Sometime about June of 2006, Brad and Kate Mead, and their friend David DeFazio got the crazy idea, “let’s make bourbon." 

 

The Mead’s ranch in Kirby, Wyoming was sitting on the Madison Formation, a limestone aquifer a mile below the ground, and the Big Horn Basin had corn and every kind of grain you need to make bourbon. The Mead’s sent Faz out into the world to to acquire a still, figure out how to build a distillery, talk a Bourbon Hall-of-Famer into moving from Kentucky to Wyoming, and find someone who could help with the marketing. Haje got that call, and we got to create a brand from scratch.

 

77’s Head of Design, Jeff Hale, designed the Wyoming Whiskey bottle, labels and all subsequent products and editions. We got to make a lot of old-school print advertising. And work with The Faz.

 

The joy here is to be part of a brand from the very start. At the beginning, the brand goal and aspiration was simply to be taken seriously as a bourbon maker, then be worthy to be called Wyoming’s Whiskey. Then the goal grew geographically to become the Whiskey of the West, and then inward to be as good a brand as our whiskey. And, finally to attract a partnern who saw what we saw and tasted in our brand and whiskey.

 

Enter Edrington America’s, a whiskey company with The Macallan and Highland Park in their stable, who gets whiskey and brands.