In a city overflowing with distilleries and breweries, Freeland Spirits rises above.
Text by Tiffany Hill
Images by Amanda Leigh Smith
Jill Kuehler was tired of flipping through Whisky Advocate and seeing women only pictured as models and socialites. “Where were the women who are producers and makers?” she says. She left her job in food education and spent three years creating Freeland Spirits, a small-batch gin and bourbon distillery and tasting room in Portland’s industrial Slabtown neighborhood. Since the distillery debuted its gin in December 2017 and opened its tasting room about eight months later, it has been breaking barriers as one of the few women-owned and women-operated distilleries in the country. Women distill and distribute the spirits, craft inventive cocktails served at the tasting room, and even grow the grain. (One of Kuehler’s earliest partners was Carman Ranch’s Cory Carman.) According to Kuehler, women are more perceptive of taste and have more olfactory senses, yet men have largely been the industry’s the tastemakers. “I feel like what we’re doing from a science perspective on that front is exciting,” she says.
Freeland Spirits Founder Jill Kuehler, Master Distiller Molly Troupe, and Sales Director Jesse Brantley (left to right in the image above) are making a name for themselves and their distillery in the male-dominated world of small-batch spirits.
The distillery itself is named after Kuehler’s tough Texas grandmother, Meemaw Freeland. Ironically, Meemaw didn’t drink alcohol, but she instilled in Kuehler that women can do whatever they want. After raising capital for the distillery—less than 3 percent of venture capital goes to women founders annually—Kuehler assembled her dream team. In 2017, a friend introduced her to Molly Troupe, who grew up outside of Portland and is one of the youngest master distillers in the United States. “We hit it off,” Troupe says, “and when I saw the other work that she had already done for this project, just her idea in general, I fell in love with the concept.” Kuehler’s childhood friend Jesse Brantley soon joined Freeland Spirits as its sale director.
Today, Freeland Spirits sells gin, bourbon, and a canned gin and rose tonic cocktail. The final recipe for the gin, derived after a lot of experimentation, has 19 botanicals, including locally sourced cucumber, thyme, rosemary, and mint. For it, Troupe combined distilling techniques, using a rotary evaporator to infuse flavors at room temperature and a heated copper still she dubbed “Hell Bitch.”
The bourbon, which debuted in November 2018, was aged for six months in pinot noir barrels from Willamette Valley’s Elk Cove Vineyards. It’s a high-corn, high-rye bourbon, meaning it has a spiciness but drinks smooth. “The fun thing about our bourbon is that we do different batches, and each batch has a slightly different variety of barrel,” Troupe says.
Molly Troupe, one of the youngest master distillers in the country, joined Jill Kuehler’s Freeland Spirits dream team in 2017.
In July 2018, Freeland Spirits opened its tasting room, a bright, airy space with custom wallpaper featuring a copper grain motif, a nod to the still visible through a window. Each month, Freeland Spirits recognizes awe-inspiring females with its community-nominated Free Spirit Award, and the distillery’s bar manager collaborates with the awardee to develop a cocktail served at the tasting room, with proceeds supporting a nonprofit of her choice.
Brantley says Freeland Spirits is not only helping create equality in the industry but also setting an example for future generations. “It’s an awesome time,” she says. “I have a young daughter, Jill has a young daughter, and it’s exciting to me for them to see women in these roles of production.”