Bainbridge Organic Distillers

The Free Bacchus Story

Keith Barnes fired the still for the first time on 14 April 2009, and what went into it was certified organic wheat from a small family farm on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Finding that grain was the hard part. Washington’s rules for small distilleries required grain grown in the state, Barnes wanted it organic as well, and he has said plainly that sourcing enough of it was difficult.

The register bears him out on the dates. The USDA’s organic database lists the operation as Free Range Distilling Co., trading as Bainbridge Organic Distillers, certified by the Washington State Department of Agriculture with an effective date of 21 May 2009, five weeks after that first run. Thirty-one products are listed on it one by one: thirty spirits, and a maple syrup aged in a Battle Point whiskey barrel.

One thing to be exact about, because it is the sort of detail that gets rounded up. The certificate covers handling, not crops. Bainbridge does not farm; it buys certified organic grain and distils it. That is a real certification of a real process, with the mashing, fermenting, distilling and bottling all inside it, but the fields belong to other people, and the page should not imply otherwise.

Wheat whiskey is worth explaining, because most people meet American whiskey as bourbon and expect corn sweetness or rye spice. Battle Point is made from organic soft white wheat alone and aged more than six years in charred American oak. The distillery’s own notes find caramel, vanilla and orange peel on the nose, baking spice and a little eucalyptus on the palate, and a finish it describes as salt-air brine.

At the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Battle Point Barrel Proof took Double Gold for the third year running, and YAMA, the distillery’s whiskey aged entirely in Japanese mizunara oak, was named Best American Grain Whiskey. Bainbridge is family-owned and sells from its own shop on the island.