What Willie's Distillery is known for

Willie and Robin Blazer opened Willie's Distillery at 312 East Main Street in Ennis in December 2012, after founding the business in 2010. Grain is milled and mashed on site, then fermented and run through a Bavarian Holstein copper still. Bottles are filled and corked by hand. The tasting room doubles as a room of military and firefighting memorabilia that the family calls the museum.

Willie's Distillery occupies a building at 312 East Main Street in Ennis, a town of about a thousand people in southwestern Montana. Willie Blazer comes from western North Carolina, in Appalachian moonshine country. He is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces and the Forest Service, having served as an Army Ranger and a Special Forces medic, then as a hotshot wildland firefighter and a smokejumper. His wife Robin is a fourth generation Montanan from a wheat farm near Toston. The couple describe the start as his moonshine paired with her knowledge of grain. They founded the business in 2010, and planning and financing and equipment took more than three years. The doors opened in December 2012 with moonshine as the first bottling. The still is a German Bavarian Holstein copper pot with a two-story column and condenser. It stands beside a 400-gallon mash tun and two stainless elliptical fermenters, visible through windows fronting the street. The woodwork and rafters of the building are about 120 years old. Grain is milled and mashed on site before fermentation and distillation, and the spirits are bottled and corked and packed by hand. Bighorn Bourbon followed the early moonshine. The tasting room doubles as a room for live music and community events.