Garrison Brothers Distillery
Every bottle is milled, cooked, distilled, barreled and aged on the Hye ranch, and volunteers hand-dip each one in wax in the bottling room you walk through.1
Why go
The distillery calls itself the first legal whiskey operation in Texas and the birthplace of the first bourbon made outside Kentucky; both are the house's own claims and neither is checked here.3 What is checkable is the tour, which runs 75 to 90 minutes from the planked cabin gift shop up to the Show Barn, through the Stillhouse and Cookhouse and the bottling room, and finishes with a pour of Small Batch in Uno, the original barrel barn.1 Expressions run from 80 to 140 proof, which is a wide enough spread that a flight actually moves.3 Dan and Nancy Garrison still host Meet the Maker dinners on the calendar, and Charlie Garrison hosts his own.1
Order this / avoid
- Small Batch, because the tour ends on it and it is the house baseline.1
- Cowboy Bourbon, the annual release. The 2026 party runs 8am to 4pm on 12 September at the distillery.1
- The Ranch Reserve PX and Oloroso finishes, released 27 June 2026, if any is left when you get there.1
- Avoid: a Sunday. The distillery is closed Sunday and Monday, and Texas law bars the bottle sale on a Sunday regardless.1
What locals & experts say
- The record here is the distillery's own. Nobody quoted below is a critic, and nothing here rates the whiskey.
- The house on its aim:
WE DIDN'T WANT TO MAKE JUST ANY BOURBON, WE WANTED TO MAKE THE BEST BOURBON EVER MADE.
3 - On the site:
Each and every bottle of Garrison Brothers is milled, cooked, distilled, barreled and aged at our distillery in Hye, Texas.
3
Good to know
- Hours: closed Sunday and Monday. Tuesday to Thursday 10 to 4, Friday and Saturday 10 to 6, as published on 20 August 2026.1
- Tours: $10 a head Tuesday to Friday, $20 on Saturday. Noon and 2pm midweek; 10am, noon, 2pm and 4pm Friday and Saturday. Book ahead.1
- Food: the Whiskey Shack runs 11 to 2 Tuesday to Thursday and 11 to 5.30 Friday and Saturday.1
- Kids and dogs are both welcome on the tour, dogs leashed.1
- Getting there: 1827 Hye-Albert Road, off US-290 in Hye, a few minutes from William Chris and Calais.1
Verdict
could-visit — Everything in the bottle is made on the Hye site, milled and cooked and distilled and aged there, and the tour walks the whole line: Stillhouse, Cookhouse, the bottling room where volunteers hand-dip every bottle in wax, and a closing pour of Small Batch in the first barrel barn they built. Texas heat does the work that time does in Kentucky, and the range runs 80 to 140 proof, so the tasting has somewhere to go. The dates are the useful part: Cowboy Bourbon lands on 12 September 2026 with a party attached, and the Ranch Reserve PX and Oloroso finishes came out in June. The distillery calls itself the first legal whiskey operation in Texas and the birthplace of the first bourbon made outside Kentucky, and both of those are its own claims, unchecked here. That, plus the absence of any published tasting note on the whiskey, is what keeps this at could-visit.