DOUGLAS FRENCH

Inspired by the beautiful ancestral corn sold in Oaxacan villages for making tortillas and tamales, Douglas French combined his passions for native local plants and good whiskey into a new enterprise. Starting In 2014, he went to village markets and rural farms buying whatever corn he could find: anything from kilo bags to gunny sacks up to a few tons. He found enough white, yellow, and black corn to start making corn whiskey. He tested 40 different recipes before defining excellence, then the good ones were put into barrels to begin aging. He launched the initial Sierra Norte^® whiskey line two years later in 2016.

Sierra Norte is the first whiskey to be made and aged in Mexico using rare, locally grown, native corn. Each corn varietal is distilled separately and then matured in French oak casks for a minimum of two years. The single-barrel bottling showcases each corn variety's nuanced, individual character. The 300-plus oak barrels used to age the whiskies are sourced directly from red wine producers whom French befriended over many years in Burgundy and Bordeaux, France, and Napa Valley, California.

French’s extensive knowledge of spirits production and whiskey production began in 1995 when he spent a year overseeing every aspect of mezcal production and distillation as the quality control manager for Encantado, a very early mezcal producer founded by Carl Doumani, the owner of Stag’s Leap Vineyards. French soon went off on his own, experimenting with espadIn and later wild agaves, and has since produced four successful spirits brands including Sierra Norte over the past 30 years.

French is a Master Distiller—someone with the rare hands-on knowledge of every detail of spirits production, from harvest through distillation, from aging to bottling. Each bottle of Sierra Norte, prized by whiskey lovers across the globe, is evidence of French’s uncompromising pursuit of excellence.