1 of 7
Evan Sledge and partner Carson Becker
2 of 7
3 of 7
4 of 7
5 of 7
The Sledge family is building an attraction in Tolar, including a distillery and event venue.
6 of 7
7 of 7
Evan Sledge is likely one of the few college students who’d built a business operating in multiple states before he graduated. Well before he graduated from TCU in May with a degree in general studies, Sledge already had several years under his belt as a hunting and fishing guide in Texas and Alaska, and living and working four months of the year in the Last Frontier.
Sledge, 23 today, and a couple of high school buddies started the business when they were 15 and in high school and ran a lawn mowing business in their hometown of Granbury. Their football coach offered $100 for a guided hunting trip; that launched the young partners into the hunting and fishing guide business. Sledge studied one year at a college in Alaska and has spent May to August each year there as a guide. “It all started with a Toro lawnmower,” Sledge says.
But things started to get “complicated” this year, Sledge says. His family’s been distilling whiskey on a 160-acre farm in the Hood County city of Tolar, minutes off of U.S. Route 377, south of Benbrook, using recipes saved by Sledge’s grandfather, who distilled moonshine on the side while serving in the Air Force in the Philippines during World War II.
You can buy the whiskey, including a smooth aged Spirit of ’42 for $60, only at the Sledge Distillery on the farm. But in January, the distillery plans to begin distributing its spiked Whiskey Morning Coffee outside the distillery, with Evan Sledge in charge of brand management and one of five partners in the product. Sledge’s parents have also been slowly developing the farm, which today includes the distillery, outdoor party space for rent, and an indoor event venue that includes a bridal suite. Next up in the planning: a saloon and small hotel.
The family moved into the whiskey business after 2008 when Sledge’s grandfather died and the family discovered an old chest containing the handwritten war-era moonshine recipes. According to family folklore, Sledge’s grandfather knew the chemistry behind whiskey-making and decided to put the Philippines’ high humidity to work in the distilling process. He scrounged scraps from the kitchen at his Air Force base, including potatoes, tomatoes and mangos, and combined them with sugar in his recipe. The whiskey was a lucrative sideline. The result by the end of the war: three duffel bags of cash, two that he was able to bring back to the U.S. after the third one was stolen. He soon met his wife-to-be, Sledge says.
“My grandma was Church of Christ; she told him, ‘You can’t drink again,’” Sledge says. “He married my grandmother, never drank again.”
After the family discovered the recipes, Sledge’s father bought a still and began to make whiskey using the recipes. The family obtained a license to sell the whiskey and opened Sledge Distillery’s doors to the public in November 2018. It publicized the opening through word of mouth; the products currently are available for sale only at the distillery, and then only on the first and third Saturdays of each month. “We didn’t do any marketing,” Sledge says of the opening. “We were expecting maybe 50 people to drive out here. We had maybe 1,500.”
Besides the Spirit of ’42 and Whiskey Morning Coffee, the distillery produces pecan and peach-infused whiskeys and Mango Moonshine. “Everything we make starts with granddad’s recipe,” Sledge says. “The same recipe he used during the war is the same recipe we use today.”
Sledge started the coffee business out of an entrepreneurship class at TCU’s Neeley School of Business, where Michael Sherrod, the William M. Dickey Entrepreneur in Residence, has teams of students devise and plan and launch a business by the end of each semester. The business levers the distillery’s assets, aging coffee beans in whiskey barrels before fire-roasting them and then using them to make the spiked coffee. Whiskey Morning Coffee was born in 2018. The distillery also sells the beans online.
For at least now, the family is seeking only to distribute the coffee, maintaining a conservative posture. His dad’s vision is “I want to keep granddad’s vision going,” Sledge says. “It’s turned into a business.”
The family raises cattle, goats, chickens and hay on the farm. The venue plan began with the distillery and moved into the outdoor party area, including a cooking facility and restrooms. Then the family built the indoor venue and opened it six months ago, and it hosts events such as weddings, reunions and corporate retreats. A large number of friends volunteer as workers. “Most of the people who work here are lawyers, doctors,” Sledge says. “They do it just for fun.”
Sledge figures he’ll have to cut back on the time he spends annually in Alaska. “Maybe four weeks” each year, he says. “Two weeks at the beginning [of the summer season], two weeks at the end.”