Cedar Ridge Distillery
By Devin Ershow
The clouds drift low across the velvet hills of Germany, soft and slow as breath. In the folds of this green country stands a vineyard—weathered, rooted, patient. Its vines stretch downward, grasping earth with a memory centuries deep. Thousands of miles away, in the stubborn clay and sand of the Swisher, Iowa soil, something stirs. A sprout breaks the crust—grapes again. Another vineyard, this one bathed in golden light as the sun lifts over a cedar-lined horizon. Old-world echoes meet new-world intention. In Swisher, legacy ripens alongside ambition at Cedar Ridge Distillery—a place where bourbon, American single malt, and generations of family history converge in the hands of the Quints.
“For generations we have people that have just been working the land.”
— Murphy Quint, Master Distiller, Cedar Ridge Distillery
Jeff Quint’s story begins in Winthrop, Iowa—a town so small it could pass you by in a blink, its heartbeat wrapped in farming and family. The Quints came from Germany in the 1800s, grape growers and winemakers by trade. Their German winery, Weingut Quint, still presses fruit into tradition today. In Iowa, Jeff worked the family farm with his father, Howard, later known as Howdy to his grandchildren—a man as gentle as he was resolved. Though the family faced hardship, Howard’s vision never drifted. His son, he believed, would have more. So he built a life from the dust up, pressing apples into wine and brandy on an old wooden press, firing up a small still that would later feel like prophecy.
When they lost the farm, it was a heartbreak stitched into the seams of Jeff’s story. He went on to college—the first in his family—and eventually became CFO for a string of companies. He married Laurie, a fellow Winthrop native, who became an educator. They had made good on Howard’s dream. But legacy, like yeast, doesn’t sit quietly. “Selling all your time to work for someone else is great and it can be comfortable,” says Murphy Quint, their son. “But what is also desirable—something that is obviously less comfortable and more risky—is something that you can do on your own. Something that is more for you or your family. Something that you can pass down.”
Jeff felt the pull—quiet at first, then insistent. A call back to the land, the lineage, the labor. Farming was in his bones. It didn’t matter how far he’d traveled from it, how many boardrooms or balance sheets had stood between him and the soil—he was being drawn home. Murphy Quint was just twelve when he first noticed the shift. He remembers his father bent low over a kitchen table, maps splayed in all directions—parcels of possibility. Up until then, life had followed a steady rhythm. His parents worked regular jobs, came home each night, and sat down for dinner like clockwork. But something was in the air. “I could just kind of feel that plan is kind of changing,” Murphy recalls.
Jeff had always been all or nothing. “Something I really admire about my dad is that he isn’t an 80% in kind of guy,” Murphy says. “He’s either 0% in or 100% in.” And this? This was 100. The idea reached back across time and ocean—back to Germany. Jeff wanted a vineyard. In 2001, he and Laurie bought land in Swisher and began to plant. It would be years before the vines bore fruit fit for harvest, but Jeff understood patience. He also understood opportunity. A vineyard alone, he thought, wasn’t enough. Iowa had no shortage of charm, but it lacked distinction in the world of wine. So Jeff decided to build something more—a distillery. The idea was ambitious, even audacious. Iowa hadn’t licensed a distillery since Prohibition. No one in the local government knew how to handle the request.
Jeff got to work. He lobbied, he educated, he persisted. And in 2005, Cedar Ridge became the first licensed distillery in the state in over 70 years. Its first home? A modest winery tucked into a literal garage. “It was as small as a mom-and-pop shop gets,” Murphy says, smiling at the memory.
Tucked in the back was a 30-gallon Christian Carl pot still—copper and gleaming, imported from Germany, a quiet nod to the family’s roots. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Alongside their wines, Cedar Ridge began crafting spirits—vodka, gin, brandy, and rum. Whiskeys, too—bourbon, malted rye, malted wheat, malted barley — made in small batches - rested in barrels at the edge of the winery, waiting. Visitors would catch sight of the barrels and raise an eyebrow. “It would keep them sort of coming back to check on it,” Murphy remembers. Curiosity was the hook, patience the draw. They waited 5 years to bring their first bottle of bourbon to market. It wasn’t easy.
Back then, the law was an obstacle. Tasting room guests could sample spirits but not buy a bottle. If they wanted to take something home, they had to leave the distillery and walk a few blocks to a liquor store. “People would be like, ‘What are you talking about? You’re holding the bottle. Can I just buy it?’” Murphy laughs. “And I’d say, ‘It’s illegal in Iowa to sell you a bottle that I’m making. That’s just the way it is.’”
Even with the red tape, the community showed up. In Iowa—too often dismissed as flyover country, a state people pass through but rarely stop to see—local pride runs deep. “It’s something that all Iowans joke about,” Murphy says, “but deep down, I think it bugs all of us a little bit. It’s an incredibly beautiful state with a lot to do, yet no one really shows us the time of day.” So when someone dares to do something bold—something different—Iowans rally. Cedar Ridge was no exception. “We probably released some stuff early on that was mediocre,” Murphy says, not flinching. “I’ll be straight up about that. But people were quick to support it because they wanted us to grow.”
“We’re geared up to really ride this wave if we hit it hard.”
The business was growing—and so was the family. What began as Jeff and Laurie’s shared vision of a vineyard had, by 2010, evolved into something more balanced. Spirits now made up half of Cedar Ridge’s operations. Murphy, once just a teenager stacking cases and scrubbing tanks to fund Friday nights with friends, had started to feel the weight—and pull—of the legacy.
He went off to college at Kirkwood Community College, where he met Amy, then his girlfriend, now his wife. After graduating in 2010, the two headed west, drawn by the promise of open skies and new beginnings. They landed in Denver, Colorado. For Murphy, Denver meant one thing: Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. He’d seen them before—2009, at the American Distilling Institute conference. The industry was still in its infancy, the craft boom just a dull rumble in the distance. Most distillers wore flannel, bathed in ambiguity. But not Stranahan’s. “They owned that conference,” Murphy remembers. Branded shirts, sample pours, confident smiles. They didn’t whisper their story. They announced it.
Eight hundred miles from home, Murphy figured he had nothing to lose. Every Friday, he called Stranahan’s, asking for a job. Every Friday, the answer was no—until finally, it wasn’t. He was brought in for an interview, and soon after, joined the production team under Rob Dietrich, then Head Distiller. It wasn’t just the work that left a mark. It was the people. “It’s what I saw that really changed how I view this whole industry,” Murphy says. “The people I worked with—how into this whiskey game they were—how much they loved it. They lived, breathed, and ate it.”
He watched as fans camped out in the snow, sleeping bags lining the sidewalk in the dead of winter, all for a chance to buy a bottle of Stranahan’s Snowflake. That dull rumble from 2009 had grown louder and was starting to shake his feet. By 2014, Murphy and Amy made the decision to return to Iowa. Cedar Ridge was already making whiskey, but Murphy was pushing for more. He urged Jeff to ramp up production, to meet the moment head-on. By 2017, Cedar Ridge was no longer just a winery with a still—it had become a distillery that also made wine.
It was a turning point, and one that Murphy credits to his father. “Everyone knows they need a whiskey mind, a brand-building mind, someone who can do sales and distribution,” he says. “But the most important thing in a distillery environment is someone who understands the financial side of it. How you build up inventory by going around the clock, how you spread out the costs by being fully efficient... that stuff is something that a lot of startup distilleries overlook.”
But Jeff Quint didn’t overlook it. He built it in from the start.
Cedar Ridge Straight Bourbon is the flagship—the bottle that tells the story best. Its mash bill is built on 74% corn, 14% rye, and 12% malted barley. In the beginning, all the corn came from the family farm in Winthrop—rows of it rising from black Iowa soil. As production scaled, they began sourcing from local grain elevators, but the promise hasn’t wavered: Iowa corn, always.
“That’s something that we’ll always do,” Murphy says firmly. “At least as long as my dad is alive and I’m alive, we will always use Iowa corn in our mash bills. Because that’s the foundation of what we’ve built.” Iowa is the number one corn-producing state in the country—and for good reason. In places like Winthrop, the earth is thick with mineral-rich black dirt, a living legacy of glacial movement and prairie grass. That soil doesn’t just grow corn—it grows some of the best in the world. Most people don’t know it, but chances are, a healthy portion of the corn in their Kentucky bourbon came from Iowa.
For the rest of their grains—rye and barley—Cedar Ridge turns north. Prairie Malt, a division of Boortmalt in Saskatchewan, Canada, supplies their specialty grain. While corn and soy thrive in Iowa, other grains are tougher to grow. “It would be a risk on their end and a risk on our end,” Murphy explains, of trying to convince local farmers to take on a new crop. So the Quints looked for partners who not only specialized in malted grain, but who shared their values. They found that in Prairie Malt. “They’re the Iowans of Canada,” Murphy laughs.
When it comes to production, Cedar Ridge diverges from tradition. They ferment off-grain—a process where the solid grain is removed after mashing, leaving behind only the sugary wort to ferment. It's a technique borrowed more from single malt scotch than Kentucky bourbon. At first, it wasn’t about philosophy. It was about plumbing. “Early on, we wanted to make whiskey,” Murphy says, “but logistically, we could only do it if we did it off-grain. We’re in a rural environment. We’re on septic out here. When it comes to waste— if we’re going to distill on-grain and ferment on-grain— well all of that eventually is going to get dumped into holding tanks. It’s going to be a huge problem.”
What began as necessity soon became preference. It gave their whiskey a unique character, something that set them apart from the big industrial brands. “When it comes to equipment,” Murphy reflects, “American whiskey producers are still young enough that we’re all kind of driving our first cars. We’re thinking about the car that we want, but we’re driving the car that we have.”
And when they’re done with the grain, it’s not wasted. The spent mash, still loaded with nutrients, goes right back into the community—hauled to nearby farms, where it becomes feed for cattle.
Back in 2010, Cedar Ridge was running off two stills—both Christian Carl. One was the original 30-gallon pot still, the other a 100-gallon pot still with two offset columns. By 2016, they’d brought in a 200-gallon pure pot still, and just two years later, upgraded again with an 800-gallon pot still, both gleaming German builds, both still proudly in use.
Today, they run their whiskey through a two-step system: the stripping run starts in the 800-gallon pot still, followed by a spirit run in the 200-gallon still. The hybrid column still? That one handles everything else—vodka, gin, brandy, etc. The original 30-gallon sits off to the side now, more heirloom than workhorse, alongside Grandpa Howdy’s apple press. Both are on display for guests, reminders of how far the distillery has come—and how rooted it still is.
The stills run 24 hours a day, five days a week—three shifts from Sunday night through Friday night. It’s a relentless rhythm, but one that reflects Cedar Ridge’s dedication not just to volume, but to intention. Their whiskey comes off the still a bit higher than most, sitting around 145 proof. “One thing that we try really hard to do is produce slightly more approachable spirits while maintaining body, flavor, character,” Murphy says. “We don’t want to strip all of that out—but we do want something more on the approachable side. One way we do that is by going to a slightly higher proof.”
Once distilled, the whiskey is barreled at 120 proof into 53-gallon virgin American oak—char #3—from Independent Stave Company. From there, the barrels are handed off to nature. Iowa’s climate does the rest. Though the state cycles through all four seasons, Murphy argues there are really two extremes: blistering, humid summers and bone-dry, subzero winters. In the intervening seasons, temperatures swing wildly—twenty degrees in the night, seventy by afternoon. The wood breathes with each shift, expanding and contracting, pulling whiskey deep into the grain and back out again.
“We’ve been #1 selling Bourbon in Iowa now for 5 years running.”
- Megan Patz, Director of Marketing, Cedar Ridge Distillery
The name Cedar Ridge is a tribute to the land itself—a nod to the line of cedar trees standing watch over the edge of the vineyard. Quiet, enduring, and unmistakably Iowan. That same sensibility carries into the packaging: clean, approachable, and, as Director of Marketing Megan Patz puts it, “speaks to our hardworking Iowa roots.”
Each bottle bears a simple stamp: Authentic by Nature. For Cedar Ridge, it’s more than a tagline. “It speaks to our distillation process and techniques,” Megan writes. “Each batch of Cedar Ridge whiskey takes on the character of Iowa’s land and climate. No temperature-controlled aging, minimal waste, and Midwest resourcefulness put production first, favoring quality over quantity.”
In 2017, Cedar Ridge gained something more than a new label. With the help of Jeff and others in the distilling community, Iowa passed a bill that allowed distilleries to sell bottles directly on-site and operate full tasting rooms. Pours and cocktails made with their own spirits—finally legal. It opened the door not only to a crucial revenue stream, but to a broader connection with their local community.
Then, in 2020, Cedar Ridge accomplished what no distillery outside of Kentucky ever had: they became the best-selling bourbon in their state. The initial efforts were all about growing distribution and getting people to try the product for us to grow.” Megan writes. “It wasn’t until 2019 that we thought we could really reach #1 in Iowa.” That shift in mindset sparked a campaign that tapped into something deeper than flavor profiles or price points—it tapped into pride.
The slogan: Turning Flyover Country Into Bourbon Country.
“That campaign, along with our pricing being close to premium legacy brands, helped us win over customers and keep them coming back.” Megan says.
Cedar Ridge bourbon, typically priced around $30, became an easy grab at the local ABC store or straight from the tasting room—something Iowans could claim as their own. Initially bottled at 80 proof, the legal minimum for whiskey, the bourbon saw a turning point around 2019. Murphy and Cedar Ridge President Jamie Siefken had started to notice a shift in consumer tastes: drinkers were gravitating toward higher proof expressions. They pushed to raise it.
Jeff wasn’t so sure, but eventually acquiesced to a modest increase. “We weren’t trying to get to 86.” Murphy admits. “We were trying to get to the mid 90s.” But compromise won the day. The flagship bourbon was bumped from 80 to 86 proof—a small but meaningful change that made the whiskey more competitive without changing its price.
“The QuintEssential to me is not so much a product as it is a program. The QuintEssential program is all about cask finishing.” - Murphy Quint
After bourbon, the next rising star at Cedar Ridge is The QuintEssential—an American Single Malt with a name that carries both legacy and ambition. Cedar Ridge had been producing single malt since the early days, but as the American Single Malt Commission began pushing the category into the national spotlight, Murphy saw an opportunity. The whiskey needed a reintroduction. In 2017, he led the rebrand.
“When we did that rebrand, I was like, ‘Alright, this is my baby,’” Murphy says, smiling. “I put my fingerprints on it.”
“At that time we wanted this product to go head-to-head with Scotch and not be stuck on the shelf next to our own bourbon.” Patz tells us. “So, we re-designed our packaging entirely and renamed it The QuintEssential American Single Malt. We knew it was incredible liquid and we just needed the consumer to try it.”
Made from 100% malted barley, The QuintEssential starts its journey aging in used Cedar Ridge bourbon barrels. After a few years, it’s finished in a range of secondary casks—rum, brandy, wine, port, and sherry—many of which come from their own winery and production. A few, like Sauternes, Tokaji, and European sherry casks, are sourced from abroad. Each cask leaves its mark.
The single malt program doesn’t stop there. Cedar Ridge also produces three peated expressions: one with 33% peated malt, one at 50%, and one made entirely from peated malt. But Murphy knows peat is polarizing.
“If I talk about peat I will immediately lose half of my audience, at least,” he admits. “People panic. So what I’m trying to do—I produce a decent amount of peat[ed distillate], and when I’m doing blends, I blend a little bit of peat into my special releases. Every time I do it I add a little more peat content.”
It’s part of a larger blending philosophy rooted in nuance and restraint. Once the distillates are finished in their various casks, they’re moved into a foeder—a massive neutral oak vessel—where they undergo the solera process. The method is simple in theory but demanding in execution. Older whiskey mingles with new, and each time a portion is drawn off for bottling, fresh barrels are added to replace it. Over time, the whiskey becomes a living blend: evolving, consistent, and deeply layered.
Managing that kind of system—especially with so many different distillates and barrel types—was, at first, overwhelming. Murphy admits it made him sick in the early years. But through repetition and experience, he developed a sense for it—an instinct sharpened over time. What began as a daunting task has become a rare kind of creative freedom. “I have had a playground to operate on that almost no one on the planet has had the opportunity to play with,” he says.
In January 2024, Murphy Quint was named Master Distiller for Cedar Ridge. That same year, The QuintEssential received 97 points from Wine Enthusiast Magazine—a monumental achievement. A moment of recognition that felt less like a finish line, and more like the start of something even bigger.
The Quint name has appeared on bottles for hundreds of years—etched into glass, passed from generation to generation, across continents and across time. It endures, like the roots of the corn that stretch deep into the black soil of Winthrop, nourished by a land that has always known hard work, and a community that knows how to lift its own.
Murphy, too, has matured like their whiskey—shaped by seasons, strengthened by time. From the boy who watched his father pore over land maps to the man blending solera-aged single malts with the ease of intuition, his journey has been one of quiet persistence. Enduring the long hours, the sleepless nights, the hum of stills and the creak of rickhouse floors.
Cedar Ridge is a quiet secret from a place most people don’t think twice about. And yet, here in the heart of Iowa, they’ve done what thousands of distilleries only dream of—built something lasting. Something meaningful.
Twenty years in, the secret is getting out. But the story? It’s just getting started.
TASTING NOTES
Double Barrel Iowa Bourbon Whiskey (52.5% ABV)
Nose: Brown Sugar, Graham Cracker, Strawberry, Coconut
Palate: The mouthfeel is velvety with sweet notes of vanilla and baking spices up front. Cinnamon explodes in the mid-palate with hints of oak, caramel and maple syrup leading to a medium finish of oak, black pepper and cola.
We love this bourbon. It has classic bourbon flavors, but there is something different in the approachability and texture. It’s delicate without feeling fragile, perhaps a testament to their off-grain fermentation and cleaner pot distillation. This is a nice, hearty bourbon that’s easy to drink, even at the higher proof.
Barrel Proof Straight Bourbon Whiskey (58% ABV)
Nose: Clove, Thyme, Vanilla, Pepper
Palate: The mouthfeel is similarly velvety with maple and vanilla sweetness up front. The mid-palate gets sweeter with vanilla and apricots leading to a long finish with black pepper and oak and a subtle bitterness.
This has everything you want out of a high proof whiskey. It delivers great bourbon sweetness with impeccable texture that is almost decadent in the mid-palate. It has just the right amount of heat and opens up beautifully with a few drops of water.
The QuintEssential American Single Malt (46% ABV)
Nose: Honey, Lemon, Dried Fruit, Chocolate, Leather
Palate: The mouthfeel is oily and coating with sweet honey notes up front. The sweetness persists but fades to the background, allowing pepper, oak and peat smoke to feature on the mid-palate. Everything comes together, joined by vanilla and ripe bananas on a very long finish.
This really is such an impressive whiskey. The depth of complexity is unlike any other American Single Malt we have ever tasted. Every flavor works together to create a dynamic drinking experience. The peat is there, but subtle and layered enough that the average whiskey drinker who may not love peat has no need to worry.