Here's a sentence I never expected to write: one of the most interesting contract distilling stories in American whiskey starts in a cornfield in Iowa, involves a Kevin Costner movie, and ends with a former MLB pitcher hauling grain in a U-Haul. Cedar Ridge Distillery in Swisher, Iowa was the first licensed distillery in the state since Prohibition, and it's now the production home of Field of Dreams Whiskey, one of the most talked-about bourbon brands to emerge in years. This is the story of a farm family, a pot-still operation, and the audacity of making bourbon outside of Kentucky.
The Cedar Ridge story starts the way all great American business stories start: a farmer looked at what he had, looked at what was missing, and decided to do something about it. Jeff Quint grew up in Winthrop, Iowa, a town so small you could drive through it in the time it takes to sneeze. His family had farmed and distilled spirits for generations going back to Germany, so the idea of making something from the land wasn’t exactly revolutionary. What was revolutionary was doing it in a state that hadn’t had a legal distillery since Prohibition.
In 2001, Jeff and his wife Laurie bought land in Swisher, just outside Cedar Rapids, and planted grapevines. A winery came first. But Jeff, in the words of his son Murphy, “isn’t an 80% in kind of guy. He’s either 0% in or 100% in.” So naturally, a winery wasn’t enough. Iowa grows more corn than any state in the country. The idea of making bourbon from that corn was so obvious it’s almost embarrassing nobody had done it sooner.
The problem? Nobody in the Iowa state government knew how to process a distillery license application, because nobody had filed one since Prohibition ended. Jeff had to lobby, educate, and basically create the regulatory framework from scratch. In 2005, Cedar Ridge became the first licensed distillery in Iowa since the repeal of Prohibition. Their first batch of whiskey hit barrels in 2010. By 2020, Cedar Ridge Iowa Straight Bourbon had become the #1 selling 750ml bourbon in the entire state, surpassing both Maker’s Mark and Jim Beam. A craft distillery, outselling the big boys, on its home turf. I love that story more than I love most bourbons.
Cedar Ridge operates out of a 15,000-square-foot distillery, tasting room, restaurant, and event center in Swisher. The production setup includes four custom-engineered German pot stills, which is not something you see every day in bourbon country. Most Kentucky distilleries run column stills and doublers. Cedar Ridge went a completely different direction, and it shows in the final product.
Their core bourbon mashbill runs about 74-75% corn (originally sourced from the Quint family farm in Winthrop, now expanded to other Iowa farms), with the remainder being a mix of rye and malted barley. Everything is twice-distilled to a higher proof than many craft operations, which helps clean up the spirit and produce what they describe as a more approachable sipping whiskey.
Then there’s the aging. This is where Iowa’s climate becomes a genuine differentiator. Cedar Ridge ages their bourbon in non-temperature-controlled rick houses, and some of their barrel storage is partially exposed to the elements. Iowa summers are scorching. Iowa winters will freeze your eyebrows off. That extreme seasonal swing pushes the spirit in and out of the wood aggressively, accelerating the aging process compared to more temperate environments. The tradeoff is a hefty angel’s share, roughly 18-22% after three years compared to the industry average of about 12%. Mother Nature takes her cut, and she’s not shy about it.
Murphy Quint, Jeff’s son, joined the family business in 2014 and was appointed Master Distiller in 2024. Under his leadership, Cedar Ridge has leaned harder into bourbon and American single malt production, while maintaining the winery side of the operation (they still grow their own grapes and use their wine barrels for single malt finishing, which is a nice creative loop).
This is the connection that puts Cedar Ridge in this series, and honestly, it’s one of the coolest sourcing stories in the entire bourbon world.
Field of Dreams Whiskey is exactly what it sounds like. Drew Storen, a former MLB closer who played for the Nationals, Blue Jays, Mariners, and Reds, got into bourbon after his playing career ended and had a question nobody had bothered to ask: what’s happening to the corn at the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville, Iowa? You know, the cornfield from the Kevin Costner movie. The one with the ghost baseball players. “If you build it, he will come.” That cornfield.
Storen acquired the corn, loaded it into U-Haul trucks (I am not making this up), and partnered with Murphy Quint at Cedar Ridge to distill it into bourbon. The result is a 100% corn bourbon made from the actual corn grown at the actual Field of Dreams movie site. If that isn’t the most American sentence I’ve ever written, I don’t know what is.
The lineup has expanded rapidly. The initial Batch 1 sold all 22,860 bottles. The 2024 Player Series sold 5,000 bottles in under an hour. Each bottle features a collectible wooden topper with a baseball legend, because of course it does. The 2025 All-Star Whiskey release went even bigger: a blend of whiskeys from 30 distilleries across every Major League Baseball market, blended by Murphy Quint, averaging about 7 years old and bottled at 108 proof. It’s the largest whiskey blend in American history, combining bourbon, rye, American single malt, wheat whiskey, and Canadian whisky.
The 2025 Player Series also expanded beyond Iowa, incorporating wheated bourbon from an undisclosed Minnesota distillery and a high-rye component from Michigan. So while Cedar Ridge remains the anchor and primary production partner, Field of Dreams is evolving into a multi-source blending operation with Murphy Quint as the master blender steering the ship.
Let’s talk about what makes Cedar Ridge bourbon taste different from what you’ll find from a Kentucky distillery, because it genuinely does taste different.
First, the grain. Iowa corn is Iowa corn. The state produces roughly 2.3 billion bushels per year, and the quality of that grain is world-class. Cedar Ridge sources locally, and in some cases from specific farms where they know the grower. That farm-to-bottle connection isn’t just marketing copy. When you control the grain source, you control the starting material, and starting material matters.
Second, the stills. Those German pot stills produce a different spirit character than the column-and-doubler setup you see at MGP or Barton 1792. Pot distillation tends to retain more congeners (flavor compounds) from the wash, which can produce a spirit with more body and character at the cost of some efficiency. Cedar Ridge double-distills to compensate, which cleans up harshness without stripping away the interesting stuff.
Third, the climate. I keep coming back to this because it’s genuinely the most underappreciated variable in craft whiskey. Iowa’s temperature range, from below zero in January to the upper 90s in July, creates barrel interaction cycles that you simply don’t get in more moderate environments. A three-year-old Cedar Ridge bourbon has experienced more temperature extremes than a five-year-old bourbon in parts of Kentucky. Whether that translates to “better” is subjective, but it absolutely translates to “different,” and different is what makes craft distilling worth paying attention to.
Cedar Ridge ages in standard 53-gallon new charred American oak barrels, same as everyone else. But their warehouse strategy is intentionally aggressive. Some of their aging facilities are partially open-air, exposing the barrels to Iowa’s full seasonal fury. This accelerates extraction and maturation, but it also means losing a lot of liquid to evaporation.
That 18-22% angel’s share after three years is significant. In Kentucky, the industry standard is closer to 2-4% per year. Cedar Ridge is losing roughly 6-7% annually, which means every barrel yields fewer bottles, which means the cost per bottle is higher. It’s one of the reasons craft whiskey costs more than mass-produced bourbon, and it’s also one of the reasons it tastes the way it does. You’re paying for what’s left after Iowa weather took its share.
You might ask yourself, “Grady, why should I care about an Iowa distillery in a series about contract distilling?” Here’s my answer: because the future of American whiskey isn’t just Kentucky anymore.
Cedar Ridge proves that great bourbon can come from places that aren’t on the traditional bourbon map. Iowa has the corn, the water, and a climate that produces genuinely distinctive whiskey. Field of Dreams Whiskey is using Cedar Ridge as its production partner for one of the most talked-about bourbon brands in the country. And Murphy Quint’s role as master blender for the All-Star Whiskey project, coordinating liquid from 30 distilleries across the country, suggests that Cedar Ridge’s influence is expanding well beyond Swisher.
The broader lesson here is that how bourbon is made, where the grain comes from, what the climate does to the barrel, and who’s making the decisions about blending and aging, all of that matters as much as the state name on the label. Kentucky will always be bourbon’s home. But Iowa is making a serious case for being bourbon’s really talented cousin who showed up to the family reunion and surprised everyone.
Cedar Ridge Small Batch Straight Bourbon Whiskey is the flagship, and the one you’re most likely to find. It’s the expression that became Iowa’s #1 selling bourbon, made from Iowa corn, aged in non-temperature-controlled warehouses, and bottled at 86 proof. If you’ve never had an Iowa bourbon, this is your on-ramp.
Beyond the bourbon, Cedar Ridge produces an award-winning American Single Malt (“The QuintEssential”), a straight rye, malted wheat whiskey, and a range of finished expressions using their own wine barrels. The single malt has won “Best American Single Malt” at the World Whiskies Awards, which is not a sentence many Iowa distilleries can claim.
Want to see how Cedar Ridge stacks up against the Kentucky competition? The OAKR spirits database lets you compare flavor profiles, panel scores, and community reviews side by side. You might be surprised.
Cedar Ridge is the smallest distillery in this contract distiller series by a wide margin. They’re not filling thousands of barrels a day like Bardstown Bourbon Company. They’re not a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar corporation like Beam Suntory or Diageo. But they represent something important: the expansion of American whiskey beyond its traditional borders, and the idea that a family farm in Iowa can produce bourbon good enough to outsell the big names in its own state and serve as the production partner for one of the most creative NDP brands in the market.
That’s what makes this series interesting to me. It’s not just about the giants. It’s about the whole ecosystem, from the megadistilleries filling barrels by the thousands to the family operations with German pot stills and corn from a movie set. Every bottle has a source. Every source has a story. And the more you know about those stories, the better your next pour is going to taste.
Bourbon enthusiast, spirits industry analyst, and the voice behind OAKR's distillery guides, brand reviews, and bourbon education content. Visiting distilleries, dissecting mashbills, and translating the craft into data since 2024.
Cedar Ridge proves great whiskey comes from unexpected places. OAKR tracks the data on every bottle, whether it’s from Clermont or a cornfield in Swisher.
