Barry Butler

Barry Scott Butler entered commercial distilling at an age when many successful executives begin planning a quieter life. Instead, at 59, he exchanged part of his pharmaceutical boardroom experience for mash, fermentation, copper, barrels, and the uncertainty of starting a craft distillery. The decision was less abrupt than it appeared. Butler had spent years making spirits as a hobbyist, while he and his wife traveled around the country visiting dozens of craft distilleries, talking with distillers, tasting their products, and repeatedly discussing the possibility of building a distillery of their own.

Butler had brought a substantial business background to whiskey. He was born in October of 1959, but as a young adult, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in corporate finance from the University of Alabama in 1982, followed by an MBA from City University in Washington. By 1988, he was working in sales and marketing for Glaxo Wellcome, then joined Bausch & Lomb in 1996, eventually becoming its Global Category Leader for pharmaceuticals. His career developed into more than 35 years in the pharmaceutical industry and included founding and leading pharmaceutical businesses, including Sirion Therapeutics. and later, Betaliq.

Barry and his wife Lisa (née Hart) met while they were both students at the University of Alabama. Their first encounter was under circumstances Barry later recalled with some humor—he was dating Lisa's roommate when he met the woman who would become his wife of now more than 40 years. While their marriage matured, it also developed into a long-running business partnership. Lisa’s professional background was substantial in its own right. Lisa completed both Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Alabama in communicative disorders and speech pathology and subsequently worked in medical writing and scientific communications as well as pharmaceutical regulatory operations. By the time the Butlers opened a distillery together, they already knew how to operate as husband-and-wife business partners.

In 2001, when Barry left his position as a senior pharmaceutical executive to establish a company of his own, Lisa also left her work as a school-system speech pathologist and trained as a pharmaceutical regulatory writer. The couple subsequently worked together in a series of pharmaceutical ventures; Barry handled executive leadership while Lisa became responsible for such demanding areas as regulatory documentation and FDA filings.  That experience established a division of responsibilities that would later reappear in the whiskey business. Barry concentrated on production; Lisa concentrated on the customer-facing side of the enterprise.

The Butlers moved to Tarpon Springs in 2013 and became attached to the distinctive Greek-American community along Florida's Gulf Coast. Their interest in whiskey continued alongside Barry's pharmaceutical career. Barry was also distilling at home on a five-gallon pot still, gradually reaching the point where he believed the spirits he produced compared favorably with commercial products. Encouragement from family and friends helped turn the hobby into a business idea, but moving from a five-gallon backyard still to commercial production presented an obvious technical challenge.

In 2018, Barry and Lisa began turning that idea into Tarpon Springs Distillery. They selected a historic former warehouse, only a stone’s throw from the city's famous Sponge Docks. The building had once housed the locally-famous Stephen Katzaras Sponge Company, connecting the new distillery directly with Tarpon Springs' Greek and sponge-diving heritage. Before opening, Barry spent a summer interning at a Tennessee distillery to learn commercial production and enlisted experienced distiller Josh Smotherman as a consultant while the Florida operation was being built. The transition required Barry to scale production from his five-gallon hobby still to a 500-gallon steam-operated still known as "Amazing Grace."

Tarpon Springs Distillery opened in December 2019 with Barry leading distillation and Lisa overseeing the retail side of the business. Lisa's responsibilities included the tasting room, events, and the customer experience, and she eventually carried the tongue-in-cheek moniker "Chief Tasting Officer," while Barry became "Chief Whiskey Officer." Barry personally directed distillation for the first two years before finally persuading Smotherman to move from the Volunteer State to the Sunshine State and assume day-to-day distilling responsibilities. Smotherman brought extensive whiskey experience and improved production efficiency from his experience at Tennessee’s Short Mountain Distillery, while Barry remained deeply involved in the whiskey program and the direction of the business.

Although the distillery initially became known for several unconventional spirits, whiskey increasingly became an important part of its identity. The Gramling Woods line developed from the distillery's grain-to-glass philosophy: spirits are mashed, fermented, distilled, aged, and bottled by the operation rather than sourced That commitment produced its first major whiskey milestone in 2022, when Gramling Woods Rye Malt Whiskey won Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. The whiskey's mash bill consists of 60 percent malted rye, 25 percent pecan-smoked malted barley, and 15 percent malted corn, giving it a distinctive combination of rye spice and smoke. The Rye Malt also demonstrates how closely Butler has tied his whiskey to Tarpon Springs itself. The whiskey is aged in a former church built in 1895, a building connected to the area's Bahamian community and now used as the distillery's barrel-aging house. When the Rye Malt received its Double Gold, Barry emphasized the philosophy he and Lisa had established from the beginning: produce the spirits in-house and avoid shortcuts. The award gave national validation to a whiskey operation that had begun only a few years earlier with a pharmaceutical executive learning how to translate backyard recipes into 500-gallon commercial batches.

The whiskey portfolio continued expanding. Gramling Woods Wheat Whiskey and Single Malt Whiskey appeared in 2023, followed by Gramling Woods American Whiskey in 2024. The wheat whiskey uses malted wheat, oats, and barley, while the single malt derives its smoky character from peat-smoked six-row heritage malted barley and Munich dark malt. The American Whiskey combines the distillery's whiskeys made from wheat, rye, barley, smoked barley, oats, and corn. More recently, the Gramling Woods line has added Checkerboard Bourbon Whiskey, made with varieties of red corn and Florida 401 black rye, producing the distillery's clearest entry into the traditional American bourbon category.

What began as conversations between a whiskey-loving husband and wife visiting other people's distilleries has become a working grain-to-glass whiskey operation of their own. In the end, Tarpon Springs Distillery was not simply Barry Butler's late-career diversion. It was another Butler partnership; one which was built upon decades of marriage, decades of working together, Barry's experience creating businesses, Lisa's experience managing exacting professional responsibilities, and a shared enthusiasm for craft whiskey that finally moved from touring distilleries to owning one.

Sources:

  1. CanvasRebel, “Meet Barry Butler,” October 19, 2023, canvasrebel.com

  2. Tarpon Springs Distillery official website, tarponspringsdistillery.net

  3. Newswire, “Tarpon Springs Distillery's Gramling Woods Rye Malt Whiskey Wins Double Gold…”, April 13, 2022, newswire.com

  4. Shoutout Colorado, “Meet Barry and Lisa Butler | Craft Distillery Owners”, February 7, 2023, shoutoutcolorado.com

  5. Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, “Tarpon Springs Distillery”, visitstpeteclearwater.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee