Bruce Boeko

“From Craft to Classroom”

When Nashville’s Wedgewood–Houston neighborhood began turning warehouses into creative spaces in the mid-2010s, Bruce Boeko brought a scientist’s discipline to the city’s artisanal boom. Before he was a distiller, Boeko spent roughly two decades in human-identity and forensic DNA work, ultimately directing a DNA laboratory in Nashville. When a corporate transfer would have moved him out of Nashville, he chose to stay and return to school for business training, then pivot and retool his career for spirits. He added professional distilling knowledge through formal coursework, then concocted his plan: build a small, technically exacting distillery in Nashville that made spirits from scratch with local and regional ingredients.

Construction followed, and Nashville Craft Distillery opened in 2016. From day one Boeko insisted on doing the hard parts in-house; mashing, fermenting, distilling, barreling, and he made that process visible to guests. The tours became known for their technical depth, reflecting a founder who was both a teacher and a maker. “Because I am a scientist,” he liked to say, “I get technical on tours.” That education-forward approach would later become central to his next chapter.

And although Nashville Craft produced more than barreled spirits, the heart of the portfolio, and Boeko’s personal focus, was whiskey. He soon launched Nashville Craft Original Bourbon Whiskey, a wheated bourbon of 60% corn, 30% wheat, and 10% barley, then distilled and bottled it on site. The first barrel rolled out in a small signed release on May 11, 2019. A few months later, the distillery bottled its first batch of Nashville Craft Traditional Bourbon Whiskey. This was a more classic mash bill of 80% corn, 10% rye, and 10% malted barley, proofed to 93. By late 2022 Boeko had introduced a limited Nashville Craft Maple Whiskey that married their made-from-scratch bourbon with pure maple syrup, again distilled and bottled in downtown Music City. Each entry added a distinct register to a compact, hands-on whiskey program, always small-batch, always from a handful of carefully selected barrels.

Running alongside the bourbons was the most Nashville Craft thing of all: sorghum spirits. Boeko’s first product was Naked Biscuit Sorghum Spirit, distilled entirely from pure sorghum syrup sourced in Tennessee from the Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill. It was a statement of place and process as much as a release, celebrating a crop long adapted to Tennessee’s climate. Later, he created Golden Biscuit Sorghum Spirit by aging Naked Biscuit in bourbon barrels, a small-batch variation with vanilla cake batter on the nose and subtle oak on the palate. In focusing on sorghum, Boeko tied the distillery to local agriculture and to a partner farm that became integral to his story.

The distillery’s whiskey and sorghum arc coincided with Boeko’s growing role as an educator. He built two-day, hands-on distilling experiences and tastings that drew visitors looking for more than a flight: people who wanted to understand the mechanics of fermentation, cuts, maturation, and blending. Travel and trail guides routinely singled out Nashville Craft’s technical tours and its distinctive expressions.

Unfortunately, after nine years, Nashville Craft’s fast-growing neighborhood again faced redevelopment. This time, rather than relocate, Boeko closed Nashville Craft to the public on March 30, 2025. Barrels went to storage to continue aging, and the team began exploring future options for the spirits. But Boeko was not done. Within a few months, he was hired to launch a new Distilled Spirits program at Motlow State Community College. Education had always been implicit in Boeko’s tours, but Motlow made it explicit, and soon he was serving as Program Director for the college’s revolutionary new Distilled Spirits degree program, described as among the first two-year distilled-spirits degrees in the country. The role placed him in the center of the Tennessee whiskey Mecca near Lynchburg, and allowed him to translate his laboratory rigor and craft-scale production experience into curriculum, labs, and workforce training.

At the same time as he was stepping into academia, Boeko also agreed to help establish processes for the new Muddy Pond Distillery, an elegant continuity for the Guenther family’s sorghum story Boeko had begun in Nashville. The agricultural tie, like his commitment to mashing and distilling from scratch, remained unbroken even as his stills moved two hours east, and his long-time sorghum partners used them to begin Muddy Pond Distillery in Monterey, Tennessee.

Bruce, who was born February 18, 1969, is married to Linda Zettler Boeko. Linda partnered with her husband in Nashville Craft’s operations and communications. Even with Bruce and Linda no longer working together on the distilling floor, their whiskey and sorghum work continue by other means. The whiskey barrels laid down in Wedgewood-Houston are still maturing, and the sorghum equipment he once used is running again in Monterey. In a collegiate lab, meanwhile, he’s doing what his distillery tours always hinted at—methodically teaching the next generation how to make Tennessee spirits with rigor and respect for local agriculture. It’s a fitting evolution for a scientist-distiller who built a small, precise house of whiskey and sorghum in Nashville, and now excitedly shares the know-how behind it in the classroom.

Sources:

  1. Alcohol Professor, “Field Trips: Nashville Distilleries”, Devon Trevathan, July 30, 2018

  2. Nashville Lifestyles, “Nashville Craft Distillery”, Chris Chamberlain, November 15, 2016

  3. Nashville Craft Distillery website, “Our Spirits”, www.nashvillecraft.com

  4. WMSR-Thunder Radio-AM1320 (Manchester, TN), “Distilled Spirits registration open at Motlow”, June 11, 2025

  5. The (Nashville) Tennessean, “Ms. Cheap Penny Drive…”, Mary Hance, December 15, 2016

  6. The (Nashville) Tennessean, “Nashville Craft whiskey distiller opens in Wedgewood-Houston”, Lizzy Alfs, May 19, 2016

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee