Jonathan Blitz
“A Mystic Blitz”
Jonathan Blitz likes to tell a particular version of how Mystic Farm & Distillery began: two friends, a worn patch of ragged farmland on the edge of Durham, North Carolina, and the stubborn idea that that state’s pre-Prohibition distilling legacy deserved a serious reawakening. What started as curiosity and weekend tinkering in 2013 has grown into an award-winning, slightly eccentric farm distillery that produces bourbon, hosts weddings, sells grass-fed beef, and now quietly aims for the stars—literally.
Blitz didn’t arrive in the spirits world as a lifer; he grew up far from Tobacco Road. A St. Louisan by birth and a New-South transplant by choice, Blitz trained professionally as an attorney. That legal background is evident in the way he discusses regulations, licensing, and the meticulous paperwork that ensures the whiskey remains legal and the lights stay on. In interviews, he’s toggled between tasting notes and courtroom cadence, the sort of operator who can argue a zoning point one minute and explain the aromatics of a double-oaked bourbon the next.
His path into distilling was less a single epiphany than a sequence of small enthusiasms. He and co-founder Mike Sinclair were both curious about fermentation and the “how” of spirits. What began downtown in Durham as modest production in bottling tiny batches and selling to local bars and restaurants became a bigger project when the partners, with their spouses, bought a 22-acre farm in 2015 and committed to becoming one of the Triangle’s farm distilleries. They planted grains, built cooperage relationships, and insisted on doing as many steps in-house as possible: from growing raw material to finishing the bottle. That farm focus distinguishes Mystic: it isn’t a Kentucky megafactory, but a place that trades on terroir and the tactile links between field and barrel. Personal life for Blitz is woven into the business. He and his wife, Marla Tuchinsky, are public partners in Mystic’s story; hosting events, appearing in interviews, and helping shepherd the farm’s community presence.
Mystic has steadily built its reputation. Its Broken Oak Bourbon has become the kind of regional product that forces critics to pay attention: consecutive gold medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2021 and 2022 and a double-gold honor in 2023 made the point loud and clear. For a distillery that only began distilling in earnest a decade ago, winning top medals against hundreds of national entries was an emphatic validation of process and palate. These awards also brought new customers and a stronger wholesale profile outside North Carolina.
Blitz’s voice in the story of Mystic often toggles between barn-wise pragmatism and an imagination for the theatrical. The farm sells beef raised on spent mash; the tasting room hosts weddings; the distillery runs pick-your-own events and bottling classes. Then, in a move that made headlines and some skeptics grin, Blitz announced Mystic Galactic, a plan to age a selection of bourbon barrels in low-Earth orbit and bring them back. The project is flamboyantly premium: a small numbered release, spacecraft logistics, and a marketing pitch about rarity and novelty. For Blitz, that’s perfectly on brand, since he’s built a business that seems to strive to be rigorously tasteful and, at the same time, a little bit playful.
Day to day, the distillery practices are seriously hands-on. Mystic grows the corn and wheat it uses in mash bills, reuses spent mash as livestock feed, and emphasizes small-batch cooperage. The Broken Oak releases are typically young, often under five years, but Blitz’s team double-oaks, finishes, and re-barrels with enough care that critics have compared their bottles favorably with more established houses. Those technical choices reflect a philosophy: you can make great bourbon without decades of continuous production if you attend obsessively to mash composition, barrel selection, and the small decisions that coopers and distillers pay close attention to each day.
There have been rough patches. Running a craft distillery in North Carolina has meant wrestling with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, navigating local zoning, and managing public health constraints during pandemic years. Blitz has been outspoken about regulatory pain points, sometimes criticizing enforcement actions and arguing for common-sense approaches that help small producers survive. That advocacy is consistent with his legal training: when the rules don’t make sense for craft operators, he’s not afraid to say so publicly.
If you talk to regulars at Mystic’s tasting room, they’ll tell you it’s the combination of place and person that makes the visit memorable. Blitz’s knowledge of distillation and his readiness to nerd out on aging regimes meet a very intentional hospitality plan: a farm that smells like wood smoke and fresh ground corn, a bar that pours samples with stories, and a staff that explains milling, mashing, and the sometimes mercurial nature of yeast. The result is more than product; it’s an experience that makes customers feel like part of a small, local revival of Southern distilling.
What comes next for Jonathan Blitz and Mystic is part growth plan, part experiment. Will the space-aged bourbon become a pricey curiosity or a testbed for deeper research into how microgravity affects barrel maturation? Will Mystic scale distribution further without losing the farm’s intimacy? Blitz seems to enjoy those tensions as the lawyer who became a farmer-distiller and likes to balance risk and ritual. Whatever happens, the story so far is clear: a regional operator with technical skill, community sense, and a taste for ambitious storytelling turned a 22-acre patch of Durham into one of the South’s most talked-about new bourbon producers.
Sources:
Mystic Farm & Distillery, official pages, www.whatismystic.com
North Carolina Department of Agriculture blog, “Bringing the Ag Industry full circle at Mystic Farm and Distillery”, October 30, 2020
9th Street Journal, “Bourbon-maker’s aims are out of this world”, Storey Wertheimer, December 6, 2023
WRAL-TV (Durham, NC), “Durham’s Mystic Farm & Distillery wants to age its bourbon in space”, Jan 23, 2023
MidTown Magazine, “Mystic Mission”, Don Vaughan, September 21, 2023
Eater Carolinas, “Mystic Farm & Distillery wins Best Bourbon up to 5 years”, carolinaseaters.com
Libertarian Party of North Carolina, “Johnathan Blitz of Mystic Distillery”, Larry Johnson, May 13, 2021
St. Louis Jewish Light, “Jonathan Blitz’s distillery earns huge honor for its bourbon”, July 26, 2023
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
