Keith Barnes

Keith Allen Barnes is a lifelong Washington resident born in August of 1958. While he spent small portions of his life elsewhere, he repeatedly returned to his home state. Before establishing Bainbridge Organic Distillers, he accumulated more than two decades of experience in beverage-alcohol marketing and advertising, working with major spirits companies and eventually becoming president and co-founder of Motive Marketing Group. His work taught him how distilled-spirit brands were developed, positioned, and sold — qualities which later came in useful when he began his own distilling venture.

Long before he was born, Barnes family history involved spirits; his grandfather was a Prohibition-era rumrunner on the Washington coast. As a child, Keith was fascinated with the story and when he was older, he became an avid collector and student of old whiskey, assembling more than a thousand bottles from different regions and periods. Experiencing older spirits gave him direct experience with differing whiskey styles, grains, casks, and flavor profiles that had largely disappeared from modern commercial production. The hobby also kept an important family memory alive, strengthening Barnes’ interest in traditional spirits.

The idea behind Bainbridge Organic Distillers began in 1998, although the actual distillery did not come about until more than a decade later. At the time, Barnes saw no shortage of well-made conventional whiskey, but he noticed that a neglected field was certified-organic distilled spirits. Around 2005, he began conducting small-scale experiments in his garage, testing organic grain, different mash formulations, and traditional production methods. His purpose was exacting: organic certification alone would not sustain a whiskey business, so the resulting spirit also had to possess the quality and flavor necessary to compete with established brands. Serendipitously, Washington law soon created the opening Barnes needed: in 2008, the state authorized craft distilleries to conduct tastings and sell their own products at their premises, giving small producers a practical route to consumers. Barnes responded by obtaining equipment, completing the required applications, and establishing Bainbridge Organic Distillers with his son Patrick in an industrial area on Bainbridge Island. The still was fired for the first time on April 14, 2009, using certified-organic Washington wheat. The enterprise became Kitsap County’s first legal distillery in more than a century, Washington’s first USDA-certified organic distillery, and one of the earliest craft distilleries established under the state’s revised law.

Bainbridge subsequently released Legacy Organic Vodka in 2010 while its whiskey continued maturing. Battle Point Organic Wheat Whiskey followed as the central expression of Barnes’s grain-focused approach. Made from a grain bill of 100 percent USDA-certified organic heritage soft white wheat, Battle Point was initially released from small barrels and in extremely limited quantities. A December 2011 release consisted of only 250 bottles; nearly the entire allocation sold on the first day, and the few remaining bottles disappeared within minutes the following morning. As the company’s stocks matured, Battle Point developed into an older whiskey, with current releases aged for more than six years in new charred American oak. Battle Point soon established that Barnes’s all-wheat recipe could compete far beyond Washington. The whiskey repeatedly received major international honors, including multiple titles as World’s Best Wheat Whiskey at the World Whiskies Awards. In 2019 it won World’s Best Wheat Whiskey in London and Best Wheat Whiskey at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Those awards were especially significant for a small independent producer whose defining ingredients and production requirements increased costs and limited volume.

Barnes then extended his experiments from grain into unusual maturation woods. His most distinctive project became Yama Mizunara Cask Single Grain Whiskey, named for Yama, the historic Japanese immigrant village on Bainbridge Island. Yama was made from organic Washington grain and matured exclusively in new Japanese mizunara oak casks. Mizunara is difficult to season and cooper, prone to leakage, and exceptionally scarce, making its use far more complicated than aging whiskey in standard American oak. Released in 2016, Yama was presented as the first non-Japanese whiskey matured entirely in virgin mizunara casks. It subsequently earned repeated recognition as America’s Best Grain Whiskey at the World Whiskies Awards and was selected as Whisky Advocate’s Craft Whiskey of the Year. Proceeds connected with the release also supported work preserving and interpreting the Yama village’s history.

Additional Battle Point expressions demonstrated Barnes’s continued use of cask maturation as a controlled extension of the base whiskey. The Two Islands series included organic wheat whiskey finished in casks associated with Islay whisky, Barbados rum, and Hokkaido mizunara oak. These bottlings retained the Washington-grown wheat whiskey at their center while introducing characteristics from barrels with markedly different origins. The Barbados Rum Cask expression won gold medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in four consecutive years from 2019 through 2022. The honors continued in 2024 when Yama Mizunara Cask Whiskey was again named Best American Grain Whiskey at the World Whiskies Awards.

Keith and his wife, Kelly Marinella-Barnes (who is co-owner), work together at the distillery. Patrick and their other children also contribute to the family business when time allows. In the mean time, Barnes’s career joins two fields that are often treated separately. His decades in spirits marketing supplied the commercial knowledge necessary to establish and position an independent brand, while his distilling work transformed Washington wheat into internationally honored whiskey. Bainbridge Organic Distillers remains family-owned, locally produced, and fully committed to certified-organic spirits as it enters its second decade of successful operation in one of the Pacific Northwest’s most beautiful and remote locations.

Sources:

  1. Bainbridge Organic Distillers, “About Us,” March 25, 2024, bainbridgedistillers.com

  2. Explore Washington State, “Keith Barnes Master Distiller Talks Organic World Class Whiskey and More, All from Bainbridge Island,” Scott Cowan, June 25, 2021, updated April 16, 2025, explorewashingtonstate.com

  3. Edible Seattle, “Bainbridge Organic Distillery,” Abra Bennett, 2011, edibleseattle.com

  4. Bainbridge Island Review, “The Flowing Spirits of Bainbridge Island,” December 29, 2011, bainbridgereview.com

  5. Sip Magazine, “Bainbridge Yama Mizunara Cask Whisky: World’s First Non-Japanese Whiskey Aged Exclusively in Virgin Japanese Mizunara Casks,” March 28, 2016, sipmagazine.com

  6. FOX 13 Seattle, “Want the ‘World’s Best’ Whiskey? Look No Further Than Bainbridge Island,” April 24, 2019, fox13seattle.com

  7. WestSound Magazine, “World’s Best Organic Spirits in Our Own Backyard,” Brooke Huffman, April 7, 2021, wsmag.net

  8. CanvasRebel, “Meet Keith Barnes,” September 14, 2023, canvasrebel.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee