Ashley & Chris Cross
For more than two decades, Ashley Cross made her career in a classroom. Cross taught English at the secondary-school level for roughly 24 years, including 18 years teaching Advanced Placement English at Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah. She continued her own education during that time and eventually earned a Master of Arts degree from Weber State University. In due course, teaching gave her an indirect and unexpected route into another profession—one that would take her from literature and composition to fermentation and distillation then, eventually, bourbon whiskey.
Ashley and her husband, Chris, had long shared an interest in spirits. Ashley favored gin, while Chris developed a particular fondness for agave spirits. Their vacations over more than two decades frequently included distilleries, and trips to Mexico allowed them to explore traditional agave production. They also attended tequila classes around the United States, while a gin-distilling seminar in Amsterdam helped turn their interest from that of enthusiastic consumers into something more serious.
The decisive moment came in 2013. After continued interest in her in career in public education had peaked, Ashley told Chris that she did not want to return for another year of teaching. The name of the business grew naturally from Ashley telling her husband that she was burned out and needed “a new world.” The phrase proved fitting for a schoolteacher preparing to exchange the classroom for a distillery, and Ashley and Chris began transforming their longtime interest in spirits into plans for a commercial enterprise.
The Crosses chose Eden, Utah, in the Ogden Valley as their home and the location for their new venture. After nearly three years of planning, they broke ground in 2016 on a 4,300-square-foot distillery designed to resemble a barn and complement the agricultural character of the valley. The facility incorporated a recirculating cooling-water system, wastewater evaporation equipment, solar power and computer-controlled fermentation and distillation equipment. Ashley and Chris also worked with Utah artist Tyler Davis on distinctive artwork that could be screen-painted directly onto their bottles rather than applied as conventional paper labels.
New World Distillery opened to the public on December 10, 2016. Its first release was Oomaw Gin, a spirit Ashley and Chris had spent more than a year developing, and the original product reflected Ashley’s longstanding interest in that spirit. Agave spirits soon followed, along with vodka, cherry liqueur and other products. Although Ashley had left public education, she did not immediately leave teaching: during New World’s first three years, the distillery hosted advanced distilling courses with an international instructional staff and students preparing to establish distilleries of their own. Unfortunately, the program eventually ended because teaching the courses interfered with New World’s growing production schedule.
Whiskey was not New World’s first focus, but as the business matured, grain spirits became an important extension of its production philosophy. The result was Ogden Nine Rails Bourbon, first released in December 2019. Unlike a sourced whiskey bottled under a local label, Nine Rails was fermented and distilled at New World in Eden and aged there before release.The Crosses single-distilled it on the grain, retaining grain solids during processes in which many distillers separate them from the liquid. They regarded the method as a way to carry more grain character through fermentation and distillation into the finished whiskey. The name Nine Rails drew upon the history of nearby town of Ogden. In the 1800s, Ogden became one of the American West’s great railroad centers after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, earning a reputation as a junction through which important rail lines passed. The Nine Rails bottle artwork incorporates railroad spikes, and the whiskey’s identity deliberately pays tribute to Ogden’s railroad heritage and its long role as a center of western commerce. The first small batch proved scarce from the beginning; New World announced at its December 2019 debut that another batch would not be ready for at least five months, and the initial release sold out shortly after appearing. Nine Rails then became a recurring but limited part of the New World portfolio rather than a mass-produced whiskey. Its limited releases continue to sell quickly, and New World has kept Nine Rails primarily as a distillery-only product. The bourbon also brought outside recognition to New World’s grain-distilling program. In 2021, Ogden Nine Rails received a bronze medal in the whiskey category of the American Craft Spirits Association judging competition. The award was particularly notable because Nine Rails remained a genuinely small-batch whiskey made at New World rather than a purchased bourbon selected and rebottled by the company.
New World Distillery is now in its tenth full year of operation, and Chris Cross reported in early 2026 that another release of Nine Rails—release number twelve—was being prepared. What began when a veteran English teacher decided that she needed “a new world” has consequently endured far beyond a career change: Ashley and Chris Cross helped create a working Utah distillery that learned to make its own bourbon from grain, age it in the Ogden Valley and attach it to the railroad history of the place the Crosses chose to call home.
Sources:
Weber State University, “Class Notes: Ashley Cross MA ’11,” Weber State Magazine, Fall 2015, weber.edu
Utah Stories, “A Whole New World: From School Teacher to Distiller, The Story of Ashley Cross,” Connie Lewis, May 24, 2022, utahstories.com
Voyage Utah Magazine, “Check Out Ashley Cross’s Story,” January 31, 2022, voyageutah.com
New World Distillery official website, newworlddistillery.com
Visit Utah, “Utah Spirits Tours: The Innovator—New World Distillery, Eden,” accessed September 28, 2026, visitutah.com
Forbes, “This Remote Micro-Distillery In Rural Utah Makes Shocking Good Spirits,” Leslie Kelly, February 3, 2020, forbes.com
American Craft Spirits Association, “2021 Judging Final Scores,” 2021, americancraftspirits.org
Visit Ogden, “Everything You Need to Know About New World Distillery,” 2026, visitogden.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
