Josh Gardner

A shield logo with four quadrants containing a W, a barrel, a stack of books, and a U.

Joshua A. Gardner was born in November of 1985 and raised in the greater San Antonio area. Not much has been revealed publicly regarding Gardner’s early life, parents or siblings, however, once he had completed high school, Gardner joined the military. He served in the U.S. Army for seven years beginning in 2004, as an Avionics Technician. In that role, Gardner was responsible for maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair of electrical and electronic components used on tactical aircraft. While in the service, he also became fascinated by the art of homebrewing, so much so that once he was discharged in 2011, he decided to get into beverage-making himself. Once he had resettled, he took a position at a fledgling distillery right in his hometown of San Antonio: Ranger Creek Brewing and Distilling. Gardner’s distilling story, therefore, begins with his place in the second generation of distillers who carried the San Antonio company beyond its start-up years.

Ranger Creek’s original distilling program was developed under T.J. Miller, the company’s founding head distiller. The distillery’s centerpiece quickly became .36 Texas Bourbon.“.36” was made entirely at Ranger Creek. Texas corn was milled, mashed, fermented, double-distilled, barreled, matured, and bottled in San Antonio, establishing a grain-to-glass model that has remained central throughout Ranger Creek’s history. The whiskey gained national recognition, including a gold medal at the 2015 American Craft Spirits Awards. At that time, Gardner was working as an assistant distiller. But in 2016, Gardner advanced into the prominent production of Head Distiller. That October, Ranger Creek introduced a cask-strength version of its .36 Texas Straight Bourbon, and Gardner selected the barrels used for the release. The whiskey was bottled at 127.2 proof, with only 600 bottles designated for Texas and online sales.

Keeping with the distillery’s firearm-caliber theme, Ranger Creek’s .44 Texas Rye also reflected the distillery’s unconventional approach to grain whiskey. It was made from 100 percent malted rye and matured in barrels previously used for .36 Texas Straight Bourbon. Bottled at 94 proof, it carried cinnamon, mint, toffee, clove, spice, and fresh-bread characteristics. Under Gardner, this rye stood beside the corn-based bourbon and barley-based single malt as part of a whiskey program built around the individual flavors of three principal grains.

By 2019, Texas Whiskey Festival co-founder Jake Clements approached Gardner and Ranger Creek co-founder Dennis Rylander about creating the first whiskey in the festival’s Tejas Collaboration Series. Gardner and Clements scrutinized several barrels in the Ranger Creek warehouse, finally selecting a rye whiskey for finishing in a cider barrel supplied by Austin Eastciders. Their choice was based not simply on which rye tasted best at that moment, but on which barrel had the qualities most suited to developing in the finishing cask. The finished Tejas rye was released in July 2020. It had spent two and a half years in bourbon barrels before its cider-cask finish, which added baked-apple, cinnamon, floral, and honey characteristics to the rye. The small release consisted of 258 bottles sold only through Ranger Creek’s tasting room. Gardner’s work on it showed a measured use of secondary maturation: the cider barrel complemented the grassy and green-apple qualities already associated with Ranger Creek’s .44 rye rather than concealing the grain.

The single-malt side of the operation gave Gardner another distinctly Texan production method to preserve. Ranger Creek’s mesquite-smoked whiskey, originally released as Rimfire and later presented as Texas Landmark, used malted barley smoked in-house with Texas mesquite. Approximately 500 pounds of malted barley went into each batch, and the distillery employed a cold-smoking method developed for the project. The whiskey took inspiration from smoked single malt while deriving its identity from mesquite rather than Scottish peat.

In 2021, Gardner also became a teacher within the distillery. At that time, Ranger Creek hired C.J. Helms as an apprentice distiller, and Gardner trained him in commercial pot-still production. Working in a two-person grain-to-glass operation, Helms learned bourbon, rye, single-malt, and botanical-spirit production, along with mash-bill development, blending, and sensory evaluation. Once Helms later moved to Still Austin Whiskey Co., he still considered Gardner his friend and mentor, giving Gardner’s work credibility beyond just the whiskey that is created at Ranger Creek.

After the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic has finally passed, Gardner continued to develop limited releases while maintaining the company’s established range. The Tejas series returned to Ranger Creek in 2022 with .36 bourbon finished in a mead barrel, and another Ranger Creek rye finished in a naranja-wine barrel followed in 2024. These releases expanded the distillery’s exploration of finishing casks without displacing its foundational grain-to-glass bourbon, rye, and single malt. Then, in June 2024, Ranger Creek released one of Gardner’s personal barrel projects: a .36 Single Barrel Texas Straight Bourbon bottled at 107 proof. The whiskey had aged for nearly four and a half years in an Independent Stave Company barrel with a medium char and level-three toast. Only 210 bottles were released. Ranger Creek identified it as one of its finest releases and described it as full-bodied and sweet, with light fruit notes—a mature, carefully proofed bourbon selected from the stock Gardner had helped manage for years.

Gardner now occupies the position once held by Ranger Creek’s founding distillers. He oversees a portfolio led by .36 Texas Straight Bourbon, now aged in traditional large oak barrels, alongside cask-strength bourbon, 100-percent malted-rye whiskey, and mesquite-smoked American single malt. His documented career traces a steady progression from assistant distiller to barrel selector, head distiller, collaborator, and mentor. Personal details remain scarce, but the production record is clear: Josh Gardner became the working custodian of Ranger Creek’s grain-to-glass philosophy and continued shaping it through mature bourbon, grain-focused rye, Texas single malt, and carefully controlled limited releases.

Sources:

  1. San Antonio Express-News, “Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling Is Up and Running,” Jennifer McInnis, September 22, 2010, mysanantonio.com

  2. San Antonio Current, “More Awards for Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling,” Jessica Elizarraras, February 24, 2015, sacurrent.com

  3. Drinkable Globe, “Ranger Creek Distillery Releases Its First Cask-Strength Whiskey,” October 24, 2018, drinkableglobe.com

  4. The Whiskey Wash, “Texas’ Ranger Creek Distillery Offers Up a New Cask Strength Bourbon,” Nino Kilgore-Marchetti, November 5, 2018, thewhiskeywash.com

  5. San Antonio Current, “San Antonio’s Ranger Creek Issues Collaboratively Made Rye with Texas Whiskey Festival,” Nina Rangel, July 20, 2020, sacurrent.com

  6. Distillers Talk, “Josh Gardner, Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling,” Alan Bishop and Christi Atkinson, August 26, 2021, libsyn.com

  7. Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling official website, drinkrangercreek.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee