Steve Ison

“Insuring a Great Whiskey”

Steve Ison was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and his early life was rooted in a family with a commercial insurance business. Once he graduated from Churchill High School, he enrolled at Texas State University. Initially, he studied accounting and business, but he later changed his major to political science, citing that he didn’t enjoy accounting. Graduating in 1993 with his political science degree in hand, he joined the family’s insurance company. Over the next decade, he served as CEO of that insurance and risk management company. But he began to feel that he wanted a different path. He saw an opportunity to build something of his own rather than simply continuing in the family business.

In 2008, Ison started seriously exploring the idea of distilling spirits in Texas. At that time, no major craft whiskey distilleries operated in Texas. He knew very little about distilling at first. To fill that gap, Ison traveled to distilling schools around the country and studied the processes involved. In California, he met Master Distiller Eric Watson and recruited him as an adviser; Watson then moved to San Antonio for approximately ten months to help Ison establish whiskey and vodka formulas. 

A year and a half later, Steve Ison officially founded Rebecca Creek Distillery in the San Antonio area.  Rebecca Creek would be among the first distilleries in Texas in decades. Ison and co-founder Mike Cameron, along with a small team including a bookkeeper and a distiller, began production. In that first year, because whiskey requires years of aging, the distillery sold mostly vodka, but a good bit of it. Over time, the cash flow from the vodka sales helped the product line expand to include Rebecca Creek Whiskey and Texas Ranger Whiskey.

Named after a local waterway known for its pristine, limestone-filtered water, Rebecca Creek quickly grew. Ison’s team was soon hosting live music, open mic nights, karaoke, and elegant events such as weddings and regal corporate gatherings at its scenic countryside location. The distillery also created Rebecca Creek Radio, a streaming radio platform that ties into its brand and features country music artists. In those early days, Ison confronted many challenges. He later told confidantes that everything cost more, took far longer, and was more exasperating than he expected. For instance, the distillery imported a copper still from Germany at a cost of about $700,000. When moving it into place, the then-inexperienced Ison opted to use a forklift rather than renting an expensive crane, and, predictably, the still slipped, fell, and bounced, leaving a dent that didn’t hurt its operation, but that can still be seen. He jokingly calls it the distillery’s “first whiskey dent.”  Another early misstep involved delivering a fledgling investor pitch in which Ison misspelled the word “distillery” no less than three times on the contract. Nonetheless, the beguiled investor backed the idea anyway. Still, to help with credibility and technical skill, Ison learned after a time to lean heavily on the more experienced Watson’s guidance.

By 2018, the business had grown significantly. One year earlier, Rebecca Creek became an official drink product at Super Bowl 51 in Houston. That same reach extended into film: the brand received an invitation to the Oscars greenroom as an official drink for actors and presenters. Before long, the distillery expanded to include dozens of staff and was distributing its products in multiple states. In speaking engagements, Ison described the challenges of scaling supply chains, raw materials, and capital, and the need to retain a “Texas in a Glass” identity while expanding.

Today, Ison, 57, lives in San Antonio. He shares three grown children, Ashlyn, Ava, and Austin, with his wife, Amy. Meanwhile, Rebecca Creek Distillery operates as one of the more prominent craft whiskey producers in Texas, combining technical ambition, rooted identity, and community engagement. The story of Rebecca Creek is inseparable from Steve Ison’s leap from insurance executive to distilled spirits entrepreneur: a journey marked by risks, simple mistakes, learning, determination, and a steady commitment to place and time, which has ultimately resulted in some of the best whiskey ever to come out of the Lone Star State.

Sources

  1. Texas State University/Inside Texas State, “Steve Ison discusses opening a distillery”, Jayme Blaschke, February 1, 2021

  2. Texas State University, Big Ideas podcast, Episode 13

  3. San Antonio Report, “Distillery’s Co-Founder…”,  Kyle Ringo, December 2, 2018

  4. Rebecca Creek Distillery/Our Story, rebeccacreekdistillery.com

  5. St. Mary’s University, “Ison to Discuss Entrepreneurship,” November 2, 2018

  6. San Antonio Express-News, “Falling out…,” Patrick Danner, Aug 15, 2016

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee