Jim Matz

A shield with four sections displaying the letters W and U, a barrel, and a stack of books.

James Richard Matz and his wife and business partner, Wendy Tilton, are East Coast transplants who established Wild Hare Distillery in Tempe, Arizona. The business was formally started on January 19, 2018, and by the following year, the duo had established Wild Hare as a fully-operating distillery, beginning a small-scale spirits business that eventually developed a notable line of bourbon and rye whiskies.

Matz was born in December of 1967 and grew up in the country close to his grandparents in White Haven, Pennsylvania. Not much public information has been released regarding his early life, but as a young entrepreneur, he owned and operated a successful eastern Pennsylvania landscape and hardscape business for 17 years before retiring and moving out West. Meanwhile, Tilton studied biology and chemistry in college, and became interested in distilling after helping a friend in Houston fulfill a bucket-list ambition to make whiskey. After she had been distilling for a while, Matz and some friends tasted the outcome and, believing that the spirit could become a business, he decided to turn her distilling skills and his complementary leadership experience into a commercial venture.

The interesting name they chose for their enterprise grew both out of Matz’s family history and Tilton’s fondness for rabbits. Matz wanted the company to incorporate something connected to his grandparents, whom he described as major influences during his upbringing. His grandmother, Bernice, was nicknamed “Bunny,” So the solution came from something his grandmother used to tell him when his youthful behavior got him into trouble: “That wild hair up your ass is going to get you in trouble one day.” The expression became Wild Hare, with the spelling deliberately reinforcing the rabbit theme. That connection carried into the DROVE brand used for the distillery’s agave spirits, because a group of hares is called a drove.

Wild Hare’s whiskey operation differs in an important respect from its agave production. The company distills its Blue Weber agave products itself, while its whiskey and vodka are sourced from suppliers who are very careful of meeting Wild Hare’s required specifications. The company then builds its whiskey portfolio around those selected spirits rather than representing them as entirely grain-to-glass spirits. That distinction is important to Matz’s story: his contribution to Wild Hare whiskey lies in product development, production planning, selection, blending and the management of a small craft spirits operation rather than in claiming that every grain used in WHD whiskey passes through Wild Hare’s own stills.

The WHD line eventually grew to include WHD 90 Bourbon, Barrel Strength Bourbon, Red Headed Hare and rye whiskey expressions. Its barrel-strength straight rye uses a mash bill of 95 percent rye and 5 percent barley, giving Wild Hare a strongly rye-centered counterpoint to its bourbon. WHD 90 Bourbon also earned outside recognition, receiving a silver medal at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Meanwhile, Red Headed Hare became Wild Hare’s most distinctive whiskey release. It combines WHD 90 bourbon with barrel-strength straight rye, with the components aged separately before being brought together in a patented Black-Swan barrel. The resulting 100-proof whiskey emphasizes the combination that defines a high-rye bourbon style: bourbon sweetness backed by the sharper spice of rye. Red Headed Hare received a gold medal at the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and in 2025 it won silver in the U.S. Open Whiskey Championship category for small-batch bourbons aged one to three years and bottled at 100 proof or higher.

What began with a husband and wife combining different skills has become an enduring Arizona craft-spirits operation whose whiskey offerings now stand beside the agave products that initially gave the company much of its identity. For Jim Matz, the clearest measure of his contribution is operational: he helped turn Tilton’s early interest in distilling into a business, gave that business a name rooted in his grandmother and childhood, and assumed responsibility for moving new spirits from experimentation toward repeatable production. Wild Hare’s bourbon and rye releases—and the national medals earned by WHD 90 and Red Headed Hare—provide tangible evidence of how far that small Tempe operation has progressed.

Sources:

  1. Phoenix Magazine, “Six Questions for Wild Hare Distillery Owners Wendy Tilton & Jim Matz”, Marilyn Hawkes, January 17, 2022, phoenixmag.com

  2. Unfinished Man, “An Interview With Wendy Tilton, Co-Owner of Wild Hare Distillery”, Chad, June 7, 2022, unfinishedman.com

  3. Wild Hare Distillery official website, wildharedistillery.com

  4. The Tasting Alliance, “SFWSC 2023 Results”, thetastingalliance.com

  5. ForWhiskeyLovers.com, “Wild Hare Distillery”, forwhiskeylovers.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee