Kenneth Maverick
Kenneth Maverick built a whiskey distillery where his family’s Texas story began. Born in December, 1973, Maverick is a seventh-generation Texan and San Antonio native. He is a direct descendant of Samuel Augustus Maverick, the lawyer, landowner, civic leader, and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence whose surname entered the English language as the very word used to describe an independently-minded person. His enterprise, Maverick Distilling, occupies part of Samuel and Mary Maverick’s former homestead near the Alamo, giving Kenneth Maverick’s whiskey business an unusually direct connection between family, product, and place.
Maverick graduated with honors from Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio and continued his education at the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and a Bachelor of Science in professional sciences, graduating cum laude. While attending Notre Dame, he served as sports director at the university’s WVFI radio station, announced Notre Dame sporting events, and hosted a sports talk program. Next, he entered the University of Texas Medical School in Houston and graduated with honors. He completed his ophthalmology residency at Washington University in St. Louis, where his research included pediatric intraocular lens calculations, corneal mapping, ocular complications associated with bioterrorism, and the safety of refractive surgery for scuba divers. He remained at Washington University for fellowship training in anterior-segment and refractive surgery, then returned to San Antonio and joined Focal Point Vision. He also served for more than a decade as medical director of the San Antonio Eye Bank and helped develop an autologous serum-tear program for patients with severe dry-eye conditions.
Maverick married Amy Hoerr Maverick, an internist, and the couple had three children. Their move into whiskey began as a small experimental project involving family and friends, when Maverick and a friend started making whiskey on his back porch. The experiments eventually migrated into the family basement until an inadequately-vented fermentation vessel spewed hot mash across the room; Amy told her husband that the project needed another home.
That moment coincided with the availability of San Antonio’s former Lockwood National Bank building, only steps from the Alamo. Constructed in 1918, the building stood on land included within the original Maverick family homestead. Kenneth and Amy acquired the deteriorated property, undertook an extensive restoration, and secured recognition for it as a historic building. The structure’s subterranean bank vaults would eventually serve a new purpose as protected whiskey-aging rooms.
The couple founded Maverick Whiskey in 2017 and opened the distillery, brewery, bar, and restaurant in 2019. Kenneth Maverick involved professional distillers and consulted a still manufacturer while converting the early experiments into commercial-scale recipes and production. The enterprise initially brought selected barrels of Certified Texas Whiskey from another Texas distillery for some releases. Its Samuel Maverick Barrel Proof Straight Bourbon used a mash bill of 72 percent Texas-grown corn, 18 percent rye, and 10 percent malted barley. The whiskey aged for at least two years in new charred white-oak barrels before the distilling team selected and blended barrels. Non-chill filtration and bottling at 114 proof preserved the bourbon’s barrel-strength character. At the same time, Maverick Distilling established its own grain-to-glass whiskey program. The distillery used Texas-grown grain, a copper pot still, and small barrels stored in the former bank vaults. Its Samuel Maverick Private Reserve Straight Bourbon was distilled, aged, and bottled on the property from corn, rye, and malted barley. Released in 2022 as a four-year-old bourbon, it demonstrated that the operation had progressed from its early sourced-barrel releases to fully in-house whiskey production.
Another experiment began in April 2019, when the distillery produced a whiskey from triticale, a hybrid grain combining characteristics of wheat and rye. The Texas Panhandle grain created a whiskey carrying rye-like spice and wheat-like sweetness. After more than four years in the underground vault, it appeared as Samuel Maverick Straight Triticale Whiskey Bottled-in-Bond. In August 2025, Maverick Distilling released a six-year-old Samuel Maverick Four Grain Texas Straight Bourbon. Its mash bill contained 51 percent yellow corn, 20 percent Abruzzi rye, 19 percent hard red winter wheat, and 10 percent malted barley. Distilled in a copper pot still, entered into barrels at 120 proof, non-chill filtered, and bottled as a single-barrel whiskey at 106 proof, it represented the maturation of the in-house program begun around the distillery’s opening.
Kenneth Maverick’s central achievement in whiskey was to assemble the sum total of location, family history, capital, restoration, hospitality operation, and production program into one successful enterprise. From a back-porch experiment to bottled-in-bond and six-year-old Texas bourbon, Maverick Distilling has become a functioning continuation of a San Antonio family story—one expressed through local grain, copper-pot distillation, oak barrels, and expertly-aged Texas whiskey.
Sources:
San Antonio Express-News, “With Maverick Whiskey, Husband and Wife Add to Family Legacy,” Richard Webner, August 31, 2022, expressnews.com
Hops & Spirits, “Happy Hour Q&A with Maverick Distilling and Kenneth Maverick,” no author given, April 12, 2023, hopsspirits.com
The Local Palate, “In the Spirit: Maverick Distillery,” no author given, February 24, 2024, thelocalpalate.com
Maverick Distilling official website, maverickwhiskey.com
Craft Spirits Magazine, “Maverick Whiskey Releases Samuel Maverick Barrel Proof Straight Bourbon Whiskey”, December 22, 2021, craftspiritsmag.com
Craft Spirits Magazine, “Maverick Distilling Unveils Samuel Maverick Four Grain Texas Straight Bourbon,” staff, August 15, 2025, craftspiritsmag.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
