Phillip Mestayer
Philip S. Mestayer was born January 5, 1986, and his adult story splits cleanly into two tracks that eventually braided together: a long, technical career in civil engineering project work, and a family-run distilling venture built the old-fashioned way, by learning the rules, building the equipment, and working until the product was real. Distillerie Acadian, the operation he co-owns and runs as head distiller, sits just off U.S. Highway 90 outside of New Iberia, and it has become one of the most recognizable whiskey names in Louisiana.
Mestayer attended Catholic High School and then studied at Louisiana State University. He first built a professional life in the civil engineering world, enduring 15 years defined by deadlines, logistics, budgets, and the kind of project discipline that rewards precision over improvisation. The distilling chapter began as a family curiosity years before it became a licensed business. Around 2012, Philip, his father Steve Mestayer, and his brother Jonathan “Jeep” Mestayer visited a friend who made “aged moonshine” at home for personal use. At that time, the moonshining culture was enjoying a mainstream moment, helped along by popular television. For the Mestayers, the fascination did not stop with wondering and wishing. The question became practical: could they make whiskey legally in Louisiana, and could they make it well enough to sell it as theirown?
From the start, the work divided along family lines in a way that made the business unusually durable. Steve, an attorney, took on licensing and compliance tasks early; exactly the sort of heavy lift that determines whether a distillery becomes real or stays hypothetical. Philip drove the production side. Jeep carried marketing and brand energy, even while living out of state later on. And their mother, Adrienne, handled bookkeeping. Distillerie Acadian’s public identity as a “family business” was not branding copy, it was a description of the labor arrangement that got bottles out the door and assets in the bank
The family’s licensing and build-out work sharpened in 2016. While the permitting process moved through federal and state channels, the Mestayers researched mashing and distillation and began building their own fermentation and distillation equipment. It was not a plug-and-play startup. It was fabrication, iteration, and the slow accumulation of competence. The distillery began distilling spirit intended for aging after permits were received in 2016, with production ramping into late spring 2017, which was the point at which their bourbon program, Cajun’s Cut, entered barrels to begin the long wait that whiskey demands.
Those first years set the tone for how Mestayer would talk about the work: patient, methodical, and grounded in process. In later descriptions of the brand’s development, the family emphasized the anxious period after barreling. That is, waiting through the first two years to find out what the whiskey would become once time and wood had done their work. That wait is where a distiller’s confidence is either earned or exposed. Distillerie Acadian framed the first taste test after that initial stretch as a turning point: confirmation that the idea could survive contact with reality.
By 2019, Distillerie Acadian had moved from private effort to public product. The family described T-Moon hitting stores in late February 2019, and positioned it as an “aged spirit” built from a grain mash while also incorporating Louisiana cane sugar—a South Louisiana fingerprint that signaled the brand’s intent to make whiskey-like spirits that still tasted like home. They also described Cajun’s Cut as a Louisiana straight bourbon whiskey made with a four-grain mash of corn, rye, wheat, and barley malt, distilled and aged in new white American oak. In that same 2019 account, Cajun’s Cut was presented as 94 proof and headed for shelves at the beginning of July 2019.
As the business matured, the plans scaledwith it. In 2025, Distillerie Acadian described distribution not only across Louisiana, but also into Mississippi and into Colorado paired with a blunt production reality: demand outpacing supply. The same account described an upcoming expansion with an ambitious plan; two new facilities across from Acadiana Regional Airport, including a barrel house and a distribution center on staggered timelines.
At the same time, Mestayer kept leaning into whiskey experimentation rather than narrowing the portfolio. The 2025 profile described an Experimental Series involving 10 different whiskeys, each with a different mash bill and grains ranging from blue corn and bloody butchercorn to red triticale, malted rye, and specialty malts. It also noted a wheated bourbon labeled “Matrimony,” and a rye whiskey labeled HorRYEzon, both discussed as in production for future release windows.
In the end, Justin Mestayer is a natural-born innovator; a Louisiana-born builder and manager who kept a long engineering career in motion while helping his family do something rare in Acadiana: build a whiskey house from scratch, stick with it through the waiting years, and turn local identity into bottles that can speak so well for themselves that he can’t make them fast enough.
Sources:
The Daily Iberian, “Family-owned distillery making its mark in Acadiana", Corey Vaughn, June 4, 2019, thedailyiberian.com
Delcambre Seafood and Farmers Market, “Distillerie Acadian: Vendor of The Month", Patrice Doucet, April 30, 2025, delcambremarket.org
Distillery.news, “Distillerie Acadian listing”, November 25, 2023, www.distillery.news
Distillerie Acadian official website, distillerieacadian.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
