Lauren Patz
Lauren Patz was born in June of 1986, a native of St. Helena, California. She grew up in Napa Valley, the daughter of winery owners, and learned about flavor by tasting grapes and measuring their sugar content with her parents. Patz went to Maine for college, graduating from Bates College in 2009. There she earned a double major in Japanese and classical and medieval studies; she then put her education to use in Japan teaching English. After returning from Japan, Patz worked for the San Francisco chocolate maker TCHO as a tour docent and private-pairings specialist. Her responsibilities included matching chocolate with beverages, and one pairing altered the course of her career: dark chocolate and bourbon. Patz found that whiskey’s flavors worked particularly well with chocolate and became increasingly interested in the difference between merely drinking a spirit and tasting it analytically. That experience led her beyond flavor into the mechanics and physics of distillation.
Patz joined Spirit Works Distillery in Sebastopol in 2013 as tasting-room manager and apprentice distiller. The dual positions allowed her to teach consumers while learning production directly from co-founder Ashby Marshall and the Spirit Works team. Patz progressed regularly from apprentice distiller to production manager and distiller, then became head distiller in January 2017.
Spirit Works gave Patz a rigorous education in turning grain into finished spirits. The distillery milled grain, fermented it, distilled it in copper pot stills, and matured its whiskey in oak rather than sourcing mature whiskey. She also worked with heritage grains and experimental releases, including a cask-strength whiskey made entirely from wheat and matured for two years and four months in a 53-gallon American white-oak barrel. As head distiller, Patz adopted three words as the foundation of her work: “passion, palate, and patience.” Passion sustained the repetitive and physically demanding portions of production; palate connected sensory judgment to decisions about quality; and patience governed whiskey, which could not be rushed once it entered a barrel. Her reputation extended beyond Spirit Works in 2017 when she began judging spirits for the American Distilling Institute. She also taught seminars and workshops, treating education as part of her responsibility to the broader distilling community.
In January 2021, Patz joined Purple Brands, the parent company of Redwood Empire Whiskey, and was named Redwood Empire’s head distiller publicly two months later. She began working alongside Master Distiller Jeff Duckhorn, who had already directed the production of the company’s early California-made whiskey. Redwood Empire had started as a whiskey project in 2011 and initially built its brands with carefully selected mature whiskey from outside distilleries while laying down its own stocks in Sonoma County. Its core portfolio developed around Emerald Giant rye, Lost Monarch (a blend of rye and bourbon) and Pipe Dream bourbon.
Blending became central to Patz’s work because Redwood Empire combined mature sourced stocks with increasing quantities of its own California distillate.The task requires Patz to identify barrels with complementary flavors and textures, maintain a recognizable house profile from batch to batch, and decide how the distillery’s younger California whiskey can strengthen a blend containing older components.
Redwood Empire reached an important production milestone in 2021 with Grizzly Beast Straight Bourbon and Rocket Top Straight Rye, its first entirely in-house, bottled-in-bond whiskeys. Both had been distilled by Duckhorn’s team during the spring 2016 season, aged for five years in Sonoma County, and bottled at the legally prescribed 100 proof. The bonded releases also demonstrated the value of seasonal variation. Yet despite individual successes, rather than forcing every edition to reproduce the first batch, Redwood Empire treats each bonded release as the product of one distillery and one six-month distilling season.
Patz’s responsibilities eventually shifted from head distiller to Master Blender, the title she holds today. Duckhorn concentrates on the control and consistency of production as Master Distiller, while Patz shapes finished compositions from Redwood Empire’s library of house-made and acquired whiskey. Their expanding portfolio includes cask-strength versions of the core whiskeys, the Haystack Needle single-barrel program, Pipe Dream 101, bonded releases, and small-lot whiskeys such as Screaming Titan wheated bourbon, Devil’s Tower high-rye bourbon, Van Duzen rye, and Foggy Burl American single malt.
In 2026, Redwood Empire introduced The Hyperion, an unfiltered, 110-proof blend that brought Patz’s blending work into its widest frame. It combines 32 percent bourbon, 30 percent rye, 25 percent wheat whiskey, and 13 percent single-malt whiskey, with components aged from seven to fourteen years and originating in California, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee. Patz and Duckhorn built it from four distinct styles rather than placing one category at the center. The result embodies the course of Patz’s career: a palate first sharpened by grapes and chocolate, disciplined through grain-to-glass production, and ultimately entrusted with assembling mature American whiskeys into balanced, identifiable compositions.
Patz continues to teach as well as blend. Redwood Empire Whiskey University uses a five-class curriculum designed and taught by her, covering milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation, maturation, bourbon, rye, barrels, and blending. That work connects her earliest public-facing position at Spirit Works with her present authority at Redwood Empire. Her career has advanced from explaining flavor to visitors, to making whiskey, to directing production, and finally to determining how many different whiskeys can speak with one coherent voice.
Sources:
BevNET, “Spirit Works Distillery Announces Promotion of Lauren Patz to Head Distiller,” no author given, January 9, 2017, bevnet.com
Imbibe, “A Day in the Life: Lauren Patz of Spirit Works Distillery,” Penelope Bass, August 15, 2019, imbibemagazine.com
Wine Business, “Purple Brands Promotes Jeff Duckhorn and Adds Lauren Patz to Redwood Empire Whiskey Distilling Team,” no author given, March 22, 2021, winebusiness.com
Modern Bar Cart, “Redwood Empire with Lauren Patz,” Eric Kozlik, 2021, modernbarcart.com
Business Wire, “Drink Among Giants: Redwood Empire Whiskey Takes California Whiskey to New Heights,” Redwood Empire Whiskey, October 20, 2021, businesswire.com
Redwood Empire Whiskey official website, redwoodempirewhiskey.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
