Jamison Rounds

Jamison Rounds was born June 13, 1971, and raised in Pierre, South Dakota. He is one of eleven children in a large, close-knit Catholic family. As a young man, Rounds sought to serve the Church and set about preparing for the priesthood. As soon as he was of age, he traveled to Europe for seminary studies. There, he lived and worked in Germany, Poland, and Italy, spending time at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. During those years abroad, his intellectual focus began to shift. Rather than continuing toward ordination, he immersed himself in the study of European distilleries and production traditions. When he returned to South Dakota, it was not to build his own parish church, but to build a distillery.

In 2006, that vision became tangible. Rounds persuaded his brotherTom to invest in a still and enter the spirits business with him. The equipment was sourced from Europe and arrived with assembly instructions written in German, but the resourceful brothers assembled it and began operating in Pierre. The occasion marked the beginning of what became Dakota Spirits Distillery. Unfortunately, at the time, South Dakota law did not accommodate small-scale artisan distillers in a workable way, and the existing licensing structure made profitability nearly impossible for a start-up producer. Rounds worked to establish a new artisan distillery license category, helping open the regulatory path for all small, locally owned distilleries in the state. Those early years required patience. State law initially prevented them from selling directly within South Dakota without a distributor, forcing product sales into neighboring Iowa. Even so, the foundation was in place. Finally, the Rounds had established a family run distillery drawing on South Dakota grains, Missouri River basin water, and a climate of hot summers and cold winters that accelerated barrel aging in American oak.

As the business evolved, the next generation stepped forward. Tom’s son, AJ Rounds, joined the operation full time, and before long, it shifted it from a weekend endeavor into a sustained commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, disagreements about production priorities and operational direction between the brothers eventually led Tom to buy out Jamison’s ownership interest. However, the family dynamic became part of the brand’s identity, and AJ introduced the “Bickering Brothers” label. The brand became a genius marketing nod to spirited debate within a working family enterprise. Dakota Spirits remained rooted in Pierre, but soon, its identity expanded through that distinctive branding and a widening distribution footprint.

While Dakota Spirits established Jamison Rounds as South Dakota’s first licensed distiller since Prohibition, it represents only one dimension of his career. After selling his share of Dakota Spirits, he trained as an attorney and became a licensed mediator, thereafter building more than two decades of experience in business development and transactional work. Rounds also served as Director of the Governor’s Office of Strategic Initiative for South Dakota, acting as a business recruiter, international relations lead, science and technology policy officer, and advisor to entrepreneurs. In that capacity, he participated in high-level due diligence work connected to the acquisition of the Homestake Gold Mine. His consulting experience also included work tied to the Gluco Boy device, later marketed as the Bayer Didget, reflecting his involvement in emerging technology ventures alongside traditional industries.

Teaching became another consistent thread. Rounds taught at the University of South Dakota for nearly six years and later taught entrepreneurship at the University of Sioux Falls. In 2019, he joined Mount Marty University as department chair and associate professor of business. His classroom work integrated legal training, transactional insight, and firsthand entrepreneurial experience, including the complexities of launching a regulated manufacturing enterprise from the ground up.

Public service extended to municipal leadership. From 2015 to 2019, Rounds served as mayor of Crooks, South Dakota. During his tenure, the hamlet managed steady development and infrastructure planning while maintaining its small-town identity. His leadership reflected the same pattern visible in his distilling and consulting work: attention to structural details, regulatory realities, and long-term viability. Through all his endeavors, family has remained a constant source of support and influence. Rounds has been married to the former Catherine “Cathy” Beatch for more than 25 years, and they share four adult children.

The arc of Rounds’ life connects three distinct callings: religious formation, entrepreneurial manufacturing, and public policy, without abandoning any one of them entirely. Instead, each phase informed the next. Dakota Spirits stands as the most visible symbol of that synthesis. It was born from European study, built through legislative adaptation, sustained by family participation, and woven into the broader civic and economicfabric of South Dakota. The distillery did not emerge from inherited infrastructure or a long-standing whiskey dynasty; it required new law, imported equipment, and a willingness to assemble something unfamiliar from the ground up.

So Jamison Rounds’ biography does not hinge on a single title. He has been seminarian, distillery founder, attorney, mediator, state economic development official, professor, and mayor. Across those roles, the throughline is structural: identifying gaps, whether regulatory, economic, or institutional, and building frameworks that allow enterprises to function within them. Dakota Spirits remains the clearest physical expression of that instinct: copper, grain,oak, and law aligned into a functioning business in a state that had not licensed such an operation since before Prohibition.

Sources:

U.S. Senator Mike Rounds, “Adult Supervision", 09/25/2020, rounds.senate.gov
South Dakota Magazine, “Bickering Over Brandy", John Andrews, southdakotamagazine.com
Mitchell Republic (republishing AP), “Award-winning distillery remains Pierre’s secret", November 21, 2012, mitchellrepublic.com
Dakota Spirits Distillery official website, dakotaspirits.com
Value Visor LLC, “About Us” (Jamison Rounds bio), valuevisor.com
Mount Marty University, “Jamison Rounds Joins MMC…”, October 22, 2019, mountmarty.edu
SiouxFalls.Business, “Crooks mayor: ‘The town is truly taking control…”, siouxfalls.business.com
Interexo broker profile, “Jamison Rounds”, brokers.interexo.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee