Josh Smotherman
Joshua P. Smotherman was born in August of 1976. Not much has been publicized regarding his early life, but he completed his high school curriculum at Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s Riverdale High School in 1994. He then built a successful 12-year career as a Master Carpenter in that rapidly-growing Nashville suburb’s homebuilding industry. Unfortunately, the economic crisis of the late 2000’s strongly affected home sales, and soon Smotherman sought more stable work. So in 2011, he joined entrepreneur Billy Kaufman in developing Short Mountain Distillery in nearby Woodbury, Tennessee. The timing of the move was significant for another reason: Tennessee had changed state law in 2009 to permit distilleries in many more counties, but Cannon County, where Woodbury is located, still needed local approval. Voters eventually permitted distilling, and Kaufman’s distillery became the county’s first legal distillery since Prohibition.
Short Mountain gave Smotherman an unusual combination of old Tennessee whiskey knowledge and modern commercial distilling. The distillery worked with local moonshiners Ricky Estes and Ronald Lawson, whose accumulated experience represented generations of illicit whiskey tradition in the region. Smotherman supplied the technical side of the new legal operation. By 2014, he was Kaufman’s master distiller and head of production. His work involved translating grain, water, fermentation, distillation, and traditional knowledge into repeatable commercial production.
At Short Mountain, Smotherman was not simply operating a still to an inherited formula; he worked with different grains and mash bills, developing several whiskey styles. He later described the distillery’s approach as an effort to, “Give whiskey drinkers greater variety” in bourbon, rye, and Tennessee whiskey. The distillery customized its production methods and fermentable ingredients while remaining within federal and state requirements governing the legal definitions of the different whiskey types. That combination of experimentation and technical discipline became a recurring feature of Smotherman’s work.
By 2019, Smotherman could measure his whiskey experience in years rather than batches after having completed seven years of hands-on work encompassing milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation, proofing, barreling, aging, dumping, and bottling. He had five styles of whiskey maturing at Short Mountain and emphasized grain selection and innovative mash bills as part of his approach. The first bourbon he had placed into casks earned a Silver Medal at the 2019 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It was an important marker for the carpenter-come-distiller whose spirits career had begun just as Tennessee’s modern craft-whiskey industry was still taking shape.
The Sunshine State provided Smotherman with his next opportunity. Barry and Lisa Butler began developing Tarpon Springs Distillery in 2018 after years of visiting craft distilleries and studying the business. Smotherman became involved at a fundamental stage of the new operation. In 2019, he helped the Butlers set up and start their 500-gallon batch distillation equipment in Tarpon Springs. Rather than arriving after production had already been established, he helped put the system into operation, bringing years of Tennessee grain-to-bottle experience to the sparkling-new Florida distillery.
Tarpon Springs initially released spirits that did not require years in oak. Ouzo, gin, claresso, and moonshine arrived in 2020, followed by aquavit in 2021. Whiskey, however, was developing behind the younger products. The distillery adopted a genuine grain-to-glass approach: it mashed, distilled, aged, and bottled its spirits on site rather than creating a local whiskey identity around finished whiskey purchased elsewhere.
The whiskey program broke into public view in 2022 when Gramling Woods Rye Malt Whiskey had matured and was ready for market. Its mash consists of 60 percent malted rye, 25 percent pecan-smoked malted barley, and 15 percent malted corn. After distillation, the whiskey is matured in an 1895 former church associated with the distillery property. The unusual combination of malted rye and pecan-smoked barley produced something distinct from a conventional American rye whiskey, and the result brought Smotherman’s Florida work significant recognition. Gramling Woods Rye Malt Whiskey earned a Double Gold Medal at the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
There was a satisfying professional symmetry in that award. Three years earlier, Smotherman had celebrated a Silver Medal for the first bourbon he had put into Tennessee mountain barrels and expressed the hope that his developing skills might someday produce a Double Gold. At Tarpon Springs, a whiskey made under the production program he helped establish reached that level. The achievement also demonstrated the continuity between the two stages of his career: Tennessee had provided years of practical experience with grain, fermentation, stills, barrels, bourbon, and rye; Florida provided another setting in which to apply, expand, and express it.
Tarpon Springs continued broadening its whiskey portfolio. Gramling Woods Wheat Whiskey and Gramling Woods Single Malt Whiskey were released in 2023. The single malt derives its smoky character from peat-smoked six-row heritage malted barley and Munich dark malt. Gramling Woods American Whiskey followed in 2024, combining whiskeys made from wheat, rye, barley, smoked barley, oats, and corn. More recently, Checkerboard Bourbon Whiskey has extended the range into bourbon, using varieties of red corn and Florida 401 black rye to produce a whiskey designed to combine corn sweetness with rye spice.
Today, Smotherman remains Director of Distilling at Tarpon Springs Distillery, still working alongside the Butlers. His title reflects a career that has now spanned two distinct periods in American craft whiskey. In Tennessee, he participated in the return of legal distilling to a county with a long moonshine tradition and there he legally developed bourbon, rye, and other whiskeys from grain to bottle. In Florida, he helped commission a new distilling system and participated in building a whiskey portfolio that progressed from rye malt into wheat, single malt, American whiskey, and bourbon. The connecting thread has been production rather than promotion. Smotherman learned whiskey by making it repeatedly; selecting grain, constructing mash bills, fermenting, distilling, proofing, filling barrels, waiting, and finally determining what years of work had produced. Short Mountain gave him his foundation and his first award-winning bourbon; Tarpon Springs gave him another still, another climate, and room to explore malted rye, smoked barley, wheat, single malt, and Florida grain.
More than a decade after he helped return legal whiskey production to a Tennessee mountaintop, Josh Smotherman is still following the same path in the Florida sunshine: begin with grain and finish with award-winning whiskey.
Sources:
Cannon Courier, “Distillery Sets Second Anniversary”, April 23, 2014, cannoncourier.com
Cannon Courier, “Short Mtn Distillery Lands on List”, 2017, cannoncourier.com
Austin Food Magazine, “11 Delicious Reasons to Explore the Upper Cumberland of Tennessee”, austinfoodmagazine.com
LinkedIn, “Josh Smotherman Professional Profile”, linkedin.com
Tarpon Springs Distillery official website, tarponspringsdistillery.net
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
