Orlin Sorenson
“Whiskey from Woodinville”
Orlin Sorensen’s path to whiskey took many Washington State paths before it arrived at the steps of Woodinville Whiskey Company. Today he is known as co-founder and CEO of one of the most acclaimed craft whiskey producers in the United States, but his story begins as a Pacific Northwest kid with a best friend who would eventually become his business partner. Orlin Sorenson was born July 23, 1976, and grew up in the greater Seattle area, and it was there that he met and befriended Brett Carlile. The two attended Bothell High School together and formed the kind of easy friendship that continued after graduation. At that point, both men headed east together to Central Washington University. There, the roommates’ friendship deepened. Sorensen studied aviation, completing a degree in Flight Technology in 1998. Carlile focused on business, setting up a complementary skill set that would matter years later when the pair moved from talking about whiskey to making it. After college, their careers diverged. Sorensen became a commercial pilot, flying for the airlines. During this period he faced a challenge that could have ended his time in the cockpit: deteriorating eyesight. He undertook an intensive program of vision training, later describing how he improved his sight enough to meet demanding pilot standards. That experience led him to found Rebuild Your Vision, LLC, in 2001, a Woodinville-based company focused on eye-exercise programs and supplements aimed at maintaining and improving eyesight.
While Sorensen was flying and building Rebuild Your Vision, Carlile worked first in the tech world and then in construction and construction-supply sales, but the two friends always stayed close. Over Friday-night glasses of bourbon they kept returning to the same topic: doing something together that they cared deeply about. Sorensen has described those years as a series of “dare to be great” conversations, the kind of talks many friends have, but few actually act on. By the late 2000s, the idea had sharpened into what could be considered a plan. They had watched the wine industry transform Woodinville into a major visitor destination, and then saw Washington’s craft-brewing scene flourish. When state law changed in 2008 to allow distilleries to operate tasting rooms, the possibility of a whiskey business in their own backyard suddenly felt real.
The leap they took was substantial. In 2008, both Sorensen and Carlile cashed out their 401(k)s, sold their houses and secured small-business loans during a recession in order to finance a distillery that would not produce mature whiskey for years. Sorensen left his airline career behind, and Carlile stepped away from construction sales. They committed to building a whiskey brand from the ground up in a state better known for Cabernet than bourbon.
From the beginning, the friends were determined to do things the hard way if that produced better whiskey. They decided that every drop would be distilled in-house rather than sourced. They partnered with the Omlin family, third-generation grain farmers in Quincy, Washington, to grow all of their corn, rye and wheat, and commissioned German-built copper stills, developing a barrel program that used long-seasoned staves and specific toast-and-char profiles which would later become a hallmark of the brand.
One of the most important relationships in Sorensen’s professional life began at this stage. Before Sorenson filled his first barrel, he sought out guidance from Dave Pickerell, the longtime Master Distiller at Maker’s Mark who had begun consulting with craft producers. Pickerell agreed to work with Sorenson, spending months helping design their process, equipment layout and flavor profile.
When Woodinville Whiskey Company opened its doors in 2010, the distillery produced vodka and “white dog” unaged whiskey to keep the lights on while its bourbon and rye rested in Quincy’s hot-summer, cold-winter climate. Sorensen continued to distill, fill and roll barrels while refining their recipe. Finally, in 2015, the long wait for fully matured whiskey ended with the release of Woodinville’s five-year-old Straight Bourbon. The following year, that bourbon was named “Craft Whiskey of the Year” by the American Distilling Institute; its Straight Rye followed and went on to win additional national recognition. These awards helped cement Sorensen’s reputation as a serious whiskey maker, not just a local experimenter.
As the whiskey gained attention, so did the business. In 2017, luxury-goods group LVMH, through its Moët Hennessy division, acquired Woodinville Whiskey Company. Sorensen and Carlile remained in charge of day-to-day operations, using the new parent company’s distribution network to expand beyond Washington while continuing to control production in Quincy and Woodinville.
Alongside this professional arc, Sorensen has kept his home life rooted in the same community. He and his wife, Carrie, chose a wooded lot in Woodinville as the place to raise their two sons. They had lived for years in a modest fixer-upper on the property while building Orlin’s business, eventually replacing it with a beautiful, lodge-style house that reflected the landscape around them. Meanwhile, the partnership between Sorensen and Carlile remains central, with Carlile as Head Distiller and Carlile focusing on distillation details.
In recent years, Woodinville has overseen a period of rapid evolution. The distillery has introduced a line of limited releases, including Port- and Moscatel-cask finishes, tequila-finished bourbon and older age-statement whiskies such as eight- and nine-year-old straight bourbons and ryes. In 2024 the company debuted “Founder’s Find,” a sourced Tennessee whiskey blended with older Indiana bourbon, a rare departure from its grain-to-glass model, born out of a project Sorensen worked on with Moët Hennessy’s innovation team and a barrel he and Carlile deemed too exceptional to pass up.
Now at fifty, with the stills running steadily and the warehouse slowly filling with aging barrels, Orlin Sorenson has come to see distilling as the natural convergence of every life he has lived before. The discipline of the cockpit, the patience learned in business, and the trust built through decades of friendship now show up in each whiskey he makes, shaped as much by collaboration as by craft. In the small, wooded town he calls home, evenings end with family at the table and mornings often begin at the distillery beside his closest friend, both of them still curious, still learning. Success, to him, is no longer measured only in awards or bottles sold, but in the rare balance he has found between work and home, ambition and contentment, and a life built deliberately alongside the people who matter most.
Sources:
Seattle Refined, “Movers & Shakers: Meet the makers…”, Kate Neidigh, February 9, 2022, seattlerefined.com
SIP Magazine, “Making Iconic American Whiskey at Woodinville Whiskey Co.”,
Molly Allen, August 29, 2019, sipmagazine.comReserveBar, “Behind the Brand: Brett and Orlin of Woodinville”, reservebar.com
Woodinville Whiskey Company/our story, woodinvillewhiskeyco.com
Breaking Bourbon, “Introducing Woodinville Whiskey”, October 17, 2024, breakingbourbon.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
