Tiana Saul

“Experimental Ideal”

Tiana Saul stands today as Head Distiller at Chattanooga Whiskey’s Experimental Distillery (CED), a role that places her at the center of one of Tennessee’s most innovative whiskey programs. From her post on Market Street in Chattanooga, she leads a 15-person production team, overseeing Chattanooga Whiskey’s “Tennessee High Malt” style. Her work has been instrumental in shaping the Experimental Single Batch Series, the Barrel Finishing Series, and the Bottled in Bond Vintage Series, releases that have all helped the distillery earn national recognition.

Saul, who was born in 1986, is a University of California graduate who studied world arts and cultures, a discipline rooted in anthropology and cultural analysis rather than typical scientific courses leading to distilling. Before arriving in Chattanooga, Saul spent time in San Francisco, and when she moved east, she wasn’t yet a distiller, but she was bringing with her an anthropologist’s interest in culture, creativity, and hospitality. That mix of skills would soon find a new expression at a young company bent on rewriting its city’s whiskey laws and identity.

Saul’s documented whiskey career began in 2015, when Chattanooga Whiskey hired her as assistant manager at Chattanooga Whiskey. The company’s Experimental Distillery opened that same year, and was designed as a pilot plant, producing only a fraction of the barrels made at the larger Riverfront Distillery, but running an almost constant stream of recipe trials, specialty malt experiments, and interesting one-off releases. In those early years, Saul worked front-of-house, managing the tasting room and visitor experience. That role placed her at the crossroads of education and hospitality: talking guests through Chattanooga Whiskey’s legal-reform story, explaining Tennessee High Malt, and pouring samples of the experimental runs that would later define the brand’s reputation. It also put her in daily contact with founder and CEO Tim Piersant, whose focus on storytelling, tourism, and brand vision depended on a team in the tasting room capable of translating the company’s mission for thousands of visitors a year. After a couple of years in visitor experience, Saul was moved fully into production, and over the next four years she worked on or helped lead nearly every aspect of the production process. As her responsibilities grew, Saul began to take on blending roles for two of the company’s most important whiskey lines: the Barrel Finishing Series and the Bottled in Bond Vintage Series.

Some of Saul’s more creative experimental masterpieces include (L) to (R): Cacao-infused, Fig-infused both 85-proof whiskeys and and Persimmon-infused 90.4-proof whiskey.

In March 2023, Chattanooga Whiskey formally promoted Saul to Head Distiller, making her only the second person to hold that title in the company’s history. Founding head distiller Grant McCracken moved into the role of Chief Product Officer, focusing on long-term innovation and expansion, while Saul assumed day-to-day leadership of production “grain-to-glass” at both the Experimental and Riverfront sites. She remains central to recipe development, single-batch releases, and the blending of core expressions. Her work since taking the reins has included not only overseeing new vintages of the Bottled in Bond series and directing the Barrel Finishing Series, but also leading projects such as the revived Vault Series—a set of smoked, Tennessee High Malt single barrels that revisit and expand upon a popular 2017 recipe.

In the quiet moments before the stills roar awake, Tiana Saul sometimes stands alone on the mezzanine, looking out over the swirling copper and steel that has come to define her life. It seems funny to an outsider how far Saul has traveled from anthropology lectures about culture, ritual, and the ways humans mark time. Back then, Saul imagined studying traditions; now she builds them, and her people notice. All fifteen of her crew, bright-eyed, stubborn, chaotic in the best possible way, follow her lead without second thought. Not because she demands it, but because she’s shown them exactly how high a standard can be when it’s approached with kindness, stubborn work, and a little bit of California cool. She checks in on their mash bills, their analyses, the weird ideas they pitch at 8 a.m. after too much coffee. Her confidence gives them the freedom to try things no one else in the state is yet brave enough to try.

As she signs off on the newest experimental finish, with a flavor profile so bold it makes even the veteran tasters grin, she feels a different kind of pride settle in; not the pride of a title or a promotion, but the pride of becoming someone worth following—someone shaping a craft she once only admired from the outside. And when the first bottles roll out, still warm from the line, she lets herself imagine what people will say five, ten, twenty years from now: that she didn’t just rise through the ranks, but instead she nudged Tennessee whiskey somewhere new, somewhere a little braver, and somehow unmistakably hers.

Sources:

  1. Chattanooga Whiskey website, “Tiana Saul is our new Head Distiller!”, March 2023, chattanoogawhiskey.com

  2. Hamilton County Herald. “Saul to become second head distiller…”, March 24, 2023

  3. Fred Minnick, “Tiana Saul Named Head Distiller for Chattanooga Whiskey”, March 9, 2023

  4. Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, “Pouring Equality: Celebrating Female Pioneers…”, March 12, 2024

  5. Barrel Room Chronicles S3/E11, “Changing Laws and Making History: The Story Behind Chattanooga Whiskey”, 2024

  6. Budget Travel, “Plan a Spirited Tour…”, March 15, 2024

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee

Left, Saul’s “Harvest Bourbon” made of yellow corn as well as malted triticale, oats, barley, rye and two different kinds of rice.

Right, Pecan-infused bourbon, 84-proof and infused with toasted pecans, vanilla bean, orange peel, cacao nibs, and coconut.