Alex Toomy

Alex Toomy did not enter the whiskey business through a family distilling tradition or a career spent working through the ranks of established bourbon companies. He came to bourbon through farming, construction, land development, and one of the worst economic downturns of his working life. Yet those hardships ultimately resulted in Ragged Branch Distillery, a Virginia operation built around an unusually complete idea: grow the grain, make the whiskey, mature it on the farm, bottle it there, and find a productive use for what remained after distillation.

Alexander M. Toomy was born in 1967 to Dr. Bill Toomy and Karen (Napotnik) Toomy, and grew up on a cattle farm in Augusta County, Virginia, before establishing himself in Central Virginia as a farmer. In 1989, Alex passed the certification to become a Class A contractor, and  since his family owned property in Albemarle County, by 2008, he along with his wife, Amy, developed portions of that land and built houses. Unfortunately, the nationwide financial crisis of the late 2000s brought that business to a sudden halt, and developed property became difficult to finance when banks would not renew loans. Toomy soon realized that he needed another use for the rich land that had previously supported cattle and hay production. Bourbon, which he already enjoyed drinking, eventually supplied the answer.

The idea emerged in 2009. What began partly as talk about making moonshine quickly became a serious investigation into operating a legal distillery. Toomy had corn and rye available all around him, agricultural land to support production, and the practical background to build much of what he needed. The following year, Alex, his brother-in-law Russell Nance, and his friend Chris Sarpy founded Ragged Branch Distillery. The name joined two of Toomy’s agricultural properties, Ragged Mountain Farm and Pounding Branch Farm, while also carrying an old whiskey association: “branch” was a traditional Southern term for stream water, as in ordering a ‘bourbon and branch’. With the help of legendary Master Distiller Dave Pickerell, and Alex’s son Joshua Toomy, they immediately created a Wheated Bourbon mash bill. The distillery mashed in on July 7th, 2014. Toomy had constructed the barns that housed the still and distilling equipment, and helped assemble the 500-gallon copper still after it arrived in pieces. Pickerell had helped design and install the system, developed the whiskey-making process, returned to select barrels, and assisted with blendin

Toomy approached distilling much as he had approached construction: learn the fundamentals from someone who understood the craft, then master the work through repetition. For instance, Toomy wanted traditional full-sized barrels from the beginning, although Pickerell persuaded him to fill some 25-gallon barrels so Ragged Branch could release two-year-old whiskey (rather than source) while the larger barrels matured. Once the original 53-gallon barrels reached four years, the emphasis shifted toward older bourbon. Months later, they decided to create a Rye Bourbon mash bill, which later became the Ragged Branch Signature Bourbon.

That insistence made agriculture central to Toomy’s whiskey. Ragged Mountain Farm covered about 92 acres near Charlottesville, while Pounding Branch Farm added roughly 800 acres. Grain was grown on those properties or obtained from other nearby Virginia farmland, ground fresh for production, mashed and distilled on site. Well water supplied the distillery, and spent mash went directly to the farm’s cattle. Water used in production could also be recycled for cooling. Bourbon and farming therefore operated as parts of the same system rather than as separate businesses.

Ragged Branch reached the market in 2017 with young Virginia straight bourbon, followed by more mature whiskey as its original stocks came of age. Its two principal bourbon recipes developed around rye and wheat. Today, the Signature Bourbon uses a mash bill of 68 percent corn, 16 percent rye, and 16 percent malted barley and is aged at least five years. The Wheated Bourbon substitutes wheat for rye at the same proportions, while Cowboy Cut presents the wheated recipe at variable barrel-strength proof. The current portfolio demonstrates how far Toomy’s project moved beyond the temporary small-barrel whiskey needed during the distillery’s early years.

Toomy also began using bourbon to emphasize Virginia history. In 2023, Ragged Branch introduced Secretariat Reserve to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Virginia-born racehorse’s Triple Crown. The Bottled-in-Bond bourbon used corn grown on the farm where Secretariat was born and was aged for more than five years. The project gave Toomy a way to make his argument about Virginia bourbon tangible: Virginia-grown grain, distilled into Virginia whiskey, honoring one of the state’s most famous agricultural legacies.

Ragged Branch subsequently expanded beyond its original Charlottesville-area home. By 2023, Toomy had established a larger production facility near Waynesboro in Augusta County, returning whiskey production to the county where he had grown up. That move produced another historical connection when the distillery revived J. Bumgardner’s Bourbon, a nineteenth-century Augusta County whiskey brand that had disappeared around the Prohibition era. After locating a descendant of the Bumgardner family, the Ragged Branch team obtained the old label, recipe, and even the original-style barrel-head brand. Toomy made the whiskey in Augusta County, close to the area where the original had been produced.

Ragged Branch now operates on 55 acres near Waynesboro, while its whiskey remains centered on traditional bourbon production and extended aging. Toomy’s path to that point began not with a marketing plan for a spirits brand, but with cattle, cornfields, construction work, and a development business battered by the 2008 recession. He responded by learning bourbon from Dave Pickerell and building a distillery around the resources already available to him. More than a decade later, the clearest line through his work remains the one established at the beginning: Virginia grain goes into the distillery, Virginia bourbon comes out, and the whiskey is made rather than merely branded by the people whose name stands behind it.

Sources:

  1. WVTF Public Radio 89.1, “Albemarle’s Own Bourbon,” Sandy Hausman, December 8, 2017, wvtf.org

  2. Bourbon & Banter, “Ragged Branch Distillery – Part 1,” Lee Stang, October 20, 2017, bourbonbanter.com

  3. Virginia Living, “Ragged Branch”, December 5, 2017, virginialiving.com

  4. The Whiskey Wash, “Virginia’s Ragged Branch…Bourbon To Market”, Nino Kilgore-Marchetti, October 19, 2018, thewhiskeywash.com

  5. Visit Virginia Travel Guide, “Bourbon and Beef Go Full Circle at Ragged Branch”, Don Harrison, February 3, 2020, visitvirginia.guide

  6. Ragged Branch Distillery, “Ragged Branch Distillery Celebrates 50 Years Since…Secreteriat…”, March 20, 2023, prnewswire.com

  7. WHSV/WVIR, “Virginia Distillery Resurrects 19th Century Bourbon from Shenandoah Valley,” Kate Nuechterlein, October 29, 2024, whsv.com

  8. Ragged Branch Distillery official website, raggedbranch.com

  9. Charlotteville (VA) News Leader, “Obituary: Willian N. Toomy, 1935-2019”, newsleader.com/obituaries/sdn021482

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee