Stan Von Strohe
Stanton S. Von Strohe was born in May of 1958 and grew up in Denver, Colorado, but frequently traveled during his boyhood to Marquette, Kansas, where his great-aunt, Mildred Holt, lived. He usually made those summer journeys by bus or train, and while there, he worked alongside local farmers during harvest, forming relationships with both the old-timers and their families that endured long after he returned home. Marquette’s wheat fields, historic downtown, and slower rhythm remained a wholesome recollection of his early life even as his later education and career carried him elsewhere.
After college, Von Strohe moved to Texas and settled in the Dallas area. He became part-owner of a successful medical-equipment distributorship and spent nearly three decades in that business, while his wife, Michele, worked as a prekindergarten teacher. Meanwhile, distilled spirits became a special interest for Stan and Michele during their professional years. Neither had formal distilling training, but both spent years studying the business as hobbyists. The Von Strohes visited producers, attended national trade shows, toured facilities, and sampled hundreds of spirits. Their travels ranged from Napa Valley to Lynchburg, Tennessee, and dozens of other American distilling centers. Von Strohe was especially interested in the production process, and by then, the couple hoped to eventually open a distillery of their own. Finally, retirement gave them the opportunity to act. They sold their Dallas-area home and moved to Marquette, choosing the community where Von Strohe already thought of as home and where he still had family connections, old friends, and idyllic childhood memories. They quickly exchanged Dallas traffic and urban density for a central Kansas town where the endless prairie meets the Smoky Hills. For Von Strohe, it was both a homecoming and the beginning of an entirely different profession.
Stan and Michele purchased the former Farmers Union Co-Op building in downtown Marquette. Built in 1919, the 16,000-square-foot structure is the largest building in town. During its heyday, the building accommodated grocery and hardware stores, apartments, a furniture showroom, a bar, and antique businesses. The Von Strohes soon overhauled its electrical and plumbing systems, installed distilling equipment, and adapted the old commercial building for production, retail sales, tours, and tastings. Their preference for restoring and reusing older properties gave the distillery a home closely connected to Marquette’s past. By that point, their son, Shane had joined them in the family business.
Smoky Valley Distillery began operating in January 2020 under Stan, Michele, and Shane Von Strohe. Stan became its head distiller and assumed responsibility for the entire production sequence, including grain selection, distillation, barrel filling, maturation, and the development of new spirits. Michele managed the tasting-room experience, events, and community relationships, while Shane handled daily operations, production support, inventory, and retail distribution. The business was therefore organized from its beginning as a working family enterprise rather than simply a personal retirement project.
Whiskey was central to Von Strohe’s plan, but maturation imposed an unavoidable delay. Smoky Valley solved the issue of raising capital by initially producing crystal-clear flavored Kansas Vodka while its first bourbon remained in oak. The distillery had made its bourbon in small batches using only regional grain and pure Kansas water. Von Strohe then matured the early bourbon in new American white-oak barrels with a No. 3 char. He later adopted 10-gallon barrels as part of the distillery’s small-barrel maturation program, increasing the proportion of whiskey exposed to oak. The operation remained deliberately small enough for him to supervise ingredients, fermentation, distillation, and aging closely. By 2026, Smoky Valley’s whiskey portfolio encompassed straight bourbon, wheated bourbon, smoked straight bourbon, high-rye single-barrel bourbon, rye whiskey, and Kernza whiskey. Yet the distillery’s best-selling whiskey, Bud & Dewey’s Wheated Straight Bourbon, preserved a personal connection to both Stan and to Marquette itself. Von Strohe named it for his grandfather, Bud Von Strohe, and his friend Dewey Grooms, a longtime Marquette barber. As a boy, Stan remembered the two men enjoying cigars and bourbon in Grooms’s barbershop. Replacing rye with wheat in the bourbon’s mash bill produced a softer flavor profile centered on cereal sweetness and vanilla, while the name joined the finished whiskey to two larger-than-life locals that the people of Marquette remembered fondly.
National recognition arrived through the blind-judged 2025 Heartland Whiskey Competition. Smoky Valley’s Single Barrel Rye Whiskey shared Best of State honors and earned a silver medal in the rye-whiskey class. Smoky Valley Straight Bourbon also received a silver medal, as did its Kernza Whiskey in the straight-whiskey category. The results placed three different expressions from Von Strohe’s whiskey program among the competition’s medalists and demonstrated the breadth the family operation had developed within only five years of opening.
By 2026, Smoky Valley spirits were available through sixteen Kansas retail partners, while the Marquette distillery continued to host visitors in its tasting room and event venue. The enterprise joined Von Strohe’s early memories of Kansas agriculture, his decades of business experience, his interest in distillation, and his commitment to Marquette in one operation. He returned to the town where he had once worked summer harvests and built a whiskey business around Kansas grain, Kansas water, family participation, and a restored downtown landmark.
Sources:
Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter, “From Big City to Rural Kansas,” Jennifer McDaniel, September 30, 2020, indyrepnews.com
Smoky Valley Distillery official website, smokyvalleydistillery.com
American Craft Spirits Association, “2025 Heartland Whiskey Competition National Medalists”, americancraftspirits.org
Heartland Whiskey Competition, “2025 Awards”, heartlandwhiskeycompetition.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
