Dave Weglarz
David M. Weglarz was born on January 20, 1981, in Michigan. When he was in sixth grade, his family moved to Indiana, a shift he has later described as part of what made him think of himself as a Midwestern kid—rooted, practical, and not overly anxious when hard work was required to build something real. In Indiana, he played football and eventually enrolled at Wabash College, where he majored in English. That detail surfaces repeatedly in his story because it sits so far outside the familiar stereotype of the modern distiller as chemist or engineer. Yet it fits the way Weglarz talks about process, identity, and perseverance. His language is deliberate, and his metaphors tend to come from stories rather than spreadsheets.
After college, Weglarz’s first real working chapter was outdoors and physically demanding. He spent time as a whitewater rafting guide in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, living a life that was intense and exhilarating, but ultimately unsustainable. He later described it as a half-year spent essentially camping, rafting every day, and slowly realizing he wanted something more durable. When he left the mountains, that desire for stability did not lead to an easy or predictable job. Instead, Weglarz landed in Chicago, where he became a futures trader.
The Chicago years proved formative in a different way. Weglarz has described working as a trader by day and a bouncer and bartender by night while trying to makeends meet; an exhausting routine that taught him what pressure feels like. That experience would later translate neatly into the distilling world, where schedules are unforgiving, equipment fails at inconvenient moments, and the difference between a good decision and a bad one can be measured in months of lost whiskey. Eventually, as many do, he burned out in the trading world. Dave and his wife, Sidni, who is from St. Louis, made a choice that looked like a pivot but functioned more like a reset. In 2011, they decided to relocate to her hometown to raise their family and build a more grounded life.
When the Weglarzes arrived, Missouri’s regulatory environment, combined with Dave’s growing interest in distilling, helped turn curiosity into a concrete plan. That same year became the starting pistol for what would become StilL 630. The next step was both practical and revealing. On February 1, 2012, Weglarz took ownership of the location he intended to turn into a distillery and moved into what was previously a Hardee’s restaurant. From the beginning, he positioned himself not only as the owner but as the working distiller. He planned to build the brand’s identity around intensity, experimentation, and a refusal to be subdued. Despite several setbacks, he declined to give up during those early years, when craft distilleries frequently fail and when it would have been easy to sell his few assets and return to the steady paycheck of trading.
The distillery’s name and distinctive use of a medial capital—StilL 630—reflect its deep connection to St. Louis. “St” and “L” reference the city, while “630” signifies the height and width of the Gateway Arch in addition to the June 30 founding date as well as the serial number of the distillery’s pot still. The name itself functions as a compact mission statement: local pride, technical detail, and layered meaning.
Weglarz’s production interests leaned heavily toward whiskey, but consistent with his broader philosophy, he also developed a reputation for obsessive experimentation. He maintains a “botanical library” of hundreds of distilled samples, treating flavor the way a writer treats vocabulary; something accumulated over time, refined through use, and deployed with intent. Recognition followed, and it came from credible places. StilL 630 earned the American Craft Spirits Association’s“Best in Class” whiskey awards in both 2016 and 2018, positioning Weglarz as an operator who had moved beyond new distillery novelty into repeatable, defensible quality.
Outside the distillery, Weglarz is consistently described as someone who reads, camps, and paddles Missouri rivers, hobbies that echo his pre-distilling years on the water and suggest that a small piece of the rafting chapter never fullyended. His marriage to Sidni has given the couple three young sons and a dog named Charley, anchoring a life that now revolves as much around family as it does around fermentation schedules and barrel fills.
In many ways, Weglarz’s story is less about reinvention than accumulation. Each phase—English student, river guide, trader, bartender, distiller—added a set of tools that still show up in his daily work. StilL 630 stands as the physical expression of that long arc: a distillery built by someone who learned, through experience, how to endure pressure, embrace uncertainty, and keep shaping raw material into something meaningful. The whiskey carries those lessons quietly, but unmistakably, from still to barrel to glass.
Sources:
American Craft Spirits Association Webinar, “Distillery Horror Stories”, October 31, 2017, americancraftspirits.org
The Bachelor (Wabash College Student Voice). “David Weglarz ’03 Continues to Contribute to the Monon Bell Game.”, Jacob Weber, November 10, 2023
CanvasRebel. “Meet David Weglarz (Q&A)”, July 3, 2023,canvasrebel.com
Distiller Magazine, “Distiller Interview with David Weglarz…”, Virginia Miller, July 15, 2022
StilL 630 Distillery official website, still630.com/pages/about
Town&Style Magazine. “Get to Know Dave Weglarz”,TownandStyle.com
Wabash College News. “Alumnus David Weglarz Leads in Craft Distilling”, Richard Paige, May 8, 2018
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
