Discovery Club December 2025: St. Augustine
The last Lost Lantern Discovery Club release of the year comes from a distillery we’ve wanted to work with for a long time… and also from a climate that we really wouldn’t mind enjoying right now, since we’re inundated with snow and cold weather up in Vermont. It’s a Florida straight bourbon whiskey from St. Augustine Distillery: the state’s premiere distillery, one of the most awarded distilleries in the Southeast, and the single most visited craft distillery in the country. Our release is a 5 year old Florida wheated bourbon bottled at its natural cask strength of 118 proof.
This is our first release from Florida and our first from St. Augustine, which is now the southernmost distillery we’ve ever worked with.
St. Augustine Distillery: The Story
Before we get to the distillery itself, first a little bit about the city of St. Augustine, Florida in northeast Florida, right on the ocean. Originally inhabited by the Timucua people, the area was colonized by Spain in the 16th century. Founded in 1565, more than 50 years before Jamestown, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited city founded by Europeans in the United States (for the curious: Santa Fe, New Mexico holds the title of oldest not continuously inhabited European-founded city). It was the capital of Florida from its foundation until 1824, by which point the territory had passed from Spanish to British to American hands and become a U.S. state. So St. Augustine has some deep history.
In the late 19th century, it became an early winter resort, and so even today the city is filled with a number of stunningly beautiful Gilded Age hotels of a sort not seen anywhere else in Florida. The city is known in general for some of the most striking architecture in the state: beyond the hotels, it’s home to a 17th century Spanish fort and many restored buildings, and the city places a great deal of focus on historical preservation. All of this, plus the ease of access to the city, have made it a major tourist destination for at least a century and a half. Although it is far, far smaller than Miami and the other major cities of South Florida, St. Augustine punches well above its weight… which happens to include being the home of the most-visited craft distillery in the country!
St. Augustine Distillery opened its doors in 2014, and the vision behind it was always clear: to create a distillery that truly reflected Florida, its unique agricultural bounty, and its climate. From the beginning, the distillery had big ambitions and wanted to make sure they got everything right. Early on, they worked with the late master distiller Dave Pickerell, formerly of Maker’s Mark, and famous for helping new distilleries all around the country get started. He worked with the St. Augustine team to build their plan, set up the distillery (which has a traditional Kentucky Vendome copper pot still), and lay down their plan for aging whiskey in the Florida climate. That expertise gave them a real head start to becoming the state’s premiere distillery.
For the curious: Dave Pickerell actually worked with a number of Lost Lantern partners in their early days. Beyond St. Augustine, he has also worked with Union Horse in Kansas, Woodinville in Washington, J. Rieger & Co. in Missouri, and all of them have been making wonderful whiskey since their early days.
St. Augustine Distillery is located within walking distance of downtown, in the city’s former ice plant (from back when you had to have a factory to make ice, not just a refrigerator). In addition to the distillery, the building is home to the Ice Plant Bar, one of the best cocktail bars in Florida and closely associated with the distillery. And because the city itself sees so much tourist traffic, the distillery and the bar get a tremendous number of visitors: they’re on the main tourist loop, and the distillery hosts more than 175,000 visitors a year. That averages out to almost 500 a day, comparable to some of the major distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail!
Needless to say, this has been a boon for the distillery. But it does have one downside: the distillery is so popular that it has never had enough whiskey to expand much beyond Florida. The demand from the tasting room alone is sufficient to hoover up any special whiskey releases they put out. And because St. Augustine produces a full range of spirits, including whiskey, gin, vodka, rum, and nonalcoholic mixers, they only have so much capacity.
And that’s why, despite being one of the most visited distilleries in the country, St. Augustine is a perfect fit for the Discovery Club. Because, unless you visit in person, you’re not likely to see their whiskey very much, and almost certainly not at cask strength.
St. Augustine: My Visit
I visited St. Augustine in 2022, on my first major trip since the pandemic. It was actually a road trip: our Great Whiskey Road Trip of 2018-2019 lasted eight months, and took us to most of the country except the South. My 2022 trip made up for lost time and gave me the chance to visit a number of Southern distilleries we had never been to before. That trip took me to Leiper’s Fork in Tennessee, High Wire in South Carolina, Oak & Grist in North Carolina (a recent Discovery Club feature), and many more… including St. Augustine. By that point I had driven basically 2,000 miles from home, but it was early spring and the warm weather was very welcome compared to the cold of Vermont.
Is Florida in the South, or is Florida its own region? Is North Florida more like South Florida, or more like Georgia? As a Yankee–a New Englander, no less!–I don’t feel qualified to offer an opinion in this matter, either culturally or climatologically. When it comes to whiskey, all I can say again is that it is the southernmost distillery we’ve ever worked with, and one of just a few (along with High Wire in South Carolina and Triple Eight in Massachusetts) that have substantial coastal or maritime influence.
Florida is a big state, or at least a long state, and St. Augustine is in the far Northeast. It’s actually closer to Charleston, South Carolina, than it is to Miami! And in fact, I popped into Florida from Atlanta specifically to visit the distillery before heading north along the coast to Charleston. I met the team at the distillery, and what was most evident was the great care they put into their maturation program. Everything from St. Augustine is aged in 53 gallon barrels, and the year-round warmth leads to very balanced maturation. In fact, they say they see much less variation between casks than many distilleries do, simply because the climate is so balanced.
I’m sad to say my visit to St. Augustine was fairly short: I visited the distillery for a few hours, went to the Ice Bar, and walked around downtown, but I didn’t get to stay the night and enjoy the Florida warmth. I look forward to going back for longer… but for the moment, I brought that taste of Florida into the Discovery Club instead.
St. Augustine Florida Bourbon: The Discovery Club Cask
The Discovery Club cask is a wheated Florida bourbon, aged for five years in a 53 gallon barrel in the subtropical heat. All of the grain except the malted barley comes from Florida (malted barley does not grow well in hotter climates): the mashbill is 60% Florida-grown corn, 18% Florida-grown wheat, and 22% malted barley.
What I really like about this bourbon is that it has the depth and flavor of a very high-proof release… but at a natural cask strength of 118 proof, it is very respectable yet a lot more approachable than the 130+ proof heavy hitters we’ve released (mostly from Rocky Mountain states, where the high and dry climate leads to intense evaporation and concentration). Aged in full-size barrels, it is less oak-driven than something like our Mississippi bourbons from Rich Grain Distilling, but more oak-driven than a typical Kentucky bourbon.
It is big and bold, with notes of dark chocolate cherries on the nose and chocolate cake, vanilla frosting, toasted grain, and rich, powerful, yet balanced oak on the palate.
I’m thrilled to have St. Augustine as the latest addition to our Discovery Club and I hope you all enjoy it as much as we do!