Discovery Club October 2025: SanTan Spirits

We have been positively thrilled by the great response to last month’s Discovery Club release, a North Carolina single malt from Oak & Grist. But for those of you who are primarily bourbon fans, don’t worry: this month will be right in your wheelhouse!

The October 2025 Discovery Club release, which is coming out hot on the heels of Lost Lantern’s fifth anniversary, is an Arizona straight bourbon whiskey from SanTan Spirits in Chandler, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. SanTan Spirits is the distilling arm of SanTan Brewing, the largest independent brewery in Arizona.

The October release is a 4-year-old Arizona straight bourbon, aged in a 53-gallon barrel, and bottled at its natural cask strength of 121.4 proof. SanTan is only the second Arizona distillery we’ve worked with, after Whiskey Del Bac in Tucson, and it’s our first bourbon from the Southwest.

Introducing SanTan Spirits

Back when Nora and I first took our Great Whiskey Road Trip around the United States, when we spent eight months on the road visiting distilleries, we were quite excited to get to Arizona… both for the beautiful desert landscapes and to visit our friends at Whiskey Del Bac. But as for the distilling scene in the rest of Arizona, I’ll be honest: we didn’t know that much. The only other Arizona whiskey I had ever encountered at that point, in my Whisky Advocate days, was an American single malt called Sacred Stave that was aged in red wine casks and came from a brewery/distillery called SanTan. So of course we had to check them out when we made it to the Phoenix area.

We first visited SanTan in February 2019, one of several distillery visits in the Phoenix area and by far the one we were most excited about. We met SanTan founder Anthony Canecchia, whose boundless energy and enthusiasm was incredibly infectious. He had built SanTan into Arizona’s leading craft brewery in a state where people tend to care a little less about local provenance (after all, most people in Arizona moved there from elsewhere!). And along the way, he had become incredibly excited about the possibilities of American single malt, and creating one that celebrated Arizona’s desert bounty. Early on, the distillery decided that its focus in single malt would be wine cask aging. In fact, in the early days, the distillery generally aged its casks in either red wine casks from Arizona wineries, or from highly esteemed California producers that Canecchia had built a relationship with. If Whiskey Del Bac was about mesquite smoke and the intense heat of the Sonora desert, SanTan focused more on red fruit flavors and balanced aging.

We stayed in touch with SanTan and with Canecchia after our visit. We featured Whiskey Del Bac early on, in our second collection, and always planned to showcase SanTan at some point as well… but we never had the right opportunity. There are a lot of distilleries like that for us: places that we have visited, like a lot, keep our eyes on, and are simply waiting for the right lens to showcase them. And one of those options is the Discovery Club.

A Return to SanTan

Nora and I visited SanTan in person again early this year. The 2025 American Craft Spirits Association convention was in Tucson, and it was both easier to fly into Phoenix and a good excuse to visit and revisit some distilleries. And a lot had changed since we had last visited.

First and most importantly, we learned when setting up the visit that Anthony Canecchia, the founder and visionary behind the distillery, passed away last October. He had personally given us the tour years before–even while running the show at a quite large and busy brewery–and had made a huge impression on us with his passion, dedication, and vision for the distillery. We were shocked and saddened to learn of his passing… and it was clear that the brewery was very much still in grief when we visited, just a few months after he passed. Everyone on the team there had worked with him, most of them for years, many for multiple decades. And it was very clear that they were still driven by his original vision, to create beer and spirits that reflected the culture and climate of Phoenix.

A lot had changed at SanTan since we last visited. In 2019, they had only been making American single malt. By 2025, they still made American single malt, but also made bourbon, rye, and a range of other whiskies–including its most successful products, a range of flavored whiskies that have found a strong following in the area (and yes, we tried the flavored whiskies too–I’m always going to ask to try a distillery’s most successful product, even if it’s something that’s not within the bounds of what we do!).

We had come to visit again mostly to consider their single malt. But it was the bourbon that blew us away. Hence this month’s single cask.

SanTan Arizona Straight Bourbon: The Discovery Club Cask

What blew us away about SanTan’s bourbon was simple: it captured the essence of the desert without intense oak extraction. Most desert whiskies we’ve encountered pick up a lot of oak character very quickly, from the climate itself, from the use of smaller barrels, and from the huge temperature swings from day to night. The average whiskey we’ve released from Whiskey Del Bac has been 1-2 years old, and they’re some of the darkest whiskies in color that we’ve ever put out! SanTan does not have, and does not want to have, that sheer level of intensity. And it was that balance that really excited us.

This month’s Discovery Club single cask is 4 years old, made from an unusual mashbill (55% corn, 13% rye, 32% malted barley) and was aged in full-size barrels in the desert climate. But because of the specific conditions of their warehouse (hot, but not insane), and the barrels they use (53 gallons and char 1, the lightest char), this single cask and all of SanTan’s bourbons are shockingly balanced. If you tasted them blind, you’d never guess they came from the desert. But once you know, you can taste hints of it: certain baking spice notes amped up more than you normally see, hints of burnt caramel, a spicy yet not domineering oak note.

We always say that whiskies should reflect where they’re from… but they can do that in different ways (after all, there are dozens of very different bourbons all coming just from Bardstown, Kentucky!). This one is the lighter and more balanced side of the desert. It’s not insanely oaky or spicy or wildly high proof. It is a balanced and deeply flavorful sipping bourbon, and that’s why we fell in love with it.

We hope you do too! As always, this will ship automatically to Discovery Club members on roughly October 25th.