Supporting veterans helps Leatherwood Distillery thrive
In the winter of 2011, fifteen Green Berets were manning a hidden camp in the remote mountains of northern Afghanistan. They were on combat operations, and keeping their bivouac in the broken country secret was key to survival. They were also learning to improvise. The team members watched as their sergeant, Andrew Lang, gathered some corn, wheat, rolled oats, and dried molasses that was meant for feeding their pack of mules.
Trust is everything for a Special Forces group. These guys had been together long enough to believe their commander knew what he was doing as he started distilling the animals’ breakfast with a beer keg, turkey cooker, and lone copper column.
Soon, the Berets were happily filling cups with a makeshift whiskey. It gave them a sense of peace within those vast, war-torn mountains — a sip of American life as they sat around telling stories and remembering crazy things they’d done back home.
“We made it out of the feed,” Lang recalls. “We basically fake-aged it, put it in a water can, and charred some branches — some sticks — so we had our charred wood, and put it in the pot for a couple of weeks. And we could make rum, too, because we could get sugar pretty easily.”
Lang’s distilling chops not only let his team relax, they also helped with some practical safety concerns. His impromptu whiskey-maker was good for purifying water that the guys fetched from a nearby river, ensuring their mission wasn’t jeopardized by anyone getting hit with a crippling bout of dysentery. Beyond that, 18 years in the army had taught the Illinois native that soldiers on deployment are going to drink, one way or another. Lang knew there was always the potential for U.S. troops to be poisoned by tribal members secretly aligned with Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
“I felt it was safer if we were making it than them trying to buy it from some idiot out on the street,” he explains. “You never know what’s in it, you know.”
“So, yeah,” he adds with a chuckle, “we started making some hooch in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Much later, the discipline, fortitude, and mental toughness instilled in Lang by the U.S. Army’s Special Forces helped him charge into new and truly unknown territory — opening a small distillery. After getting the operation off the ground in Pleasant View, Tennessee, the retired master sergeant didn’t forget everything the military had done for him or that some of his brothers- and sisters-in-arms genuinely struggle with returning to civilian life. Lang ultimately released a product line of commemorative spirits that honor the memory of 9/11, with a percentage of the sales going to support three veteran-related nonprofits. According to Lang and his team, that has really told the public what Leatherwood Distillery’s values are as a company — and made the military community want to share the brand near and far.
Given what he had seen on the battlefield, marketing was hardly top of mind when Lang set out to support the work of those nonprofits. Nevertheless, recent buzz around Leatherwood has grown so quickly that Lang is now opening a second location, proving what kind of competitive edge a distillery can get from strategic philanthropy and growing a label’s profile and bottom line through supporting causes aligned with its own story.
From Lang’s perspective, sometimes finding the right social commitment for a business is right in front of you.
“I figured if I’m going to market my distillery as veteran-owned and operated, it’s my obligation to give back to that community,” he stresses. “It’s what I wanted to do.”
Snake Eater
There’s a wall of tempered wood painted like an American flag adorning Leatherwood’s tasting room. Approaching it, visitors see the entire space is a kind of understated military museum, its decor made largely of keepsakes and mementoes from Lang’s excursions to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and the Kuwaiti border. Yet it’s the memorial wall that signals a more universal experience to those in uniform, not to mention all the veterans and military families who like to visit.
The wall is lined with plaques for fallen warriors. They bear the soldier’s photo, their rank, and a small biography of their career, ending with their final sacrifice. There are 55 of these windows into someone’s service, each positioned as if standing watch under the stars and stripes. It’s a tribute to the U.S. Army’s 5th Special Forces Group; that’s the group Lang’s unit of Green Berets belongs to. But at Leatherwood, the wall also represents something much bigger: Between the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and 20 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many veterans have come to know the feeling of losing a friend — or friends. With the distillery located just 40 minutes down the road from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where Lang was stationed, there are many people dropping in with connections to members of the 5th Group who never came home.
“I would say 75% of customers who are coming through here are military or retired military, so it’s the majority,” notes Cailee Baker, a manager at Leatherwood. “It’s almost surreal when you walk in and see all the things that Andy’s done, and realize what he’s sacrificed for his country. But what really gives people goosebumps is our memorial wall. If anyone wants to come in and have a drink with someone that they knew who’s on the wall, they can pull their picture down and have that drink with that picture right by their side.”
To an outsider, Leatherwood has a feel of familiarity and comfort unlike any other tasting room. Baker says vets and soldiers usually gather around tables swapping war stories as they sip a cocktail with their favorite spirit from the distillery.
“Even though we’re a tasting room and not a bar, we do have the kind of regulars you’d have at a bar,” she observes. “I don’t know what it is about the atmosphere, but it’s such a relaxed environment that people never sit still at the same table for too long. Everyone is always moving around, talking to everyone else.”
That is the vibe Lang was hoping for when he opened in 2017. Yet, that doesn’t mean the sergeant had a compass and map for getting there. The Green Berets may have taught him how to execute dangerous raids and risky reconnaissance, but obtaining liquor licenses, securing building permits, tracking product sales, and managing payroll were entirely foreign to him. He was also starting the distillery with just a few friends as modest co-investors, but no serious capital investment. All the pressures mounting might have gotten to some distillers, but Lang thinks his years of being a special operator helped him weather it.
“We literally started out with zero dollars in the bank and just started building up from there, so everything had to come slow as we grew,” he says, looking back. “It’s a tough way to do it, and I would say that if I knew better, it wouldn’t have been quite so stressful, but I’d never had a business before. My military experience helped a hundred percent. It was just my drive and motivation. I could work 24 hours a day if I had to. I’ve done that for years. And, you know, there’s that whole saying, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ After what I did in my previous career, I could have an attitude that it’s either going to work or it’s not.”
With a shrug, he adds, “Nobody’s dying.”
Lang may be laid-back, but there’s nothing tame about his signature spirit, Snake Eater Bourbon (the term “snake eater” is a nickname for the Green Berets). This small batch wheated whiskey showcases his approach to cooking all his grains at perfect temperatures. The result is an ultra-smooth bourbon that Leatherwood’s fans — military or not — cannot get enough of.
Spirit Fans Haven’t Forgotten
In 2003, a performance for military personnel stationed in Afghanistan inspired country singer Darryl Worley to pen an elegy to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He called it “Have You Forgotten?” Last year, as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approached, a friend of Worley’s introduced him to Lang. The singer and the distiller spent an evening together drinking Snake Eater bourbon.
“Darryl is a huge supporter of the military, so we hit it off quick,” Lang recalls. “We’ve been like brothers ever since. He’s an amazing guy.”
Lang and Worley decided to partner on creating limited edition 9/11 commemorative spirits, which in turn would raise money for veteran causes. In September of 2021, Leatherwood Distillery released its Darryl Worley Bourbon, Darryl Worley Rye Whiskey, and Darryl Worley Sweet Feed Whiskey, along with bottles of Have You Forgotten Moonshine. Lang says around 30% of the sales are split between three nonprofits: the Special Forces Association, which promotes the general welfare of the military’s Special Forces community; the Special Operators Transition Foundation, which helps elite soldiers who are retiring from service enter the next phase of their lives; and the Charlie Daniels Journey Home Project, which assists veterans with physical and mental healthcare and employment support.
For Lang, that third charity was vital to making sure that his 9/11 invocation was not just focusing on members of the Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Delta Force, and Airborne Rangers.
“It’s true that when I opened the distillery, my interest in giving back was mainly to the Special Ops community,” he reflects, “but we also delved into the Charlie Daniels Journey Home Project because they help all branches of the military, and I do think that’s really important.”
Thanks to Worley’s profile, he and Lang were able to announce their 9/11 spirits on various television shows. This media blitz went down the same week that Lang hired Baker as a manager.
Looking back, Baker realizes the explosion of interest in supporting Leatherwood’s 9/11 endeavor was something the distillery was not fully prepared for. To start with, as a small, upstart business, its website was never designed for the sudden volume of online traffic pouring in.
“It was kind of a trial by fire sort of thing,” Baker says. “I remember it was Veterans Day (my husband is a veteran) and Andy called me and said, ‘We just got off the air and you need to jump on a computer and start answering emails … About half of the messages were very positive, and thanking us for doing it, and about half of them were frustrated people saying, ‘Hey, your distillery’s website keeps crashing.’”
The technical difficulties were eventually ironed out. Worley has been promoting the spirits at his live performances, too. Word of mouth about the project spread like wildfire on its own through the military community. In more recent months, Americans heard about Leatherwood Distillery through national stories about Lang flying out to Poland to help former U.S. Marine and country singer Scooter Brown transport 55 Ukrainian orphans out of a war zone and get them to safety in Europe, where they’d still be eligible for adoption. Lang and Brown worked with Operation Light Shine on the mission, a nonprofit started by former Green Beret Matt Murphy. Again, while promoting the distillery was never the point of this effort, the way that various veterans’ businesses and organizations joined forces to make the rescue happen signaled to the spirit-buying public the values at the heart of Leatherwood.
Lang and Baker agree that a general commitment to community—– whether it is the veterans’ community or the children of the world’s community — naturally builds lasting bonds with patrons on its own.
“People definitely appreciate what we do along those lines,” Lang observed. “And I think they know that every little bit of the money that’s chipped into those causes, it is going to somebody who really needs it.”
