Constable
The Man Behind the Label
Brion Wise grew up on an apple farm in the Pacific Northwest. His dad loved making wine, and would often recruit Brion to make a few barrels of hard cider out of the apples left in the field at the end of harvest. Northwest winters were cold, so there was a lot of card playing, and a lot of wine and whiskey drinking to keep the winter blues away. It was during these long, cold days that Brion learned the importance of life’s simple pleasures; nothing beats time with friends and a good drink.
Years later Brion became a super successful chemical engineer for the petroleum industry, which afforded him the chance to travel the world over. With a penchant for learning he visited most of the great wine and whisky producers to learn their trade. At the end of his engineering career, Brion purchased an extraordinary piece of land in California wine country above Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon. He and his wife, Ronda, set to work building their dream from the ground up. Drawing on his understanding of the land from his family’s three generations of farming, and with the help of awesome partners like John Caldwell, he planned and planted the vineyards, built the winery and a beautiful home from local stone and materials, and launched B Wise Vineyard. Today Brion and Ronda own and manage a number of incredible vineyards for their wine portfolio including Sleeping Lady and a new project called Upper Range atop the legendary Pritchard Hill in Napa Valley.
Working with Master Cooper, Ramiro Herrera and his winemaking team, Brion’s taken a bold approach to developing a barrel-aged spirits program. Working with one of the globe’s most connected and well-respected whiskey dealers, he’s found connections to the best distilleries in every great whiskey region including Ireland, Scotland, Kentucky, Canada and Japan. A bonafide treasure hunter, he seeks out the rarified, small batch, single barrel prizes – which are often too small for other commercial ventures–but just right for the tiny batch, super exclusive gems we bottle for Wise Caldwell.
What's In a Name?
Constable is a discovery of roots, and the finest spirits in the world, curated through time and place.
My family’s history is woven through the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee. But it’s not a famous bootlegger where this whiskey story begins. Rather, it starts with the venerable J.R. Wise, one of the original Constables of Anderson County Tennessee, and the man responsible for a 13-year career defined by closing down illegal moonshine operations after Prohibition was repealed. We named our whiskey in honor of our cousin’s noble work (while standing strong against the legacy of Prohibition), by making the best damn whiskey in the world.
“Not content to stop at wine alone, John and I are finding a whole new passion project through Wise Caldwell Distillers - which all our friends seem to enjoy almost as much as we do.”
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