Our Mission
Our mission at Blue Shepherd Spirits is to give the people of luray and its visitors a place to come and enjoy artesian crafted spirits. All of our spirits are created in house, in extremely small batches. We are a nano distillery that uses local grains and goods to make our spirits and cocktails.
THE TEAM
Bruce
The Face
WHY BLUE SHEPHERD? MEET BRUCE
Bruce is a Blue German Shepherd that came to us because he was having some severe behavioral issues. My wife and I have become accustom to taking in very challenging dogs and trying to rehabilitate them. Bruce is a very loving guy with a personality twice his size and good looks to match. Being such a special dog we decided to name the business after him. While he is big and beautiful you won’t see him in person due to his issues, but when you come to the distillery there are plenty of pictures of him and his friends.
Alex
Alex is a jack of many trades, Veteran, Firefighter/Paramedic, and our Distiller, Owner, and Creator. He is still working full time as a Firefighter/Paramedic and then on his off days from that runs Blue Shepherd. (That’s why our hours are always changing and appointments encouraged while we are in our infancy). Make an appointment today to come meet Alex and taste some of our delicious spirits!
Sarah
Sarah is a very accomplished first responder, nurse, and small business owner. We would not be able to keep the doors open without all her hard work helping with everything from the back end stuff that no one ever sees, to being on the forefront of our tasting room giving everyone a unique tasting and cocktail experience.
It has been a long journey
This all started as we needed a building for storage, working on cars, ect. with the dream to have a business so that in many years when I (Alex) retire or become unable to be a firefighter any more, (its a dangerous, hard job), I would have something to fall back on. Well, my life had a few wild things happen in it and I learned very quickly that you only live one and life can be a lot shorter than you think. So why try and get this all set up for years down the road when the only thing stopping you from doing it now is money and hard work.
Why a distillery? My wife and I enjoy traveling around locally and afar visiting all the small breweries, distilleries, and wineries. Both of us have a particular liking towards distilleries, tasting their spirits and seeing what particular flavors we can pull out of them through smell and taste. No two Distilleries create the same flavors and even those change from batch to batch. The process is fascinating and we always loved learning more and more from every place we went to visit.
Why Luray? Traveling around we found some small towns have a great atmosphere when you are in them and others don’t. We have lived in luray since early 2017 and while we have loved living here felt that the towns atmosphere could use some help. It has come along way with many new businesses over the years and the town has been giving grants to improve the looks and bring in new business. Luray has so much potential and history in it. The building we purchased we had driven by over the years without a second glance. It used to be Tutts Autos, an old school speed shop that could build a car from the ground up. Unfortunately when Mr Tutt got sick and passed away the shop was shut down and the building sat vacant for many years.
09/01/2021 The building is perfect for our needs. Large, open, tall ceilings, beautiful views out back of the mountains with plenty of potential for an area people can hang out and their kids can play. But there is a lot of work that needs to be done… That’s were we are now…. Trying to breathe life back into the place.
02/12/2022 While working on the building we are also trying to get all of our permits in place. In order to distill anything you have to be federally, State, and County approved. We FINALLY got approved by the Federal government and are now starting our permit process with the state of VA and getting Town of Luray approval.
08/26/2022 We have finally opened our doors to the public! Sorry for not having more updates along the way but time just flew by. Come and check out our beautiful tasting room and our try our small batch spirits!