About A. Smith Bowman Distillery
Industrial Facilities, Factories, Interesting Places
The A. Smith Bowman Distillery is a distillery that was originally based on the Bowman family's 7,200-acre Sunset Hills Farm in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, in what later became the planned community of Reston. The distillery was founded in 1934 on the day after the end of Prohibition, by Abram Smith Bowman and his sons, Abram Smith, Jr., and DeLong. From the time of its founding until the 1950s, it was the only legal whiskey distillery in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The primary brands produced by the distillery were the Virginia Gentleman and Fairfax County bourbon whiskeys. In February 1988, it relocated to Spotsylvania County, near Fredericksburg, into a former FMC Corp. cellophane plant at One Bowman Drive, where operation continues as a microdistillery owned by the Sazerac Company.
