Agronomist Gary Hinegardner, who served in the Peace Corps in India and later worked for cooperage Independent Stave Co., founded Wood Hat Spirits in New Florence, Missouri, still owns it, and named it for his hobby of turning hats out of wood on a lathe. He set out to make whiskey in Missouri from corn people actually eat instead of commodity yellow dent. He planted his first corn in 2012, first distilled in 2013, and now grows and breeds his own blue, red, white and orange heirloom corns. Wood Hat cooks, ferments, distills, ages and bottles on site, firing its still with scrap wood from a neighboring stave mill and cooling with geothermal and ambient-air loops instead of refrigeration. It makes corn whiskeys, bourbons and fruit and nut cordials, aged mostly in small chinquapin oak barrels kept in metal shipping containers. Its Bloody Butcher Red Corn Whiskey won ADI's Best of Class whiskey trophy in 2018, and in 2019 Hinegardner and the Missouri Craft Distillers Guild saw passage of the law creating the Missouri Bourbon designation.