Ep. 252: Koopers Whiskey with Troy Kooper Show Notes
Koopers Whiskey: Troy Kooper on Blending, Texas Aging, and Finding the Whiskey in the Middle
This episode takes us back to Texas, but not to a distillery.
Koopers Whiskey, formerly Kooper Family Whiskey, is a blending house. The whiskey is sourced, then matured, blended, finished, and bottled in Texas, and Troy Kooper is direct about that. He is not trying to wedge Koopers into someone else’s definition of craft whiskey. He and his wife Michelle built the company around the part of the process that fascinated them most: taking whiskey that already has something to say and giving it shape, balance, and identity through maturation and blending.
I was introduced to Troy through our friends at Big Thirst, with an extra nudge from Jake Clements of the Texas Whiskey Festival. Jake and I had talked about Koopers in the context of Texas whiskey and what it means to “make” whiskey in Texas when distillation is not the whole story. That made this a natural follow-up: a conversation about whiskey that is Texan by where it matures, how it is handled, and the point of view behind it.
Troy came to whiskey from advertising and design. He grew up creative, found graphic design as a career, moved through internet work, commercials, video games, and eventually agency life. Whiskey was already part of that world for him. Long workdays turned into bar conversations, Scotch became the house language, and the wider whiskey boom of the early 2010s gave the whole thing some extra oxygen.
He and Michelle moved to Austin looking for a better life after their son was born. They loved Texas, but Troy was still trying to find a way out of the grind of advertising before the work swallowed the rest of his life. Naturally, the answer became whiskey, because apparently the cure for one demanding career is to start a second one with barrels, debt, compliance, and evaporation.
Koopers began small. Very small. Troy built an eight-gallon still, learned what he could, and quickly discovered the home-distilling problem: making spirit is one thing, filling a barrel is another. An eight-gallon mash does not exactly leave you with a warehouse full of aging stock. So they went to Koval in Chicago, trained with Dr. Robert Birnecker, and found a path forward. Koval could supply unaged whiskey; Koopers could bring it to Texas and learn the aging side from there.
At first, Koopers still expected to become a distillery. Troy admits they had bought into the early craft-whiskey idea that distillation was the crown jewel and anything else was somehow suspect. The plan was to eventually build the whole thing. But by the time financing finally became possible, he hesitated.
That pause became the company.
Troy realized that if he built the distillery, he would be tying himself to the still, the mash, the equipment, and years of waiting to find out whether the whiskey became what he hoped it would become. Blending offered something different. It let him work creatively with barrels, finishes, second-fill wood, toasted oak, proofing, and time. Coming from Scotch, he already knew blending had a long and serious tradition behind it. The more Koopers learned, the more the “temporary” plan started looking like the actual point.
It also took a serious amount of sacrifice to get there. Troy kept an advertising job for years while Koopers grew, eventually realizing he had not escaped work so much as given himself a second job. He and Michelle kept cutting costs until, in 2018, they left Austin for rural Texas, roughly halfway between Austin and Houston, where they could afford a building, a small house, and enough breathing room to make the business possible.
That move helped shape the whiskey too.
Koopers had been aging around Dripping Springs, where the climate could push barrels too far too fast. Troy talks about the dance of trying to get whiskey mature before it turned into a wood pile. In their current location, with climate control and constant airflow, Koopers found a better middle ground. Texas still gets to be Texas, but it does not get to grab the steering wheel for six months straight.
That is one of the big themes of the episode. Troy is not trying to make whiskey that performs Texasness for the sake of it. He lives there. The company is there. The whiskey is matured, blended, finished, and bottled there. That is enough. The goal is not to make something huge just because people expect Texas whiskey to punch them in the teeth. The goal is balance.
That came through in the Barrel Reserve Rye and Sweetheart of the Rodeo Bourbon I tasted before the interview. Both had proof, flavor, and structure, but they also had a rounded edge. Troy is not a hazmat guy, and neither release felt like it was trying to win a bar fight. He wants layered whiskey that hits different parts of the palate while remaining drinkable. That sounds simple until you remember how many bottles manage to miss one side of that equation.
We also spent a good bit of time on design, which makes sense given Troy’s background. Early Koopers labels used cats and family imagery, including the cheetah on the Barrel Reserve Rye. The cats stood for balance: power and elegance in the same animal. Over time, though, the label system became limiting. People kept asking about the cats, the bottles could disappear on crowded shelves, and the brand had grown one piece at a time instead of as a complete family.
The newer Koopers look keeps the same underlying idea but expresses it more clearly. The rose and skull carry that balance of beauty and danger, softness and strength, elegance and aggression. It also lets the bottle be seen, which is not a small thing. A whiskey can have all the depth in the world, but if nobody can find it on the shelf, it becomes a very thoughtful ghost.
The conversation also gets into the old stigma around sourced whiskey. Troy is honest that Koopers did not always feel fully welcomed in the Texas whiskey community, especially early on when distilling from scratch carried so much weight. But customers were usually far less bothered. They would walk into the tasting room, ask where the still was, hear that Koopers was a blending house, and then move on to the part that actually matters most to most drinkers: does it taste good?
I care how whiskey is made, obviously. That is part of the job, and part of the fun. But transparency does not require everyone to make whiskey the same way. Koopers is not hiding what it does. It is betting that the work in the barrel, the blend, and the glass can make the case better than a manifesto ever could.
Troy is also thinking about what comes next. Koopers is pushing harder now across the tasting room, distribution, and direct-to-consumer sales after a period of pulling back during and after COVID. The rebrand grew out of a simple question: if they were starting today, knowing what they know now, what would they do? The answer seems to be clearer, louder, more confident, and more comfortable being its own thing.
There may also be Texas-distilled components in the future. Troy is interested, though not now. He sees them as another flavor, another blending piece, another way to build something interesting if the cost and logistics make sense. He even floated the idea of blending other Texas whiskies together, which could be a fascinating direction if done thoughtfully.
I closed by asking what Troy wants Koopers’ legacy to be, and his answer came back to voice. He and Michelle want to do it their way. Troy thinks of whiskey a lot like music: each producer should sound like its own band. Once the band becomes derivative, it stops mattering.
That feels like the center of Koopers. It is a husband-and-wife business built without investors, through trial and error, mostly error by Troy’s own count, with a designer’s eye, a Scotch drinker’s respect for blending, and a Texas aging program that is more interested in balance than bravado.
There are plenty of ways to make whiskey. This is Koopers.
Koopers Whiskey
Website: https://www.kooperswhiskey.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kooperswhiskey/
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