BENDT Distilling Co. sits in downtown Lewisville, Texas, where founders Ben and Debbie Thompson turned their shared passion for craft spirits into a full-scale operation. The couple, both engineers by trade, started experimenting with distillation in their garage before opening their doors in 2017. Their 4,000-square-foot facility on South Charles Street houses custom copper stills and serves as both production space and tasting room, focusing primarily on bourbon, rye whiskey, and vodka. The name BENDT comes from combining the founders’ initials – Ben, Engineers, iN Distilling, Together – which pretty much sums up their analytical approach to making spirits. What started as weekend hobby projects has evolved into a serious craft distillery that’s earned recognition in Texas’s growing spirits scene. The Thompsons handle most operations themselves, from mashing and distilling to bottling and running tastings. Their engineering backgrounds show up in everything from their precise temperature controls to the detailed records they keep of every batch. You’ll find them working the stills during production days or pouring samples in the tasting room on weekends, always ready to talk about their process or the local grains they source from Texas farms.