Black Draft Farm & Distillery sits on a working farm along Dry Run Road in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where the Shenandoah Valley meets the Potombian Highlands. Founded by husband-and-wife team Tim and Kim Valore in 2016, this farm-to-bottle operation grows its own corn and wheat on 40 acres of West Virginia soil. Tim, a former federal employee with a background in agriculture, partnered with Kim to create something that honored both the land and traditional Appalachian distilling heritage. They opened their doors in 2018 after two years of perfecting their recipes and building out their distillery space in a converted farm building. The Valores weren’t content with just buying grain from suppliers—they wanted complete control over their product from seed to sip. Tim handles the farming and distilling operations, while Kim manages the business side and visitor experience. Their master distiller approach focuses on small-batch production using a 500-gallon copper pot still that allows them to monitor every step of the process. The grain they don’t grow themselves comes from other local farms within a 50-mile radius, keeping everything rooted in the Mid-Atlantic terroir. What you’ll find here isn’t a polished corporate tasting room but an authentic working farm where the smell of fermenting mash mingles with hay and fresh earth. The distillery produces bourbon, rye whiskey, and moonshine, with most of their whiskeys aged in 15 and 30-gallon barrels that speed up the aging process while adding intensity. Visitors can see the entire operation from grain storage to bottling, and on the right day, you might catch Tim out in the fields checking on the corn crop that’ll become next year’s bourbon.