Handcrafted spirits have grown in popularity recently in the Coastal Bend.
Wild Rag Vodka in Sandia was the first Texas distillery south of San Antonio. Not long after that, Justice Label started making legal moonshine in Sinton.
Now, the Wild Horse Distillery near Kingsville is crafting some smooth Texas rum.
The distillery’s owner, Jacob Bynum, also owns Rifles Only, a company that specializes in combat arms training. It is that business that triggered Bynum’s interest in making rum.
It began about 14 years ago, when Bynum was working with a client in Australia.
“One of the guys was into making booze. So whenever he was overseas, he’d find himself over there and he couldn’t find any rum,” Bynum said. “So he ended up with a little tabletop, one-gallon still.”
Bynum says that when he started messing around with his own still, and has developed some pretty good recipes over the years.
Last November, Wild Horse became a licensed distillery, starting out with two 150-gallon stills. However, it wasn’t long before they were unable to keep up with demand.
To increase production, a 500-gallon still has recently been added.
Customers say it is the rum’s smooth taste that make Wild Horse popular. Bynum says the reason for that is two-fold. First, he only uses ingredients sourced in Texas, and second, he only collects the purest part, or heart, of the rum he makes.
Wild Horse’s Texas Rum recently won a silver medal in the Washington Cup spirits completion.
To learn more about the distillery, or to find out how to make a visit there, check them out online here.
