FEW Spirits

Just north of Chicago, where Lake Michigan's waters meet the suburban grid of Evanston, Illinois, sits a distillery born from delicious irony. This is the birthplace of Frances Elizabeth Willard, the temperance crusader whose initials now grace bottles of bourbon and rye whiskey. Paul Hletko chose this location deliberately in 2011, planting FEW Spirits in the very soil where America's Prohibition movement first took root.

The city that once declared war on whiskey now embraces it. Evanston's municipal water system draws from Lake Michigan, the same vast freshwater sea that has sustained this region's brewing and distilling traditions for generations. That water flows through FEW's copper stills, carrying with it the mineral signature of the Great Lakes—soft enough to coax sweetness from grain, clean enough to let the whiskey speak clearly.

In the stillhouse, the choices reveal character. While Kentucky bourbon makers lean heavily on corn's sweetness, FEW pursues a grain-forward philosophy that celebrates the entire mash bill. Their bourbon and rye whiskeys emerge with the bold flavors that define the new American whiskey movement—less concerned with tradition than with pushing boundaries. The American single malt represents something newer still, part of the craft revolution that refuses to be bound by geography or convention.

The equipment hums with purpose in a space that feels both industrial and intimate. Each run through the stills is a small rebellion against the temperance ghosts that once walked these streets. Where Willard preached abstinence, FEW practices the opposite faith—that grain and water and fire can create something worth savoring.

Under Samson & Surrey's ownership, the distillery continues this contradiction with pride. The building itself seems to acknowledge the paradox: modern American whiskey-making in a city that tried to kill whiskey entirely. Every bottle that leaves this place carries that story—the temperance town that learned to love what it once feared.

The stills will keep running, the Lake Michigan water will keep flowing, and FEW will keep writing new chapters in American whiskey's expanding story, one grain-forward expression at a time.