Spirits · San Jose, California

10th Street Distillery

American single malt whisky, engineered in San Jose by two Silicon Valley friends.

Founded: 2017
Founded by: Virag Saksena, Vishal Gauri
Based in: San Jose, California

Shop all 10th Street Distillery (2)Our featured pick

Their story

10th Street Distillery started with a lost bottle. Virag Saksena, a Silicon Valley engineer and longtime single malt fan, lost a treasured 30-year-old Scotch and set out to make something worth replacing it with.

After years of home distilling and prototyping at San Jose's TechShop, he teamed up with Vishal Gauri, a chemical engineer and college friend from their days in Delhi. They opened the distillery in 2017 in San Jose's warehouse district, one of the city's first spirits producers since Prohibition, and released their first whisky in 2019.

In 2021 the New York International Spirits Competition named 10th Street California Whiskey Distillery of the Year.

How it's made

10th Street makes whisky only, distilling malted barley in custom copper stills. San Jose's warm climate pulls flavor from the barrel faster than Scotland does, so the team designed its spirit around that. The range includes peated and unpeated single malts and California Coast, a blend of its malts with a corn grain whiskey.

Our featured pick

Peated: Distillers Cut American Single Malt (750ML)

$80.00

Distillerâ€™s Cut is a malt loverâ€™s dream. Using all copper pot stills, unique cuts during distillation, imported peated barley, and aged in bourbon barrels; this appeal to the malt and peat lover has.

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I wanted to do something that was not bits and bytes but nuts and bolts.

Virag Saksena, co-founder, to Content Magazine

Why we carry them

10th Street is proof that American single malt can stand on its own. The peated malt in particular surprises people who expect a Scotch copy. It is floral and honeyed, not just smoky.