Spirits · San Diego, California
Cutwater Spirit
San Diego distillery that turned real spirits into canned cocktails.
- Founded
- 2016
- Founded by
- Yuseff Cherney, Earl Kight, Jim Buechler
- Based in
- San Diego, California
Making it since
2016
Their story
Cutwater grew out of San Diego's craft beer scene. Its founders, Yuseff Cherney, Earl Kight and Jim Buechler, were all senior leaders at Ballast Point Brewing, and the project started as Ballast Point's spirits arm before becoming its own company in 2016.
The team built a 50,000 square foot distillery, tasting room and kitchen in the Miramar neighborhood, which opened in 2017. Their canned cocktails, built on spirits they distill themselves, took off quickly with shoppers looking for something easy to bring along.
In 2019 Anheuser-Busch bought Cutwater outright, its first spirits acquisition. The brand now sits in A-B's portfolio but is still made in San Diego.
How it's made
Cutwater distills its own base spirits on a continuous column still in Miramar and ages some of them in barrels on site. Those spirits go into ready-to-drink cocktails that are mixed and canned on the same property, on a line that runs hundreds of cans a minute.
We went where the chains were asking for us.
Why we carry them
We like Cutwater for picnics and beach days, because the cocktails start with spirits the team distills itself rather than flavored malt.
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