Grain before glass. That is not merely a tagline at Black Button Distilling — it is a covenant, one that has held through a decade of milestones, a near-closure, and a community-led resurrection that reads more like folklore than business news. Rochester’s first craft distillery since Prohibition sits at 1344 University Avenue, a sprawling facility that tripled production capacity when Black Button relocated there in 2023, and though its tasting room has recently been quiet, the stills have never stopped turning. The story of Black Button is, at its core, the story of what happens when an artisan refuses to make anything he cannot stand behind entirely — and what happens when an entire city decides to stand behind him.
The Grandfather’s Legacy and the Color-Blind Founder
Jason Barrett grew up in Penfield, NY, with the weight of a manufacturing family’s legacy on his shoulders. His great-grandfather had swept floors at the Shantz Button Factory — the very building now known as the Button Lofts — before his grandfather eventually owned the company. Barrett imagined himself continuing that tradition. There was, as he tells it, only one complication: he is color blind. Making nothing but black buttons wasn’t exactly a business plan.
So Barrett did what all great artisans eventually do — he transposed the values of his inheritance onto a new medium. After earning a degree from SUNY Cortland and spending years in Washington, D.C. as an accountant, he fell into homebrewing, then distilling schools in Chicago, Colorado, Kentucky, and Cornell. By 2012, armed with a master distiller’s certificate and an understanding of what Rochester was missing, he opened Black Button Distilling on Railroad Street — the first grain-to-glass distillery in the Flour City since Prohibition.
The name was his tribute. The craft was his inheritance.
Grain to Glass: What It Actually Means
There is a version of “locally sourced” that exists purely in marketing copy, and then there is Black Button’s version. As a licensed New York State Farm Distillery, the operation sources nearly 100% of its ingredients from within 50 miles of the distillery — corn, wheat, and rye contracted directly from western New York growers, malted barley from a Rochester malt house. At the center of the production floor sits a 300-gallon hybrid still from Artisan Still Design, modified by Barrett himself to fine-tune pressure and reflux with a level of specificity that would feel familiar to any craftsman who has spent years learning the temperament of his materials.
This is not unlike the process of breaking in a piece of English bridle leather — the material is only as honest as the conditions under which it was made, and what goes into the barrel determines everything that comes out.
The Spirits Lineup
Black Button’s catalog is both disciplined and adventurous — a combination that is harder to achieve than it sounds. The flagship expressions include:
Four Grain Straight Bourbon — the distillery’s most recognized whiskey, built from a mash bill of corn, wheat, rye, and malted barley, all New York grown. It earned Best in New York State at the 2021 Heartland Whiskey Competition, while tying for best bourbon in that same competition with a Kentucky-made expression — a remarkable achievement for an upstate New York operation competing in bourbon’s home territory.
Empire Rye Whiskey — a nod to the state’s agricultural identity and the historical dominance of New York rye before Prohibition dismantled it.
Bespoke Bourbon Cream — the product that, perhaps more than any other, connects Black Button to the broader community. Rich, approachable, and beloved enough that when the tasting room briefly closed in 2025, Rochester liquor stores reportedly cleared their shelves of it within days.
Citrus Forward Gin — a botanical gin with a clean orange finish that won a bronze medal at the American Craft Spirits Association Awards in 2015 and recently anchored a collaboration with Rochester’s own Fee Brothers Bitters, producing a Citrus Forward Gin Barrel-Aged Citrus Bitters — a meeting of two local institutions that needed no introduction to each other.
Bottled in Bond Straight Bourbon (2024 Edition) — perhaps the most precise statement in the lineup. Bottled in Bond is one of the oldest consumer protection designations in American spirits law, requiring single distillery, single season production, four years of aging, and 100 proof bottling. Producing it is a declaration: we have nothing to hide.
Seasonal Lilac Gin — made with lilac petals and complementing botanicals, it is one of the more poetic expressions in the catalog, a springtime spirit that could only come from upstate New York.
A Community Held It Together
Every craft business eventually faces a test that no balance sheet fully prepares you for. For Black Button, that test arrived in July 2025 when mounting financial pressures forced the closure of the tasting room and a winding down of operations. What followed was not quiet — Rochester responded with the kind of collective loyalty that most brands spend decades trying to manufacture. Farmers markets sold out. Liquor store shelves emptied. Social media lit up with something that looked less like consumer sentiment and more like grief.
That outpouring was visible enough to reach Kris Comstock, a longtime friend of Barrett’s and a spirits industry veteran with deep knowledge of the category. Comstock’s firm, Blackstar Company, stepped in with a purchase that promised to keep Barrett and his team in place and the stills running. It was, by all accounts, a breath of life into an institution that Rochester had made clear it was not ready to lose.
The distillery is now in its next chapter, continuing to produce and sell its full lineup — bourbon, rye, vodka, gin, and the beloved Bourbon Cream — while the tasting room rebuilds. The spirits are available at farmers markets every weekend and through liquor stores across New York State. Plans are forming. Updates are coming.
Awards, Recognition, and a Decade of Milestones
The accolades have accumulated steadily over thirteen years. Black Button has landed on the Inc. 5,000 list of fastest-growing companies four times, a distinction that places it alongside businesses operating at a different scale entirely. Fast Company named it to their “World Changing Ideas” list in 2020 after the distillery pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic to produce hand sanitizer for local distribution. The 1 millionth bottle was bottled in July 2019. The 2 millionth followed just 19 months later, in February 2021 — even amid the disruptions of the pandemic.
In 2022, for the distillery’s 10th anniversary, Barrett released a small batch blend of 6 and 7-year whiskey from 53-gallon barrels, limited to 243 decanter bottles — the first 100 housed in a wooden frame commemorating both the decade of distilling and 100 years of the Barrett family’s involvement in Rochester manufacturing. It was an artifact as much as a spirit.
How to Find Black Button
The distillery is located at 1344 University Avenue, Suite 7000, Rochester, NY 14607, near the intersection of Blossom and University. Parking is available on the east end of the building at the Blossom Street entrance. Spirits can be purchased online, at farmers markets throughout the region every weekend, and at liquor stores across New York State.
Phone: (585) 730-4512 Website: blackbuttondistilling.com Instagram: @blackbuttondistilling Online Shop: blackbuttondistilling.com/shop-spirits
The Grain That Remains
What Black Button has built in Rochester is not simply a distillery. It is a proof of concept — that a single-minded commitment to provenance, craft, and community can outlast financial pressure, outlast trends, and outlast the kind of headwinds that flatten businesses built on less conviction. Jason Barrett started with a button factory legend, a color blindness joke, and a 300-gallon still. He ended up with something the Flour City refuses to let go of.
There is a philosophy I’ve returned to across everything I’ve built — the diner, the briefcases, the real estate work just getting underway with Paola — and it is this: the things worth keeping are the things built to be kept. Not optimized. Not scaled beyond recognition. Built. Black Button Distilling was built. Rochester knows the difference, and it showed.
