Our Journey

The opening of J.D. William’s Whisky Distillery was a journey over 10 years in the making. In 2014, Daniel and Michelle Watts opened J.D. William’s Whisky Bar in the Jordaan in Amsterdam because of their love for whisky.  For ten years at J.D. William’s Whisky Bar, they built a devoted community of whisky and whisky cocktail lovers with both locals and visitors alike.   

The drive and motivation to create a spirit was always there as Daniel’s grandfather’s family on his mother’s side were moonshiners during the prohibition era in the States.  And on his father’s side, still today his uncles dabble and make their own home spirits.  We were inspired by Daniel’s relatives’ pioneering spirit and in 2019 we started distilling our own rye whisky at a distillery in the Netherlands.  We filled 30 casks and our journey began.  

Although we closed J.D. William’s Whisky bar in the summer of 2024, we had already secured a location in Amsterdam Noord in the summer 2023.  Over the past few years,  we worked dilligently to set up the distillery and to make it production-ready.  In the Spring of 2026, our whisky distillery opened for production and we began filling our first barrels.

At the core of J.D. William’s Distillery is a pioneering spirit, a desire to question the established status quo, and a fearlessness to try something new.  We want to inspire people of any age, gender or race to dream big. On a product level, J.D. William’s Distillery’s mission is to create an American-style rye whisky using natural, high-quality ingredients. The intention is to use traceable ingredients and to create flavors from natural products such as rye, barley, yeast, and wood.  We not only want to push the boundaries with flavor and execution, but we also want to minimize their impact on the planet and to create a circular economy during the production process.  All of our spent mash is used as livestock feed with a local farmer in the Amsterdam Waterland area.

Essentially, the brand is an expression of where we have been, where we are now and where we want to go.