Most Tucsonans have driven past the green-trimmed building at 2106 N. Forbes Blvd. without realizing what is happening inside. Tucked into a low-slung industrial pocket between West Grant Road and the Santa Cruz River, just west of Interstate 10 and a short walk from the Mercado District, Hamilton Distillers makes Whiskey Del Bac — the first commercial mesquite-smoked single malt whiskey produced anywhere in the world. The brand was conceived on a Tucson barbeque patio in 2006, incorporated in 2011, distributed in roughly 20 states today, and recognized at the 2026 World Whiskies Awards as a component of the year's Best American Blended Malt. Heading into the first week of May, the tasting room is open seven days a week, the Spring 2026 Distiller's Cut is on the shelf, and the production-floor tour runs Wednesday through Sunday for $25 a person. Here is a fully sourced local-business spotlight for Tucson residents, visitors, and anyone evaluating the west-side neighborhoods that surround it. 2006 / 2011 — Concept on the patio / Hamilton Distillers incorporated. 2106 N. Forbes — Tasting room and distillery, Tucson 85745. $25 — Distillery tour and tasting, Wed–Sun. ~20 states — Current distribution footprint The Origin Story: A Mesquite Fire and a Glass of Scotch The Whiskey Del Bac story begins on a backyard patio in Tucson in 2006. Stephen Paul — co-founder of the long-running Tucson furniture company Arroyo Design, which had specialized in Sonoran Desert mesquite hardwood for roughly three decades — was barbecuing over a mesquite fire and drinking a glass of single-malt Scotch with his wife Elaine. Per the company's own published history, Visit Arizona's Meet the Maker profile, and reporting in Tucson Local Media's 10-year retrospective, Elaine asked the question that became the brand: 'What if you malted barley over mesquite instead of peat?' Stephen built a small malting kiln out back, ran a five-gallon still, and spent the next several years quietly perfecting a smoke profile that nobody had commercialized before. In 2011, Stephen and his daughter Amanda Paul incorporated Hamilton Distillers — named for Stephen's mother's maiden name — and obtained a Series 1 Producer's License from the State of Arizona. The decision turned a kitchen-table experiment into the first craft distillery established in southern Arizona since Prohibition. What 'Del Bac' Actually Means The name is hyper-local in a way that out-of-state visitors often miss. 'Del Bac' is a reference to Mission San Xavier del Bac, the white-stucco Spanish colonial mission about nine miles south of downtown Tucson on the San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation. 'Bac' itself is from the O'odham word for 'where the water appears,' a description of the spot along the Santa Cruz River where the mission was built in 1692 by Father Eusebio Kino. Naming a Tucson whiskey after the most-photographed mission in the American Southwest is the brand's way of saying, plainly, that this is a Sonoran Desert product made from a Sonoran Desert tree — and that the geographic reference is not optional or interchangeable. Why Mesquite, Not Peat In a traditional Scotch single malt, barley is sprouted, dried over a peat fire, mashed, fermented, distilled in copper pot stills, and aged in oak. The peat smoke embeds itself in the malt during drying and carries through every step that follows. Whiskey Del Bac's process is structurally identical, with one substitution: the malt is dried over a mesquite fire instead of peat. Mesquite, the tree that defines large stretches of the Sonoran Desert, gives a smoke profile that is sweeter, brighter, and warmer than the iodine and seaweed notes typical of an Islay Scotch. The technique also has practical regional logic — Stephen Paul's furniture company spent thirty years sourcing and milling Sonoran mesquite, so the wood, the supply chain, and the in-house knowledge were already there when the distillery opened. Per Hamilton Distillers and Spirit Hub, every bottle is hand-bottled and each label is hand-signed by the distiller, a level of craft that is unusual at the company's current production scale. Quick orientation: Whiskey Del Bac is a brand of single malts; Hamilton Distillers is the company that makes them. The flagship lineup runs Classic (unsmoked), Dorado (mesquite-smoked, the brand's signature), and Sentinel (a heavily smoked expression), with rotating Distiller's Cuts, a Global Cask Collection, and a Cask Club program for collectors. Visiting the Tasting Room: Hours, Tours, and What It Costs Per the company's Visit Us page, Visit Tucson's Whiskey Del Bac listing, and the distillery's verified Yelp and TripAdvisor profiles, the tasting room at 2106 N. Forbes Blvd. is open Monday and Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tasting flights — typically four pours of approximately a quarter ounce each — are available every day starting at 11 a.m. Distillery tours run Wednesday through Sunday at 12 p.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., last about an hour and 15 minutes, and cost $25 per person. The tour walks the production floor with a Tasting Room Spirit Guide, covers the malting, fermentation, distillation, and barreling steps, and ends with a guided tasting that includes Classic, Dorado, Sentinel, and any current limited release. Reservations are not strictly required but are strongly recommended on weekends, when slots regularly fill in advance. Bottles, merchandise, and distillery-only releases are available for purchase after the tour. What's New: The Spring 2026 Distiller's Cut The most recent limited release on the shelf is the Spring 2026 Distiller's Cut, which became publicly available on Saturday, March 14, 2026. Per the brand's own product copy, this batch was assembled by Master Distiller and Blender Mark A. Vierthaler as a four-Arizona-region blend: a lightly smoked Whiskey Del Bac single malt finished in Arizona white oak previously used to age Page Springs Cellars Syrah from the Verde Valley, a single barrel of mesquited single malt finished in former Whiskey Del Bac barrels that had held Twisted Bee Honey mesquite honey from Maricopa County, and a single barrel of lightly mesquited single malt finished in former Whiskey Del Bac barrels that previously held Mother Road Brewing Company imperial stout from Flagstaff. Distiller's Cut releases are batch-limited and typically sell through the tasting room and the brand's online shop within a few weeks; current shipping eligibility is Arizona, Kentucky, and Nebraska, with New York and California listed as 'coming soon.' For Tucson residents, picking one up at the tasting room remains the most reliable way to get a bottle. National Recognition: Awards Through 2026 Whiskey Del Bac has steadily accumulated national press over the last several years. Per Wine Enthusiast and Hamilton Distillers' published award list, the Classic was named to Wine Enthusiast's Top 100 Spirits list in 2021. Whisky Advocate gave the Dorado a 90-point score in 2022 and awarded 93-point scores to two of the Global Cask Collection releases — Frontera and Normandie. At the 2026 World Whiskies Awards, the Lost Lantern independent-bottler blend Shadow & Light — which incorporates mesquite-smoked single malt from Whiskey Del Bac alongside whiskies from Cedar Ridge, McCarthy's, and Santa Fe Spirits — was named the year's Best American Blended Malt. The cumulative track record matters partly for the bottle on the shelf and partly for the shape of the brand: Whiskey Del Bac is the rare small-state craft producer whose work shows up in independent-bottler programs at a national scale. Where the Distillery Sits in Tucson The 2106 N. Forbes Blvd. address sits inside ZIP 85745, a wedge of west-side Tucson that includes the historic Menlo Park and Barrio Hollywood neighborhoods, the Mercado District, the southwest stretch of West Grant Road, and the Santa Cruz River corridor. From the distillery, it is roughly three miles to downtown Tucson via the Cushing Street bridge, about a mile to the Sun Link streetcar's western terminus at the Mercado District, and a short drive to the A-Mountain trailhead. The neighborhood is one of the city's older Mexican-American working-class districts, with smaller mid-century single-family homes and bungalows mixed with newer infill, and it is the same general area that has seen the most concentrated public and private redevelopment investment over the last decade — Mercado San Agustín, the MSA Annex, the streetcar build-out, and a string of locally owned restaurants and small producers along West Congress Street and West Grant Road. What 85745 Looks Like as a Submarket For buyers and sellers tracking the Menlo Park / 85745 corridor specifically, the housing data is meaningfully different from the metro-wide headline. Per Redfin's Menlo Park neighborhood dashboard, the trailing-12-month median sale price in Menlo Park is approximately $327,500, with average days on market in the mid-70s — slower than the Tucson metro average of about 28 days for March 2026. ZIP-level 85745 medians sit modestly higher, in the mid-$350,000s. The housing stock is older and smaller than what a buyer would find in newer northwest-side master plans like Marana's Gladden Farms or Sahuarita's Rancho Sahuarita, with a meaningful share of homes built before 1960. Trade-offs are typical of an older urban neighborhood: walkability, character, and proximity to downtown amenities on one side; smaller lot sizes, occasional deferred-maintenance considerations, and a mixed building-age inventory on the other. Buyers prioritizing access to the Mercado District, Sun Link, the Loop trail along the Santa Cruz River, and downtown Tucson tend to find 85745 the closest match in the metro for that specific lifestyle. Why this corner matters: Whiskey Del Bac is one of several small producers — alongside the Mercado District, Borderlands Brewing Co., and Exo Roast Co. — that anchor a craft-and-food cluster in the western shoulder of downtown. Tucson received its UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation in 2015, and the 85745 / Menlo Park corridor is one of the places where that designation is most visibly built into the daily fabric of the city. Why This Matters for Tucson Buyers and Newcomers Spotlighting a single distillery is not a substitute for a neighborhood guide, but for relocators sizing up Tucson it is a useful data point about the city's character. National-attention craft producers tend to cluster in cities with deep raw-material connections, supportive small-business ecosystems, and a critical mass of locally minded customers. Tucson has been quietly stacking those conditions for two decades — the UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation, a long-tenured restaurant scene, the growth of Mercado San Agustín, and the kind of small-batch producers that send their products to twenty other states from a building most residents do not even know exists. For newcomers evaluating Tucson against Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, or various California metros, the practical takeaway is that the city's craft-and-food culture is real, durable, and locally rooted — not a marketing veneer applied to a generic suburban template. What to Watch in the Coming Weeks Three things at the distillery and the surrounding corridor are worth tracking through May. First, the Spring 2026 Distiller's Cut: limited-batch releases at this scale typically sell through the tasting room and online shop in four to eight weeks, so the window to pick up a bottle of the four-Arizona-region blend at the source narrows quickly. Second, the tasting room's published events calendar — the distillery has hosted an active 2026 program of guest pours, music nights, and partner tastings (including a Tucson Symphony Orchestra chamber-music evening on February 7), and the company posts events on the Visit Us page in advance. Third, broader Mercado District and 85745 activity: Mercado San Agustín and the MSA Annex remain the public-facing anchors of the neighborhood, the Tucson International Mariachi Conference's evening competitions are running at the MSA Annex through Sunday, May 3, and the corridor's slower seasonal foot traffic in May is, for a lot of locals, the best time to actually visit. For first-hand updates, the distillery's own site, Visit Tucson's listings, the Arizona Daily Star's restaurant and beverage coverage, and Tucson Foodie are the most reliable sources to check the morning of a visit. Quick reference: Whiskey Del Bac / Hamilton Distillers — 2106 N. Forbes Blvd., Suite 103, Tucson, AZ 85745. Phone (520) 628-9244. Tasting room hours Monday–Tuesday 11 a.m.–2 p.m., Wednesday–Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Distillery tours Wednesday–Sunday at 12 p.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., $25 per person, approximately 75 minutes. Tasting flights available daily from 11 a.m. Reservations recommended on weekends. Visitors must be 21 or older. Sources Hamilton Distillers / Whiskey Del Bac — official site, Visit Us page, About Us / The Whiskey Del Bac Story, and product pages for Classic, Dorado, Sentinel, the Spring 2026 Distiller's Cut, and the Global Cask Collection (whiskeydelbac.com; shop.whiskeydelbac.com). Wikipedia — Hamilton Distillers entry, including the company's status as the first craft distillery in southern Arizona since Prohibition and the Series 1 Producer's License history (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Distillers). Visit Tucson — Whiskey Del Bac listing at 2106 N. Forbes Blvd., 85745 (visittucson.org/listing/whiskey-del-bac/27669/). Visit Tucson — "Taste Whiskey in Tucson | Del Bac and Hamilton Distillers" blog feature (visittucson.org/blog/post/taste-tucson-in-a-glass/). Visit Arizona — "Meet the Maker: Stephen Paul of Hamilton Distillers" (visitarizona.com/like-a-local/meet-the-maker-stephen-paul-whiskey). Tucson Local Media / Inside Tucson Business / Tucson Weekly — "Whiskey del Bac celebrates a decade of Sonoran spirits," 2021 retrospective on the company's 10-year incorporation anniversary (tucsonlocalmedia.com; insidetucsonbusiness.com; tucsonweekly.com). Tucson Foodie — "New Cocktails, Hours & Events Happening at Whiskey Del Bac," October 2024 (tucsonfoodie.com). Wine Enthusiast — Top 100 Spirits 2021 (Classic). Whisky Advocate — Dorado 90-point review (2022) and Frontera/Normandie 93-point reviews from the Global Cask Collection. World Whiskies Awards 2026 — Best American Blended Malt category, Lost Lantern Shadow & Light release that incorporates Whiskey Del Bac mesquite-smoked single malt (worldwhiskiesawards.com; thewhiskeywash.com). Spirit Hub — "About Whiskey Del Bac," hand-bottled and hand-signed labels (spirithub.com/pages/whiskey-del-bac). Yelp and TripAdvisor — Whiskey Del Bac verified hours, address, and visitor reviews (yelp.com/biz/whiskey-del-bac-tucson; tripadvisor.com). UNESCO Creative Cities Network — Tucson, City of Gastronomy designation, 2015 (en.unesco.org/creative-cities/tucson). Real estate context for ZIP 85745 / Menlo Park drawn from publicly available aggregator dashboards on Zillow, Redfin, Homes.com, and Realtor.com, including Redfin's Menlo Park neighborhood profile (median sale price ~$327,500, mid-70s average days on market). MLSSAZ / MLS of Southern Arizona — March 2026 metro-wide statistics for context (mlssaz.com; tucsonrealtors.org/mlssaz-statistics/). All data current as of April 29, 2026. This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase real estate. Visitors must be 21 or older. Drink responsibly.