Gin Blossoms

How an award-winning Mississippi distiller crafts its signature spirit from rice

- Michael Shulmar

Roommates, Wonderbird Spirits cofounders Rob Forster and Tom Alexander remained close. Whether taking the $8,000 they’d won betting on football and going to India (where they lived on $20 a day until they depleted their funds) or being best man in each other’s weddings, their personal lives had become intertwined. Then, after establishing themselves in their respective fields, they began thinking of ways that a corporate attorney and a software developer could blend their professional skill sets.

Forster moved to Oxford, Mississippi, to manage his father’s estate. Upon realizing just how elevated the city’s food and beverage scene was becoming, he was reminded of all the times he and Alexander had talked about starting a distillery together. So, he asked him—Alexander was then living in Austin, Texas—to come check the place out. When he saw the potential of this cool community, full of worldly people with taste, Alexander said he was in, so long as Forster understood he’d require a year to reorient his life.

Not one to sit idly by, Forster used that year to address many administrative tasks, such as regulatory issues (why had no other distilleries opened there?), capitalizing and finding a location. During this time, he heard about a man named Chand Harlow, who’d been working in finance in New York and decided to return to Mississippi to open his dream grain-to-glass distillery. He shared the same passion and energy, and in short order the team of two became a trio.