Jason Brauner

“Bourbon and Bistro Maestro”

Jason Brauner’s story begins in the heart of bourbon country, Louisville, Kentucky, where he unsurprisingly grew up surrounded by the culture of American whiskey. Bourbon wasn’t an abstraction in the Brauner household; it was part of family ritual. His aunts and uncles drank highballs, and many of them worked for National Distillers. Yet in the early 2000s, Louisville had not fully embraced the culinary side of its whiskey heritage. Bourbon was everywhere, but bourbon-focused dining was rare. Brauner sensed a gap: the city had the history, the brands, and the raw passion, but not a place where bourbon could be celebrated alongside food.

In 2005, Brauner opened Bourbons Bistro in northeast Louisville’s Clifton neighborhood. The restaurant quickly became a destination for bourbon drinkers and industry veterans alike. There, Brauner’s palate became the stuff of local legend; he often recalled that even before opening the restaurant he could identify three bourbons by smell alone, even if the bottles were mixed up. So Bourbons Bistro built a reputation as one of the earliest truly bourbon-forward dining experiences in Kentucky, and behind the bar, Brauner curated what he called a “broad and deep” bourbon selection. Importantly, he also ran an active single-barrel program, and forged solid relationships with Master Distillers across the state.

Over time, Brauner’s interests evolved from pouring whiskey to creating it. He realized that curating great barrels and serving great whiskey wasn’t enough; he wanted to build a brand of his own; something that reflected his palate and his point of view. So in 2016, he partnered with Judith Hollis Jones, a seasoned business executive with extensive experience in brand development and culinary product launches. Jones brought a complementary skill set: operational and strategic expertise, a sharp understanding of consumer tastes, and the ability to move a concept into a commercial product. Together they formed a partnership built on contrast, with Brauner as the palate-driven bourbon obsessive, Jones as the operations-and-growth strategist. Their shared vision was simple but ambitious: build a whiskey brand that did something different. By 2019, the partnership resulted in the launch of Buzzard’s Roost Sipping Whiskey, where Brauner serves as Founder and Master Blender. The name came from an actual road that was once considered for the distillery site, as well as from the imagery of buzzards roosting above barrel warehouses, watchful, constant, always returning. Brauner liked that the name sounded old, as if it had been on a rickhouse wall for a century.

Buzzard’s Roost began by sourcing aged bourbon and rye whiskey, but the key innovation wasn’t in the distillate, it was in what happened next. Brauner helped design proprietary barrels for a secondary maturation, experimenting with toast levels, char profiles, and wood preparation. “We have a proprietary process to treat our barrels,” Brauner said. “We’ve built a huge taste profile that we’ve worked on for over three years.” For a longtime bourbon lover, rye whiskey presented a challenge. Brauner admitted he hadn’t always been a fan of rye’s spicy edge, but he approached it the way he approaches all whiskey, through the lens of curiosity and craft. Over time, his palate shifted, and rye became a centerpiece of the brand. By 2024, Buzzard’s Roost expanded its lineup to include a Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon, distilled in 2018 and finished in its proprietary barrels. The brand emphasizes whiskey meant to be savored. Brauner often says he wants people to “sit, sip, and enjoy,” whiskey that invites conversation instead of demanding attention.