David Cohen

“The Jacksonville Alchemist”

If you believe spirit-making is equal parts craft, chemistry, and personality, then David Cohen’s story reads like a recipe where each ingredient arrives at just the right time. He’s a founder who turned a hobby-level curiosity about fermentation and flavor into Manifest Distilling, Jacksonville’s compact, design-minded craft distillery, and then built it into a hub for Florida’s growing spirits scene. More than a brand owner, Cohen has become an industry advocate, an educator, and an unapologetic promoter of provenance and process.

David grew up with hospitality in his blood. His family’s involvement in the service industries stretches back generations and across geographies. The family story includes a grandfather who fled persecution in Holland in the 1940s and later operated a successful chain of liquor stores in Florida, so conversations about bottles and service were ordinary dinner-table talk. That background, combined with early jobs in fine dining, gave him a practical education in both taste and operations long before he ever bought a boiler or chose a mash bill.

But Cohen’s path wasn’t a straight line from family liquor store to still. He spent years working in creative industries, running a production company in Los Angeles, taking roles as Creative Director and vice-president of an editorial and publishing outfit, and even producing documentaries. Those careers taught him storytelling, branding, and how to move projects from concept to launch, skills that would later prove invaluable in building Manifest’s identity and packaging. Along the way, he pursued formal distilling training (a certificate from The Siebel Institute) and an internship with Kentucky Artisan Distillers, coupling creative chops with technical knowledge.

Manifest Distilling opened its doors in downtown Jacksonville in the mid-2010s as a small, organic-focused operation that leaned as heavily on design and hospitality as it did on spirits science. Cohen and his co-founders wanted to make bottles that would perform in cocktails, not just on shelves, hence Manifest’s emphasis at first on balanced gins, ryes, and vodkas with transparent ingredient sourcing and no additives. The neutral grain for much of their base may still be sourced from quality suppliers in Tennessee and Indiana, but once on-site, it undergoes rapid aging in Florida’s sometimes whacky temperatures, in a manner just as Cohen decides. The result has been a host of gold medals, remarkable for a distillery only about ten years old.

On the floor, Cohen’s approach is practical and meticulous. He has spoken at length about learning the mechanics of distillation in Kentucky, then translating that discipline to Florida’s climate and consumer tastes. That means paying attention to fermentation parameters and raw ingredient selection, but also to logistics, such as how to schedule contract distilling, how to manage a tasting room as a revenue stream, and how to pivot when supply chains tighten or local regulations evolve. Under his stewardship, Manifest expanded into regional distribution and contract work while retaining a local tasting-room vibe.