Montana's Tallest Still Towers Above a Steakhouse in Lolo, Montana

The distillery sits on the hill above its sister business — and the connection between the two is most of the story.

For decades, the Grunow family ran Lolo Creek Steakhouse, the kind of place that gets featured on the Food Network and becomes a fixture for anyone driving Highway 12 through the Bitterroot. In April 2018, Matt and Kasie Grunow took the next step: they opened a distillery on the hill just above the restaurant, built around a 500-gallon hybrid pot still shipped over from Boise. At more than 16 feet tall, it's reportedly the largest operating still in Montana, and it's flexible enough to turn out vodka, gin, whiskey, rum and brandy from the same setup.

The family angle isn't just marketing copy. Matt and Kasie are fourth-generation in the liquor business, and their two sons appear on the bottle labels — a not-so-subtle hope that there's a fifth generation waiting in the wings. Head Distiller Ryan Arthur runs day-to-day production, and the grain comes from a relationship the family has held for 20 years with a seventh-generation farmer in Montana's Golden Triangle. That's a lot of generational math for a business that's only been open a few years, but it tracks with how the Grunows talk about it: this is an extension of something they were already doing, not a pivot into something new.

The tasting room itself leans into the setting. It sits above the steakhouse with views toward Lolo Peak, an outdoor patio with a fireplace, and a longhorn mount named Stanley hanging over the indoor fireplace — borrowed, fittingly, from the neighboring Holt Ranch. Much of the woodwork was done by the same craftsman who built out the steakhouse more than 30 years ago, so the two spaces share a kind of visual lineage even though one is brand new. There's a shuttle that runs guests between the distillery and the restaurant, which solves the obvious problem of where to eat after a flight of cocktails.

On the product side, the Honey Huckleberry Vodka gets singled out most often — one visitor compared it favorably to Grey Goose, Tito's, and Ketel One, which is a fairly bold claim for a distillery that's been open less than a decade. Cocktails run $5 to $8, and flight tastings are priced around $2.50 a pour, putting the experience closer to a casual stop than a destination splurge. Reviewers consistently mention the staff being knowledgeable and the views being worth the drive on their own.

Lolo Creek Distillery is part of the Montana Distillers Guild and shows up on the state's tourism circuit through Visit Montana and the Lewis and Clark Trail listings, which suggests it's become more than a local secret. Given its location next to an established, well-known restaurant, that was probably inevitable — but the distillery has built enough of its own identity, between the still, the bottle design, and the view, that it doesn't read as an afterthought to the steakhouse next door.