Tom Pendergast's Prosecutor Has a Great-Nephew Distilling on Main Street
An hour with the stills, the barrels and a pour, at the Main Street distillery named after Kansas City's Prohibition-era boss.
Kansas City spent the 1920s acting as though Prohibition had never been written. The man who arranged that was Tom Pendergast, a saloon keeper who became the city's political boss, and by 1921 people were calling the place Tom's Town. A century later the name is on a bottle, and the bottle is made at 1701 Main Street.
Two family lines run through that decision. Steve Revare's great-uncle was Maurice Milligan, the US attorney who put Pendergast in a federal cell for tax evasion. David Epstein's grandfather ran a liquor brand that Pendergast's machine drove out of business. The two of them founded this distillery together in 2015 and named it after the man on the other side of both stories. The company lays all of that out on its own history page, dates included.
The tour is an hour long, and the history gets a brief pass inside it.
Every tour starts in the tasting room and ends there. In between it crosses the production floor and the space where the barrels sit, and the listing describes the finish as a taste of each of the spirits the company makes.
Reservations close one hour before the start time. Each tour holds up to twenty people.
Tom's Town Distillery Tour and TastingSixty minutes at 1701 Main Street, from the production floor back to the tasting room. USD 27 per person.www.viator.comThree Rooms in Sixty Minutes
The hour is a walking hour. Guests cross from the tasting room onto the production floor, then into the space where the barrels sit, and the guide works through what happens in each.
The company lists the ability to walk up and down stairs as a requirement, not a preference. Past that it calls the hour suitable for all fitness levels, and service animals are allowed. Public transit stops nearby.
Everyone Walks, Not Everyone Drinks
Fifteen is the youngest age the booking accepts. The listing is blunt about the rest: twenty-one and a valid ID are what it takes to taste the spirits, and no one under fifteen is admitted at all.
A fifteen-year-old can take the whole tour and finish it holding a glass of water. Count the drinkers in your party before you book three seats and expect three tastings. An adult has to be on the booking.
Saturday Is the Only Daytime Option
Tours do not run every day, and the times are not the same across the week.
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: 5:00 PM
- Friday: 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM
- Saturday: 12:30 PM, 2:30 PM, 4:30 PM, 6:30 PM
- Sunday and Monday: no tours
Saturday holds four of the nine weekly start times, and it is the only day a tour begins before five in the afternoon. A weekday visit is an evening visit.
The Bar Opens Before the Tour Does
The tasting room and restaurant keep their own hours, and those hours are wider than the tour schedule.
- Monday to Thursday: 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Friday: 4:00 PM to midnight
- Saturday: noon to midnight
- Sunday: closed
A 5:00 PM tour on a Tuesday starts an hour after the room opens, and the room stays open four hours after that tour ends. The booking instructions ask you to arrive fifteen minutes early and invite you to pick up a cocktail first, which is a bar purchase and sits outside the ticket. Monday is the one day the bar is open and no tour runs.
- Be in the tasting room fifteen minutes before the start time. The booking asks for fifteen in one line and ten in another, and fifteen satisfies both.
- Cancel at least twenty-four hours ahead for a full refund on the booking.
- Bring ID if you plan to taste.
- Mobile or paper ticket, one per booking.
- Tours are guided in English.
The company's own timeline puts Pendergast's Jackson Democratic Club in a second-floor office at 1908 Main, a few blocks from this door. Finish the hour, keep the stool, and order something built on a spirit made in the room you just walked through. The bar runs until ten on weeknights and until midnight on Friday and Saturday.