From Islay To California: John Campbell Takes the Reins at Sespe Creek Distillery

It’s been a busy few years for John Campbell. Let’s first rewind to 2021, when he was distillery manager at Islay mainstay Laphroaig. He had joined the Laphroaig production team in 1994, and when he became distillery manager in 2006, he was the only Islay native to do so in Laphroaig’s nearly 200-year history. So suffice to say that news of his departure in September of 2021 was something of a surprise to the whisky world.

From Laphroaig, Campbell moved to Lochlea, the Lowlands whisky maker that began distilling in 2018. During Campbell’s tenure as distillery manager, starting in November 2021, the distillery’s first single malts reached the U.S. (scoring well with our panel). Now, three years later, Campbell is making his biggest jump yet, both geographically and stylistically: He’s leaving his native Scotland and traveling across the pond—and then across the U.S.—to become the master distiller and chief operating officer at Oxnard, California-based craft distillery Sespe Creek.

While it’s based in California, Sespe Creek leans more into Southwestern heritage—the sole whiskey brand under its umbrella, Warbringer, is a bourbon made with malted rye and Texas-sourced, mesquite-smoked flaking grits corn (the kernels are cracked to increase the surface area that’s exposed to smoke), in a call-back to California’s Wild West roots. The distillery installed a custom smoke box in 2017, and today it carries out all mesquite smoking by hand, in a process that takes three days to complete.

A cask-strength single-barrel version of Warbringer, Warmaster, is also produced, made in collaboration with UFC fighter Josh “Warmaster” Barnett. Sespe Creek's Cowboy Edition is made in partnership with UFC fighter Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone. Warbringer and Cowboy Edition—but not Warmaster—are filtered through mesquite charcoal, in a Southwestern take on the Lincoln County Process. As master distiller, Campbell will be in charge of not just Warbringer (and its Warmaster and Cowboy Edition offshoots), but Parlour Cay rum and Silvergrin vodka as well, allowing him to play with spirits other than whisky for the first time in his career.

Sespe Creek got its start in 2017, founded by biochemist David Brandt, who had previously launched California’s Lost Spirits Distillery in 2010 (which relocated to Las Vegas in 2021 and shuttered permanently earlier this year). Brandt retired from Sespe Creek in 2021, naming Alfred English his successor as CEO.

Oxnard is located nearly 70 miles north of Los Angeles, along the Pacific Coast. While we’ve previously covered the many distilleries that now pepper California’s famed wine country, quite a few have also come to populate the state’s Central Coast. Given its location, and its current production capacity, the majority of Sespe’s sales have been in the Los Angeles area; with Campbell now at the helm, the distillery is eyeing a future with expanded distribution and wider brand recognition. To that end, the distillery plans to open a tasting room in Oxnard in the first half of next year.