Discover where the best drinks are in the state.
Pick up a glass, and take a sip of Missouri Life’s readers’ favorite drinks from destinations across the state. These breweries, distilleries, and wineries offer a variety of tastes. So whether your palate desires local wine, tasty spirits, or the refreshing tang of a cold beer, this selection has it all. Cheers!
Best Brewery: Logboat Brewery
504 Fay Street, Columbia • LogboatBrewing.com
THERE ARE MORE THAN 160 BREWERIES in Missouri. Some of them are big (like Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Company), and some are tiny (like St. Louis’s Side Project). All of them strive to honor the legacy of beer making in the state, like that of the world-renowned Anheuser-Busch beer that dates to the mid-19th century.
Today, the Missouri beer scene has never been more boisterous. Smack dab in the middle of the state in Columbia is Logboat Brewing Company—our readers’ top pick for the best brewery in Missouri.
Logboat’s brews are widely distributed around the state because they offer something beyond funny, creative names on their cans: a diverse selection of beer. Smart breweries celebrate all the varieties of beer styles.
Logboat’s offerings include the perfectly refreshing Missouri lager (Bobber), a deep and satisfying mild brown ale (Mamoot), a very well-balanced and light-on-its-feet porter (Dark Matter), and some mighty fine seasonals like the Irish-style red ale (Falling Fences) and Oktoberfest (Knothole). And yeah, the Snapper, an American IPA (India Pale Ale), is tangy and snappy, like it should be. I don’t hate IPAs, and I even drink them when the time is right. I just resent the bartender who tells me they have an amazing beer selection with three dozen handles, but 33 of them are IPAs. Then they try to sell me Guinness as a “heavier” beer.
But for Logboat, it’s really the balance and lack of showiness for show’s sake that stands out. It likely reflects the same ethos you’ll find at the brewery, where there is a Missouri vibe (they’ve got a golden ale beer named Stormin’ Norman, ya know) and a lot of ciders and even some innovative NA beers. It’s no surprise to anyone who’s been there that the fans chose Logboat Brewery as the best.
Runner Up: Boulevard Brewing Company
Founded in 1989, the Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City is the largest specialty brewer in the Midwest. The company sells all types of beer from dry stouts to pale ales.
2501 Southwest Boulevard, Kansas City • Boulevard.com
Best Distillery: Pinckney Bend Distillery
1101 Miller Street, New Haven • PinckneyBend.com
FAN FAVORITE PINCKNEY BEND DISTILLERY in New Haven has been in operation for almost 15 years, a remarkably long time in the craft distilling business.
The barriers to the distilling industry are high: equipment is expensive, the regulatory authorities seem hell-bent on making it impossible, and if you’re going to make whiskey, you’re going to have to wait years for it to age in barrels before selling a single bottle. Wisely, the three guys at Pinckney Bend first focused on gin, which typically isn’t rested for more than a few months.
I still remember Pinckney Bend’s Hand Crafted American Gin winning a gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, where I was a judge for many years. Pinckney’s was voted the best around the world.
The company has a diverse selections of gins, cask aging one of them, adding hibiscus to another, and even making a Navy Strength Gin (at 114 proof, you may be headed out to sea yourself). Each is a worthy iteration of the distillery’s original American Gin. But with a decade and a half under its belt, it has grown into the whiskey business.
The next time you’re driving across state, stop by, and maybe, you’ll arrive during one of the “blend your own gin” sessions.
Runner Up: Switchgrass Spirits
Switchgrass Spirits distillery in north St. Louis makes whiskey and brandy and uses Midwestern ingredients, labor, and supplies whenever possible.
6100 Idadale Avenue, Saint Louis • SwitchgrassSpirits.com
Best Winery: The Blufftop at Rocheport
12847 West Highway BB I-70, Rocheport • MissouriWine.com
FULL DISCLOSURE: not only have I been friends with the folks at The Blufftop at Rocheport for decades, but I also have a business partner who is an investor there. So yeah, you can take me with a giant grain of salt. But it was the readers who praised The Blufftop at Rocheport, not just me.
You probably know them as Les Bourgeois Vineyards; you could say that’s their day job. While that may mean Riverboat Red to you, I think they make some of the finest bubbly in the state. Indeed, I believe Missouri sparkling wine is one of the most underrated but consistently reliable wines in the Midwest. Les Bourgeois had an even bigger impact with their white varieties, like vignoles, vidal blanc, traminette, and the like.
But red wine is trickier in vineyards throughout the plains. Crossings of European varieties with American species have offered ample success with white wines, but that has generally eluded red wines. Aside from the Norton, most red grapes in the Midwest lack tannin and that makes them a bit unrecognizable for wine drinkers who are used to the rasp and grip of red wines.
The Blufftop at Rocheport uses grapes from California and Washington vineyards, and the grapes are the familiar faces of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, and riesling.
But perhaps more importantly, much like the other award winners in this group of beverage makers, the folks at The Blufftop at Rocheport are all about the hospitality as well as the quality of their wines. The A-Frame blufftop location has, for decades, been a destination for University of Missouri students, friends, and family. Watching a sunset from The A-Frame with the Missouri River winding underneath is iconic.
Runner Up: Stone Hill Winery
Stone Hill Winery in Hermann was started in 1847 by a German immigrant. It now serves all types of wine—red and whites from dry to sweet—and is the second-largest winery in the nation.
1110 Stone Hill Highway, Hermann • StoneHillWinery.com
This article was originally published in the January 2026 issue of Missouri Life.
