Distillery Marketing
Distillery searches in four cities returned median Domain Ratings of 48, 49, 52 and 53 in September 2026. In every city a tourism board or a whiskey trail held a top three slot.
The gatekeepers: visitdenver.com 78, austintexas.org 77, visitmusiccity.com 76, visitphoenix.com 75.
Trails rank too: tnwhiskeytrail.com at 50 and distillerytrail.com at 53, in two cities each.
Domain Ratings pulled 7 September 2026, United States, English.
Getting listed on the tourism board and the state trail is worth more than any ranking you could build yourself, and both are free. Do that before touching your own pages.
Distilleries do still rank: a DR 11 producer holds position two in Nashville.
Brand collision warning: two of the nine results for the marketing term are agencies with distillery in the name.
Four cities, measured
On 7 September 2026 we ran a distillery search in four cities with real spirits industries and pulled a live Ahrefs Domain Rating for every organic result. Thirty three results in total:
| Search | Results | Median DR | Tourism or trail sites | DR at position one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| distillery nashville | 8 | 48 | 2 | 50 |
| distillery tours denver | 6 | 49 | 1 | 78 |
| craft distillery austin | 10 | 52 | 2 | 77 |
| distillery tours phoenix | 9 | 53 | 2 | 75 |
These medians are high compared with most local categories, and the reason is not that distilleries have strong websites. It is that a small number of very strong intermediaries sit on top of the results in every city.
The tourism boards and the whiskey trails
Four of the strongest domains we found were city tourism boards, and each held a top slot in its own market:
| Site | DR | City | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| visitdenver.com | 78 | Denver | 1 |
| austintexas.org | 77 | Austin | 1 |
| visitmusiccity.com | 76 | Nashville | 7 |
| visitphoenix.com | 75 | Phoenix | 5 |
Alongside them sit the trails and directories: tnwhiskeytrail.com at DR 50 holding first place in Nashville, and distillerytrail.com at DR 53 appearing in both Austin and Phoenix.
Add Yelp, Reddit and Tripadvisor and a visitor searching for a distillery in your city meets three or four pages that list distilleries before they meet a distillery. That is the shape of this market and it is not going to change.
Get on those lists before you touch your own site
This is the whole strategy for most producers and it is regularly skipped in favour of website work that will never outrank a convention and visitors bureau.
Your city tourism board almost certainly has a partner or member listing, and inclusion is usually free or included in a modest membership. Your state trail, guild or craft spirits association has a map or directory. Distillery Trail and comparable industry directories accept submissions. Each of those is a page that already ranks in your city and each will send a visitor who is looking for exactly what you sell.
Two other things follow. Every listing is also a relevant link from a strong domain, which is the sort of link a small producer cannot otherwise get. And a listing is durable in a way a ranking is not, because the tourism board maintains it for you.
Where producers still take the page
Nashville shows that this is not hopeless for a distillery's own site. thenashvilledistillery.com at DR 11 holds position two, ahead of Nelson's Green Brier at DR 51, Tripadvisor at DR 93 and the tourism board at DR 76.
Nashville Barrel Company at DR 34 and Big Machine at DR 37 take two more slots, and Corsair at DR 45 takes another. Five of the eight results are actual producers.
The producers that rank have one thing in common: their pages are about visiting rather than about the brand. Tour times, tasting room hours, what a tour costs, whether children can come, whether you need to book, parking, and how long it takes. A brand-led homepage cannot answer any of those, and every one of them is a query.
A brand collision worth knowing about
If you search the marketing term itself, the first two results are themarketingdistillery.com at DR 3.9 and thisisdistillery.com at DR 9, both marketing agencies that happen to use the word. A third, dstillery.com at DR 74, is an advertising technology company. Indeed at DR 92 ranks with job listings.
Four of the nine results are not about distilleries at all. This is worth knowing for two reasons. It explains why searching for advice in this category returns so little that is useful, and it means genuinely relevant advice pages face less competition than the raw difficulty number suggests.
The two results that are on topic are worth reading: an operator write-up at DR 22 and the American Distilling Institute forums at DR 17, where producers discuss what actually works.
Tours and tastings are what people search
Look at the queries that returned these results. Tours appears in two of our four searches, and the pages that rank lead with visiting. Stranahan's ranks in Denver with a book a tour page. Corsair ranks in Nashville by calling itself a distillery for tours.
The pages worth building follow directly: a tour page with times, duration, price and booking; a tasting room page with hours and what is poured; a cocktail bar page if you have one; a private and group events page; a page for how to find you and where to park.
Seasonality matters here more than in most categories. Holiday gift buying, summer visitor traffic and spirits release calendars all move demand, and a distillery that publishes a release schedule gives both search engines and enthusiasts a reason to come back.
The bottle shop and the events calendar
Two revenue lines get almost no search attention from producers. The first is direct sales where your state permits them, which is searched by product name plus buy, and by the specific bottle a customer tried on a tour.
The second is private events. A distillery is an unusual venue, and corporate bookers looking for somewhere memorable search for venue terms rather than spirits terms. That is a different page, a different vocabulary and a much higher value booking.
Both are also link magnets in a way a brand page is not. An events page gets referenced by venue directories and wedding sites; a release page gets referenced by spirits writers.
Links a distillery can realistically get
Start with the listings above, because they are the highest value and the least work. Then: state craft spirits guilds and the American Distilling Institute, distributors and retailers who stock you, bars and restaurants with a spirits list, food and drink writers at the city magazine, tour operators running drinks tours, and awards bodies whose medals you have won.
Award listings are underused. If you have medals, the awarding body publishes a winners page every year, and those pages are strong, relevant and permanent.
Local food and drink press is the cold half, and it is easier here than in most categories because a new release or a new tasting room is genuine news. Our guides to link outreach and how to build backlinks cover the approach.
Doing the contact work
Working through tourism boards, trails, guilds, distributors, drinks writers and tour operators, finding the right person at each and asking to be listed or covered is the highest yield marketing work available to a distillery, and it is the work that never gets scheduled.
MentionAgent runs that loop. It finds the relevant sites, pulls a contact, drafts and sends the pitch from your own domain, and replies come to your inbox. The Domain Rating figures on this page come from the same research step it runs first.
In this category the listings matter more than the rankings, which is unusual and worth taking seriously. Our link building checklist covers the sequence once the obvious listings are claimed.
Frequently asked questions
Why are distillery searches harder than other local categories?
Because strong intermediaries sit on top of them. Measured on 7 September 2026, median Domain Rating ran 48 in Nashville, 49 in Denver, 52 in Austin and 53 in Phoenix, and in every city a tourism board or a whiskey trail held a top three slot. The distilleries themselves are not strong; the pages listing them are.
What should a distillery do first?
Get listed. Your city tourism board, your state trail or guild, and the industry directories all run pages that already rank in your city, and inclusion is usually free or part of a modest membership. Each listing is also a relevant link from a strong domain, which a small producer cannot otherwise get.
Can a distillery site rank on its own?
Yes. In Nashville a producer at DR 11 holds position two, ahead of a DR 51 distillery, Tripadvisor at 93 and the tourism board at 76. Five of the eight Nashville results were actual producers. The ones that rank have pages about visiting rather than about the brand.
Which pages matter most?
Tour times, duration, price and booking. Tasting room hours and what is poured. Whether children are welcome, whether booking is required, where to park and how long a visit takes. Every one of those is a query, and a brand-led homepage answers none of them.
Why is advice on distillery marketing so hard to find?
A brand collision. Of nine results for the term, two are marketing agencies using the word distillery in their name, one is an advertising technology company at DR 74 and one is a job board. Only a handful are about marketing an actual distillery.
What links can a distillery get?
Tourism boards, state trails and craft spirits guilds first. Then distributors and retailers who stock you, bars and restaurants listing your spirits, city magazine drinks writers, drinks tour operators, and awards bodies. Award winner pages are underused: they are strong, relevant and permanent.