Meet the mentee: Ana Hinz, Westland Distillery
Success stories like Ana Hinz’s prove that empowering women can have meaningful consequences. We catch up with the former OurWhisky Foundation mentee and Westland Distillery’s business development manager about her extraordinary entrance to the whiskey industry.
“When I get my hooks into something, I will keep digging.” Ana Hinz’s first steps into the whiskey industry have proven just that. The former Seattle Symphony production manager spent just two months with her first mentor, Matt Hofmann, as part of the OurWhisky Foundation Mentorship Programme before he offered her a job. Now the business development manager for Westland Distillery is one of American whiskey’s brightest new talents.
Hinz grew up in Wisconsin and from a young age was always involved in music. Pursuing it as a career, she bypassed teaching to work in orchestra management and, not long after graduating with bachelors and masters degrees in related subjects, quickly found herself working her way up in the industry.
“It was really rewarding and fun,” Hinz says of her 15 years working in music. “But then eventually I realised that I wasn't growing anymore, and it wasn't fulfilling in the same way. I wasn't as passionate about it anymore.”
Sniffing it out: Hinz took a risk to join whiskey which more than paid off
Her journey into whiskey wasn’t exactly love at first sight. With some Scottish heritage on her father’s side and having studied abroad in Scotland for a semester, she wasn’t a whiskey drinker from the off, but there was something about the category that piqued her interest.
“I didn’t like whiskey,” she admits, “it's an acquired taste. But I wanted to just learn more and kind of got obsessed with trying to figure out why things tasted the way they did. And that's how I fell down the rabbit hole of the craft, of trying to understand that, and then just started reading books and going to seminars and all sorts of activities.” A trip to Scotland in 2016 visiting a ‘bunch of distilleries’ and the snowball was speedily in motion.
Hinz’s very first whiskey book was Lew Bryson’s Tasting Whiskey - ‘an awesome base’- and she references Heather Greene’s Whisk(e)y Distilled, and Peat, Smoke and Spirit by Andrew Jefford as two other important tomes on her bookshelf. But while she had access to information on whiskey, knowing how she could possibly work in it wasn’t so easy. Hinz shadowed distillers at a local distillery, but quickly realised that wasn’t for her. How her background in project management could translate to a distillery wasn’t obvious.
Come 2020 and her first opportunity revealed itself in a part-time role. “There was an opening at a very small distillery in Oregon [Wanderback Whiskey Co], and they were looking for a virtual brand ambassador. I can talk about whiskey till I'm blue in the face so I was like, ‘I’d love to do that’.” After six months, she took over the role of rackhouse manager. “That was the starting piece of really getting more into production.”
The mentorship programme
When Hinz applied for the first ever OurWhisky Foundation Mentorship Programme cohort in 2022, she was looking to have a full time job in whiskey. Wanderback was ‘a great way for me to get my feet wet’ without losing her long-term career in music. But changing it all for whiskey was a huge leap. Seeing the Mentorship Programme come up was her chance to see what was really out there for her.
She was paired with Matt Hofmann, co-founder of Westland Distillery in Seattle, a brand Hinz was already familiar with. Within a matter of months, she contacted the OurWhisky Foundation team to let them know that Hofmann had hired her. “It was amazing,” she says of achieving her goal so quickly.
“All of that work had paid off, finally, after four years. It felt like I had been just hammering my head against a wall and thinking maybe I shouldn't try this because I'm not finding a path. So having that actually happen was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it was worth all of it. And I can't believe I get to do this, pinch me. Also, don't fuck it up.’”
She rejoined the programme in 2023 under the mentorship of Tormore distillery manager Polly Logan who helped her move through the first phases of her new career. “It was so helpful to talk to her about working in this new space for me and then still trying to understand where I want to aim, besides just learning my job and doing the best I can.
“She taught me to remember that I can explore all the things I want and that will help you decide. Look for opportunities, just roll with it.”
Barrel half-full: Hinz pulls a sample at Wanderback Whiskey Co, her first steps in whiskey
At such an early stage in her career, connecting with somebody who's been in the industry for decades was ‘incredible’. And the second other most valuable part of the programme for Hinz was meeting the women doing it alongside her.
“You don't necessarily make those connections unless you go to conventions or festivals, so having those connections was great.” It’s something Hinz has continued to take advantage of even after leaving the programme. Her and Erin Lee (who has started working as distiller at FEW Spirits since joining the programme) have traded samples and set up their own whiskey tastings. Hinz threw the net wider. “I was like, ‘You know what, I think we need to do it again. And let's connect some other ladies that I know.’ So we're going to do that in the coming months. It’s another way to build connections with women in industry.”
Building dreams
Hinz’s role at Westland is varied to say the least. Looking at upcoming whiskey releases and working on timelines and resources - and building that all out from blend concept to on the shelf around the world - can take anywhere from 10 to 11 months. She also handles software projects, Westland’s single cask programme, bottling, labelling, and allocation.
Managing the independent bottling programme is something she really enjoys. “For a whiskey geek like myself, because I know these folks, or at least drunk their whiskey before, it's really fun to connect with them, learn what they want and work on all that planning.”
She’s also learning more about export markets, making her the point of contact for all of Westland’s brand ambassadors and marketing field teams abroad. Commercial work is completely new to Hinz, but while it’s been a huge learning curve, learning each individual market has been ‘fascinating’.
Conducting her orchestra: Hinz’s role brings lots of skills into focus
And while she has been able to put her project management skills and compliance knowledge to good use, orchestras and distilleries are two very different beasts. “When I was reading over the job description, I was like, ‘Oh I literally do all of this already.’
“But some of the main things are super specific to each of these fields. In the orchestral world, you have to plan years out, but not 15 years out,” she explains. “The other thing that was sort of interesting is that in the distilling world, it doesn't actually take that many people to run a distillery, at least on-the-ground work. With an orchestra, it’s the flip.”
Ultimately, she says, it’s about being able to look at your end goal, work backwards and understand the timeline and resources needed - and be able to communicate that across teams.
She’s come a long way in two years. Does she have any advice for women wondering if whiskey is for them? “Really zoom out on what your skills are,” she advises, speaking from experience. “Look at what you actually do, the skills you have. Take out the context of whatever it is and think about all of those things that are transferable.
“And you're if you're willing to learn and put yourself out there, you can do anything.”
Discover more about the OurWhisky Foundation’s Mentorship Programme.
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