Prohibition kept a lot of secrets hidden under the cornfields.

That’s according to Dannie Strable, cofounder of Rack House Whiskey Club. He and his colleagues spent time digging up those secrets as they learned more about distillery histories for their new subscription box service promoting U.S. craft distilleries. 

Each box has one or two bottles of whiskey, and a few small gifts linked to the whiskey’s place of origin. The boxes are sent every 60 days, and have around 100 subscribers. 

Rack House Whiskey Club separates itself from other subscription services, Strable said, because it works as a marketing opportunity for small distilleries: Strable and his team travel to each distillery to film interviews with the venture’s founders, and hear histories behind the spirits.

“We’re trying to push most of the story and what’s behind the whiskey, because I don’t think that gets talked about enough,” Strable said. 

Strable operates Rack House Whiskey Club with whiskey ambassador Brad Nagel and communications director Sam Hoyle out of Des Moines. The company was founded in August 2017, but the nature of alcohol laws meant the team spent some time seeking a way to work around patchwork state laws — eventually, they turned to a group in Las Vegas for shipping needs.

“What took the longest to figure out was the antique liquor laws that are based in the U.S. It just took a long time to figure out,” Strable said. “The state laws are like shipping to a different country, and once we figured that out and wrapped our minds around that, we got rocking and rolling.” 

Rack House Whiskey Club is looking at creating a few more subscription box models, including a lower-priced option and different subscription timelines. This month, Rack House Whiskey Club’s first shipment features Iowa Legendary Rye, which still uses a process developed and hidden by a mother in Carroll County, Iowa, during the Depression; her descendents now run the family business. 

“She was bootlegging up to 300 gallons of whiskey every single day, and this is right here in Carroll, Iowa,” Strable said. “They’re hiding whiskey in tombstones, and you can go see these tombstones today. They’re still there. … That’s right here in your backyard, and I don’t know if people even realize that there’s some really cool history even in Iowa.” 

For the next shipment, Strable and his partners have their sights set on eastern Texas. 

“Every whiskey tells its story,” Strable said. “We want to take that label and tell the whole story so people know what goes into that exact whiskey. That’s what we’re trying to go out and do.”