Mark is our Production Manager and Head Distiller. Mark grew up on a small farm in the Pacific Northwest before heading to Seattle to pursue a career in art, with some fermentation based hobbies on the side. After a decade of digital art production he decided to combine all of his hobbies into a career and joined a distillery in Illinois, growing with the company and starting a family. When his wife accepted a job in Madison, the timing aligned perfectly with John Mleziva’s plans to launch State Line Distillery. Mark has been a distiller for well over a decade, working on every aspect of production: recipe development, quality assurance, maintenance, blending, distilling, sewing gin bags, and wrangling spreadsheets. Mark’s guiding principle is simple: every new batch should be the best one yet. Thanks to the skill and passion of the State Line bar and production staff, this has been true year after year.

When Mark isn't at the distillery he's usually cooking, biking, reading sci fi, enjoying Wisconsin’s nature, or starting some new experiment that may or may not become a new product at State Line.