“Last year we sold out in about 45 days,” says the company’s director, Michael McQuiggan. It’s back over Labor Day, a ritual now as much about place as flavor.
Place dictates the process here. Arizona’s hard water and brutal heat are rough on delicate spirits, so the McQuiggans import the water used to proof their bourbon and vodka.
“There’s too much iron… it would have a very poor impact,” Michael says. Barrels can’t age long-term in the Sonoran Desert — it’s simply too hot. Constraints became choices, and choices became the house style: clean water in, patient aging elsewhere, then blending, proofing and bottling in the north Valley.
That approach took nearly a decade to dial in. In 2016, the company’s owner and president, Renea McQuiggan, pitched her husband on a simple hobby. She wanted to make small-batch spirits anchored in the grain from her family’s Kansas farm.
“Maybe we could even sell a few bottles,” she told him. He was all in.
The idea became a project, and the project turned into a plan. The pair flew to Louisville in 2017 for Moonshine University’s crash course on starting a distillery and came home with a network.
“In this industry, everybody was happy to help me,” Michael says. After years in cutthroat finance, the generosity floored him. Now, he fields calls from newcomers and starts the conversation with “here’s the first big mistake I made.”
Carefree Spirits & Distillery took shape with a clear North star: quality without shortcuts.
“We’re real sticklers for quality and consistency,” Renea says. “We always taste it before it goes to the bottler.”
After tasting the offerings at the tasting room, take home a bottle of Carefree Bourbon.
Lauren Wise
If bourbon is the resume, the calling card is vodka — specifically Chakra Vodka, a line with an unflavored base and seven natural flavors “symbolically representing our bodies’ seven chakras, or energy centers,” Renea explains.
The flavors were reverse-engineered to fit the symbolism.
“We looked at ingredients that were associated with a particular chakra, and narrowed down which ones tasted better combined,” she says.
For the root chakra, they landed on red apple and ginger root. Green tea, mint and matcha steer the heart toward a mule with clean edges and a cool finish. For solar plexus, there’s pineapple and rosemary, and lavender and grapefruit for the third eye.
The base spirit is made with Midwestern corn, which keeps it naturally gluten-free. The flavor brief is strict: no added sugar. That last rule was a hill to die on.
“At one point, the (flavor) engineer said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to add sugar,’” Michael recalls. “We flatly told him if he can’t do it without sugar, we’re going to have to go to another flavor engineer.”
Additionally, most flavored vodkas punch in around 60 proof, soft and sugary. Chakra flavors hold the line at 80 proof, the same as standard vodka, so they mix like a spirit instead of drinking like dessert.
The brand’s Kansas roots still tug. Early on, they contracted in Atchison to work with local corn, bringing the farm into the bottle until that producer closed. The intent stands and they’ll return to that grain when the right partner emerges. In the meantime, imported water and a careful barrel strategy keep the flavors locked in.
The journey hasn't been linear for the owners of Carefree Spirits Distillery. But the local company continues to grow.
Lauren Wise
Growth hasn’t been linear. The McQuiggans won approval for a 14,000-square-foot distillery and bottling plant, then shelved it as construction costs spiked, putting the lot on the market and pivoting to an existing building nearby to scale bottling.
“Right now we bottle about 300 bottles a day,” Michael says. “With the bottling line expansion… we’d be looking at 3,000 a day.”
But first they need to move the needle on demand.
“We want to own our own neighborhood before we try to get into another state,” Michael says.
You’ll find bottles across the Valley at familiar names including Safeway, Total Wine and Trevor’s Liquor. A larger grocery pickup may be coming, but they’re not naming names until the ink dries.
The attention hasn’t been just anecdotal. By 2022, Carefree Bourbon and Chakra Vodka had racked up 30 international awards. In 2023, they grabbed both gold and silver at the USA Spirits Ratings and earlier medaled with the American Craft Spirits Association. Awards don’t sell every bottle, but they do tell a story about intent. The quality control line Renea keeps bringing up isn’t marketing; it’s practice.
Walk into the tasting room and the menu turns into a conversation. Staff talk about which cocktails are the most popular. “The Dreamsicle flies off the shelf,” one bartender notes, mentioning a drink made with Chakra grapefruit and lavender vodka.
If you want to taste the arc of the brand, start classic and end local. Pour the straight bourbon and let the grain do the talking. Then chase the sun with Toasted Oak, if it’s in season. Finish with a Chakra cocktail.
The matcha-mint mule is Michael’s choice for an afternoon sip, or try the Mountain Martini if your evening can handle a peppery kick from ginger. Note how none of it leans sweet. Everything lands dry, on purpose. That’s what happens when you refuse the easy fix.
The list rotates quarterly, a good excuse to drop in and find what’s new.
There’s a humility to how the couple narrates the journey. For Michael, the early days were all about doing things by hand, because that was the only way forward. For Renea, flavor came the slow way. She spent months pondering, “does this actually taste good?”
The future is ambitious but just as measured.
“I believe Chakra Vodka has the legs to go not only national, but international,” Michael says.
First, they’ve conquered the neighborhood. Then, the next bottling line. And, after one more taste-and-check, the world.
