Has the Era of Instant Whisky Arrived?

In an industrial section of Los Angeles, a fantasy jungle grows inside a warehouse. Populated by animatronic topiary dinosaurs, talking plastic parrots, and an autonomous AI personality named Tessa, this steampunk theme park houses Lost Spirits Distillery . Here, ideas about whisky—and whisky itself—are deliberately challenged, broken apart, and remade.

Lost Spirits founder Bryan Davis ushers me aboard a flat-bottomed wooden boat, which he pilots through darkness filled with simulated thunder and wind, toward an “island” of tiny fermenters and pot stills topped with dragon heads. Here, behind a heavy wooden door, in a starkly bare room, futuristic-looking devices emit...