From left to right, Wes, Lincoln, and Kyle Henderson. In this photo, the father-son-grandpa trio had just broken ground at its Louisville distillery, July 9, 2013. Founder Lincoln Henderson passed away a few months later.
ESTABLISHED: 2002
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: 1792 is the year Kentucky joined the Union.
When Barton Brands Ltd. created the Ridgewood Reserve 1792 label, rival Brown-Forman filed a lawsuit that claimed it infringed upon the trademark of its Woodford Reserve brand. Barton changed its brand’s name to 1792 Ridgemont Reserve, emphasizing 1792—the year Kentucky became a state—and changing Ridgewood to Ridgemont. Today, 1792 is one of Sazerac’s flagship bourbons.
ESTABLISHED: 1934
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Named after its founder, A. Smith Bowman.
Like Kentucky, Virginia has a strong distilling history. Coming out of Prohibition, Kentuckian A. Smith Bowman built a distillery with his sons and started selling Virginia Gentleman Bourbon in 1937. In 2003, Sazerac purchased A. Smith Bowman.
From left to right, Wes, Lincoln, and Kyle Henderson. In this photo, the father-son-grandpa trio had just broken ground at its Louisville distillery, July 9, 2013. Founder Lincoln Henderson passed away a few months later.
OWNERS: Bacardi
NAME ORIGINS: The 3 to 5 percent of bourbon lost per year due to evaporation, known as the “angel’s share.” Angel’s Envy is the whiskey the angels didn’t get.
Angel’s Envy was the first mainstay bourbon product finished in port barrels, giving purist bourbon lovers headaches. How could it be called bourbon when used barrels are a staple of the brand’s flavor profile? Simply put, the government allowed the company to do it as long as the label would say “straight bourbon finished in port barrels.”
ESTABLISHED: 1992
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after Baker Beam, former distiller.
Baker Beam recalls working in the Jim Beam Distillery when somebody approached him about naming a bourbon after him. The year was 1985, and most bourbons were named after legends who’d passed away. “I was really surprised and honored,” Baker told me. He became the Claremont distiller in 1973 when his father, Carl, retired from the same position.
ESTABLISHED: 2009
OWNERS: PE Investors LLC
NAME ORIGINS: The Balcones Fault Zone is responsible for the natural spring water from which the Waco, Texas, distillery draws its supply.
On July 17, 2013, Balcones announced new investors and a new distillery. The following year, the investors and founder Chip Tate were locked in a legal battle that resulted in Tate leaving the company. His partners bought him out in late 2014, and the Balcones legacy continues without its founder.
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Oscar Getz claims he picked “Barton” out of a hat.
Upon Prohibition’s repeal, Oscar Getz and Lester Abelson started a whiskey company called Barton Brands, which would become one of the most powerful American-owned spirits companies of the twentieth century. Very Old Barton was marketed as high-end bourbon, with 1970s advertisements championing its age: “Very Old Barton spends eight long years aging (that’s about four years longer than most bourbons) to become a smoother, mellower bourbon. So Very Old Barton gives you more bourbon flavor to give.” Today, Very Old Barton is more of a value brand.
ESTABLISHED: 1992
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after Basil Hayden, famous Kentuckian.
When Anglo-American Catholics moved westward from Maryland, one of the leaders was a distiller named Basil Hayden. In 1785, Hayden was credited with leading twenty-five families down the Ohio River to Kentucky. His grandson, Raymond, created a brand called Old Grand Dad in his honor. Today, Beam Suntory owns Old Grand Dad and Basil Hayden’s.
ESTABLISHED: The modern company was created in 2006. Belle Meade hit shelves in 2011, but the family’s history goes back to 1853.
OWNERS: Family owns the majority with a few angel investors.
NAME ORIGINS: Named after a former thoroughbred farm in the Nashville area.
The Buffalo Trace Distillery is located in Frankfort, Kentucky, and is a massive whiskey-making facility.
Tom Bulleit stands outside the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, which now serves as a Bulleit visitor center. Bulleit’s parent company, Diageo, owns Stitzel-Weller and is also building a Bulleit distillery in Shelby, Kentucky.
During his day, the man behind the original Belle Meade Bourbon was as big as Jack Daniel, Jim Beam, E. H. Taylor, or any number of renowned bourbon producers. Based in Tennessee, Charles Nelson operated the Green Brier Distillery and produced about thirty labels, two of them in conjunction with other companies. Established in 1853, the Charles Nelson Green Brier Distillery could have been what Jack Daniel’s is today if not for Prohibition and a few business dealings not working in its favor. Thanks to a new Charles Nelson, Belle Meade is making a comeback.
ESTABLISHED: 1984
OWNERS: Age International
NAME ORIGINS: Named after Colonel Albert Blanton.
Colonel Albert Bacon Blanton was not alive to see his name on a bottle. He lived from 1881 to 1959, working as the superintendent and president at the George T. Stagg Distillery (now Buffalo Trace). Elmer T. Lee created Blanton’s, the first so-called single barrel product available on liquor-store shelves.
ESTABLISHED: 1988
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after Booker Noe.
The grandson of Jim Beam, Booker Noe started working in production at the distillery in 1951 and never left. He called the rack warehouse his second home and became a de facto bourbon ambassador, traveling the country talking nothing but bourbon. When he passed away in February 2004 at the age of seventy-four, the entire industry mourned a personality that could never possibly be replaced as well as a houndlike bourbon nose and palate that could find a honey barrel sitting nine barrels high.
ESTABLISHED: 1999
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Buffalo Trace is named after the buffalo finding passage across the Kentucky River en route to the Great Plains.
Buffalo Trace Distillery is one of the most important and historic distilleries in the United States, but the facility suffers from a century-old identity problem. While the George T. Stagg Distillery was renamed Buffalo Trace and the brand launched in 1999, the facility was also formerly the Ancient Age Distillery, and sections were the OFC Distillery. Locals continue to refer to Buffalo Trace as Ancient Age or Stagg. Nonetheless, Buffalo Trace Straight Bourbon ranks among the best introductory bourbons.
ESTABLISHED: 1987
OWNERS: Diageo
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the Bulleit family.
When Tom Bulleit wrapped up his legal career and embarked on a new journey to start a bourbon company in the mid-1980s, he chose to create a bourbon brand that would change the face of bars around the world. The Bulleits built their demand the old-fashioned way: they knocked on doors and told their story. The hard work paid off, and its parent company is now building the $115 million Bulleit Distilling Company in Shelby County, Kentucky.
ESTABLISHED: 1871
OWNERS: Haas Brothers, San Francisco
NAME ORIGINS: Nineteenth-century master distiller.
Of all the bourbons on the shelf today, Cyrus Noble enjoys one of the most colorful stories and is the only brand to have been featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. Noble, a three-hundred-pound distiller for the Bernheim Distillery, drank too much and fell into the mash bin, and Bernheim’s partial owner, Ernest R. Lilienthal, wanted to name a whiskey after him. Lilienthal moved to San Francisco and started a company under his name, which later became Haas Brothers.
The creators of Devil’s Cut came up with a catchy name and have offered even better television commercials, showing an illustration of the barrel being twisted and droplets of whiskey coming out.
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the whiskey trapped inside the wood—the angel gets the evaporation while the whiskey ages, and the devil gets his cut when the whiskey is dumped from the barrel.
Beam Suntory created an agitation method to extract whiskey trapped inside the freshly dumped barrel and called it Devil’s Cut. It would probably be more appropriately named Barrel Sweat, the Kentucky term for taking a freshly dumped bourbon barrel, filling it with water, rolling it around the yard for a bit, allowing it to soak in the sunshine, and letting it sit bung-side down. But that would be likely to remind consumers of gym socks. Devil’s Cut is much more appealing.
ESTABLISHED: 1986
OWNERS: Heaven Hill
NAME ORIGINS: The late 1700s Baptist preacher who earned the founder of bourbon moniker long before historians and journalists had a chance to scrutinize this claim.
When Heaven Hill launched the Elijah Craig brand in 1986, the popular bourbon company promoted the longstanding legend of its namesake inventing bourbon. As legends go, Craig supposedly discovered the barrel-charring technique in a barn fire. The story was so popular that television actor George J. McGee starred in the one-man play The Life and Times of Elijah Craig in 1982. These days, as social media dissects everything from high-fructose corn syrup to politics, people seemingly care about the whiskey truth-in-marketing. Thus, the Craig legend is just that, a legend—but it’s a legend that helped build the bourbon industry, proving that whiskey loves a good story.
ESTABLISHED: 1986
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the former George T. Stagg distiller.
Old Fitzgerald master distiller Edwin Foote (left) and George T. Stagg master distiller Elmer T. Lee (center) greet country music star Neal McCoy at an outdoor bourbon event in the 1980s. Foote and Lee were among the great master distillers who brought bourbon back. Photo courtesy Edwin Foote
Elmer T. Lee is the distiller who almost wasn’t. When he interviewed for the position, the venerable Colonel Blanton told him they weren’t hiring, but the upright, hardworking World War II veteran stuck around and took the job anyway. Lee transformed the industry with Blanton’s Single Barrel and his former distillery, Buffalo Trace, honors Lee’s legacy with the brand donning his name and likeness.
ESTABLISHED: The original Evan Williams distiller began in 1783, but the actual brand was formed in 1957.
OWNERS: Heaven Hill Distillery
NAME ORIGINS: The Kentucky distiller of the 1780s.
In the 1780s, Evan Williams built a small distillery on Louisville’s Fifth Street near the Ohio River, but he “claimed the right to sell his product without license” and was indicted by a grand jury for this offense.3 Heaven Hill created the brand Evan Williams in 1957 and has since carved out a consistent bourbon for the ages.
OWNERS: FEW Spirits
NAME ORIGINS: Talk about irony. FEW is named after Frances Elizabeth Willard, the founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Based in Evanston, Illinois, FEW Spirits is not too far from where the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded. The WCTU was the leading voice in favor of Prohibition and the major reason why Evanston kept Prohibition in effect for four decades after the Volstead Act was repealed. The city remained dry until 1972, making it illegal to operate a distillery in the interim. When it opened in 2009, FEW Spirits became the first legal alcohol-production facility in Evansville since Prohibition.
ESTABLISHED: 1888
OWNERS: Kirin Brewing in Japan
NAME ORIGINS: There are several stories that claim to explain why founder Paul Jones Jr. named this brand Four Roses. The brand sells the legend that Jones’s hot date to a grand ball wore a four-rose corsage.
In the late 1950s, its parent company Seagram’s took Four Roses Bourbon off the market and sent it into exile, casting it to foreign markets, where bourbon had zero marketing power. In 2001, Seagram’s folded, and Japan-based Kirin Brewing purchased the brand. It kept the Seagram’s methods and people and embarked on one of the greatest comebacks in American business history. Today, largely due to its five yeast strains, distillation methods, and single-story warehouses, Four Roses is arguably the sexiest distillery in Kentucky.
Four Roses offers private barrel selections to consumers, bars, and liquor stores, where you can taste samples like these straight from the barrel and choose your very own. Four Roses is based in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Like many names you see on the bottle, George T. Stagg was a major contributor to the growth of bourbon in the 1800s.
In the 1860s, George T. Stagg was a respected whiskey salesman and helped E. H. Taylor build his bourbon empire.
ESTABLISHED: 1855
OWNERS: Heaven Hill
NAME ORIGINS: Named after an Irish immigrant and Kentucky distiller.
Henry McKenna moved from his native Ireland to Fairfield, Kentucky, starting a milling business and settiing up a pot still around 1855. McKenna served as his own cooper, milled and mashed his grains, and distilled, making him a master distiller and potentially a master cooper. According to the Nelson Journal, “what this horny-handed son of Old Ireland doesn’t know about making Kentucky whiskey, no one knows.”4 Seagram’s closed the Henry McKenna Distillery in the 1970s; Heaven Hill purchased the brand name but no longer uses the same recipe. The original yeast, mashbill, and flavor profile are gone. Lost with time.
ESTABLISHED: 2005
OWNERS: William Grant & Sons, London. Distilled at the original distillery, Tuthilltown Distillery in Gardiner, New York.
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the Hudson Valley area.
If you live in a US state without a significant distillery presence, you can thank Prohibition. The country is still recovering from the thirteen-year alcohol ban nearly a century after it ended, but states are coming around to opening distilleries again, thanks in part to Ralph Erenzo, cofounder of Tuthilltown Spirits. Hudson was Tuthilltown’s flagship product; Hudson Baby Bourbon made such a splash that it garnered outside investor interest. William Grant & Sons, which owns a powerful Scotch whiskey portfolio, purchased the Hudson line in 2010.
When Hudson Baby Bourbon launched, the whiskey world didn’t know what to do with itself, often resorting to a play on the former 1990s Pace Picante commercial line “Made in New York.” But since its inception, Hudson has helped grow the bourbon category and the craft distillery movement.
ESTABLISHED: 1997
OWNERS: Castle Brands
NAME ORIGINS: Named after President Thomas Jefferson, who repealed the whiskey tax.
When Chet and Trey Zoeller created Jefferson’s Reserve in 1997, the father-and-son duo received cease-and-desist letters from the lawyers of two major spirits companies, arguing the Jefferson’s bottle was too similar to their brands. Although Chet was a successful attorney, the Zoellers didn’t have the capital to fight the claim, and instead negotiated terms that made everybody happy—a new bottle. After this, the Jefferson’s filled its new square bottles with bourbon procured from distillers throughout Kentucky.
As the thirteen millionth barrel of Jim Beam bourbon travels down the conveyor belt, dozens of reporters from around the world interview the great grandson of Jim Beam, Fred Noe. The Beams and Noes have carried bourbon through the good times and the bad.
ESTABLISHED: The Jacob Beam Distillery started in the 1790s without an official name, but the true Beam empire began in 1933.
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the real Jim Beam.
Bourbon could be called “Beam” and it would be a legitimate name for the whiskey. The Beams have been a part of more than sixty bourbon brands, including the Dowlings, Early Times, Heaven Hill, Limestone Branch, and Yellowstone. The greatest of them all was Col. Jim Beam, who started working in the distilling business at sixteen and later becoming president of Bardstown’s F. G. Walker Distillery in 1913, which he operated along with the Clear Springs Distilling Company until Prohibition. Also prior to Prohibition, Jim Beam purchased the Old Murphy Barber Distillery to dig up the limestone rock as part of his family’s stone business, registered as Sunbeam Quarries. The Claremont spot was located across from the newly formed Bernheim Forest, a fourteen-thousand-acre preserve established by fellow German immigrant and bourbon icon Isaac Wolfe Bernheim. Once Prohibition was repealed, Beam, at the age of seventy, used the Old Murphy Barber Distillery to create what is now known as the Jim Beam Distillery.
ESTABLISHED: 1953
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Marjorie Samuels named Maker’s Mark after pewtersmiths, who always left a so-called maker’s mark on their work that identified them as the creator.
After he purchased the run-down Burks Springs Distillery in 1953, Bill Samuels Sr. and his wife, Marjorie, created Maker’s Mark. He created the whiskey; she created the name, developed the slender bottle, and invented the now-iconic dripping red wax. The couple and their son, Bill Jr., are in the Bourbon Hall of Fame.
OWNERS: Merry Beth and Paul Tomaszewski
NAME ORIGINS: Named after co-owner Merry Beth Roland.
During the rise of craft distilleries, or microdistilleries, Iraq War veteran Paul Tomaszewski asked a simple question: where were the microdistilleries in Kentucky? After his second tour of duty, Tomaszewski and his wife, Merry Beth Roland, opened the first distillery in Christian County, Kentucky, since Prohibition, converting a former Amish farm into the MB Roland Distillery in 2009.
ESTABLISHED: Like many things in whiskey, Michter’s original founding date is complicated. The original Pennsylvania distillery site began in 1753, but the Michter’s brand was not created until 1950. Since then, it’s been on a rocky ride.
OWNERS: Chatham Imports
NAME ORIGINS: A combination of the names Michael and Peter, the founder’s sons.
The original Michter’s distillery sits barren in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania, its parts picked and sold and used again. Listed on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places, the distillery was once an American whiskey crown jewel. Now, crows fly overhead and weeds grow on the edges of buildings. The site dates back to 1753, when John Shenk owned and operated a still; by 1780, the area was a hotbed for distilleries, with twenty stills in operation. George Washington allegedly purchased whiskey from the area to give to his troops. Today, Michter’s operates in Kentucky and has released several stellar older whiskeys in the past decade.
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the charter oak, a now-extinct species.
Adam and Ben Chapeze inherited land along Long Lick Creek in Bardstown with intentions to farm. When the railroad built a station on the farm, the area became known as the Chapeze Station. Around this same time—1867—the brothers started the Chapeze Distillery, and they created the Old Charter brand in 1874. They sold their distillery to John Wright’s and Marion Taylor’s company in the early 1890s. Wright & Taylor grew Old Charter into one of the most formidable bourbon brands ever made, but Prohibition ended its prominence. In 1933, the Schenley’s Bernheim Distillery purchased the Old Charter brand and the leftover stocks Wright & Taylor still had on its warehouse receipts, and Old Charter became one of the conglomerate’s flagship bourbon brands along with I. W. Harper, Cascade, and Echo Spring. In 1999, the Sazerac Company, Buffalo Trace’s parent, acquired Old Charter from United Distillers (which had acquired the Schenley Company more than ten years prior).
ESTABLISHED: Mid-1800s
OWNERS: Beam Suntory
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the Scottish doctor James C. Crow, who pioneered many of the bourbon manufacturing methods in the 1800s.
Old Crow was named after the industry pioneer Dr. James C. Crow, who industrialized bourbon distilleries in the 1800s. One of the first brands to don a name, Old Crow was the undisputed best-selling bourbon before Prohibition and perhaps after. Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and President Ulysses S. Grant were among the reported fans of Old Crow, and in 1966, a special bottling of Old Crow sold for $5,000 (equivalent to $35,900 in 2014) to benefit the Society of the Preservation of the Crow. When Fortune Brands purchased National Distillers, who owned Old Crow, in 1987, the brand became less representative of its former glory.
OWNERS: Heaven Hill
NAME ORIGINS: Named after either treasury agent John. E. Fitzgerald or a former employee.
When S. C. Herbst founded his company in 1870, he created two businesses. One was a thriving wine and spirits import company that brought to the US market A. De Luze & Fils, which made cognac, Bordeaux wines, claret, and sauternes. The other side of the business was bourbon. Herbst initially contracted the J. Swigert Taylor Distillery to make “Jn. E. Fitzgerald,” but in the early 1890s, the S. C. Herbst company purchased the Old Judge Distillery and renamed it the Old Fitzgerald Distillery. The origins of this name remain a mystery, with some saying the namesake was a Herbst employee with keen distilling skills. In the book Always Fine Bourbon by Sally Van Winkle Campbell—whose grandfather, Pappy, and his company, Stitzel-Weller, purchased Old Fitzerald during Prohibition—the author argues the real Fitzgerald was a crooked government agent. Nonetheless, Old Fitzgerald is likely to be remembered as one of Pappy Van Winkle’s brands that left his family’s control when they sold the distillery in 1972 to Norton-Simon, who sold it to Distillers Limited in 1984. In 1992, Heaven Hill acquired Old Fitzgerald and it’s now made at the Bernheim Distillery, a few miles from the former Stitzel-Weller plant.
ESTABLISHED: 1870
OWNERS: Brown-Forman
NAME ORIGINS: Named after Dr. William Forrester, a popular Louisville physician who frequently prescribed this particular whiskey. After Forrester retired, the second “r” was dropped from the brand’s spelling.
In 1870, brothers George Garvin Brown and J. T. S. Brown Jr. formed a whiskey firm with Old Forester as their brand and sold exclusively by the bottle. They were chasing the pharmaceutical market; although whiskey was a popular medicine, doctors were purchasing barrels, which were diluted for greater wholesaler profits. The Browns realized whiskey purchasers wanted assurance that what they were buying was actually 100 percent whiskey, not 60 percent whiskey, 20 percent Uncle Joe’s tobacco spit, and 20 percent Great-Grandma’s prune juice. So, Old Forester became the first exclusively bottled bourbon, giving purchasers trust that the whiskey was really whiskey. It helped that the bottle was more convenient to prescribe than drawing doses from a barrel. In 1902, George Garvin Brown created Brown-Forman, which still owns Old Forester.
ESTABLISHED: In the 1970s, the Van Winkles resurrected the pre-Prohibition label Old Rip Van Winkle and later added Pappy Van Winkle to the lineup. The iconic photo of Pappy smoking a cigar did not appear on a brand label until 1995.
OWNERS: Partnership between the Van Winkle family and Sazerac.
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the former whiskey salesman and founder of the Stitzel-Weller Distillery.
Julian P. “Pappy” Van Winkle Sr. started as a W. L. Weller and Sons salesman, selling the brand names Old W. L. Weller, Mammoth Cave, Cabin Still, Harlem Club, Hollis Rye, Silas B. Johnson, and Stone Root Gin. In 1908, Van Winkle and fellow salesman Alex T. Farnsley purchased the Weller wholesale business. When Prohibition hit, Van Winkle and Farnsley locked up their facilities and walked away. They attempted to start another business, losing significant money in a farm-equipment company. Van Winkle, Farnsley, and A. Ph. Stitzel also formed the American Medicinal Spirits Company to offer their existing whiskey stocks to physicians. Meanwhile, doctors were prescribing whiskey at an alarming rate. When Prohibition ended, the three men formed the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, opening the facility on Kentucky Derby Day 1935. Van Winkle became bourbon’s heart, changing the game in so many ways. He helped pioneer the private label business and wrote advertorials long before they taught the tactic in college. Pappy died in 1965.
Pappy Van Winkle once convinced Conrad Hilton to buy his whiskey as a private label for the Hilton Hotel Chain. Now, his name and likeness are used to sell the world’s most coveted bourbon, so rare the Hiltons of the world can’t even find it. Photo courtesy of Buffalo Trace
OWNERS: Bardstown Barrel Selections
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the founders’ personal redemption.
Redemption is the brainchild of two spirits-industry veterans who have made a lot of money for other spirits companies through consulting and marketing efforts. Business partners Michael Kanbar and Dave Schmier provided bottling solutions for smaller distilleries, and Schmier is the founder of the Independent Spirits Expo. This brand represents their career Redemption.
ESTABLISHED: 2011
OWNERS: Alltech
NAME ORIGINS: Named after an underground creek.
Despite being in the heart of bourbon country, the city of Lexington, Kentucky, has really lost its distilling prowess. The Henry Clay Distillery (named after the Kentucky statesman), James E. Pepper Distillery, Ashland Distillery, Tarr Distillery, and Lexington Distillery were among the companies that spread bourbon throughout horse country in the 1800s. Fires and Prohibition decimated Lexington’s distillery community, but the Town Branch Distillery looks to restore its rich heritage.
OWNERS: Sazerac
NAME ORIGINS: Named after William Larue Weller.
William Larue Weller began his whiskey journey as a rectifier. In 1852, his firm advertised in the Louisville Daily Journal that it specialized in “rectified whiskey and foreign and domestic liquors.”9 The Weller family also dabbled in the cologned-spirits business and in making gin, and they used their still to produce high wines for blending. But a significant fire in the 1870s destroyed their Main Street facility. In the modern era, after the Van Winkle ownership of Weller, Sazerac acquired the Weller brand from United Distillers in 1999. Today, Weller is considered the poor man’s Pappy Van Winkle, since it uses the same mashbill recipe but has different ages.
ESTABLISHED: 1940s
OWNERS: Campari
NAME ORIGINS: Named after a wild turkey hunt.
In the early 1940s, the Austin Nichols president Thomas McCarthy would draw whiskey from premium barrels in the Anderson County Distillery or Old Ripy warehouses and take them with him on his wild turkey hunts. His friends would ask, “Hey, when are you going to get more of that wild turkey bourbon?” The name sort of stuck, and Wild Turkey was born. Today, the brand is owned by Campari, which invested more than $100 million to build a new distillery and visitor center.
Wild Turkey has not changed its recipe once, but it has tinkered with its proofs. The 101- and 81-proof bourbons are symbolic of past changes.
ESTABLISHED: First established in 1935. Closed in early 1980s, reorganized in 1984 under Even Kulsveen as Kentucky Bourbon Distillers.
OWNERS: Family owned.
NAME ORIGINS: Willett is the family surname. Rowan’s Creek is named after a creek at the bottom of the hill of the distillery; the creek in turn is named after John Rowan, a Kentucky statesman who lived from 1773 to 1843. Noah’s Mill is a name made up by the modern owners. Johnny Drum is named after a young Civil War soldier. Contrary to popular belief, Old Bardstown takes its moniker not from the town of Bardstown but from the bay gelding of the same name that retired with $628,752 in race winnings.
The Willett family of whiskeys includes Johnny Drum, Kentucky Vintage, Old Bardstown, Noah’s Mill, Pure Kentucky, Rowan’s Creek, and, of course, Willett. These products don’t sit on shelves long, for they evoke the same sense of emotion and consumer loyalty as the greatest bourbons ever made. What’s interesting about this is the Willett Distillery, also known as Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, only started distilling its own products in 2012.
Willett bourbons are among the most treasured and sought after. Fans can rest assured that this will likely continue as long as the distillery is led by Drew Kulsveen (pictured) and his family. Kulsveen is considered to be among the brightest young people in the spirits business.
ESTABLISHED: 1996
OWNERS: Brown-Forman
NAME ORIGINS: Named after the county in which it resides.
In the 1990s, Brown-Forman repurchased the Oscar Pepper distillery site it once owned and commenced a $10 million rebuilding project. Since then, Woodford Reserve has grown quickly, amassing a following of consumers who are not simply bourbon drinkers but “Woodford drinkers.”
