Make it a double.
Barrel House Distilling Co. — the Distillery District pioneer purveyors of handcrafted, smallbatch spirits — soon will be joined in reviving bourbon production in its historic Lexington home with the return of the James E. Pepper label to its namesake campus after a hiatus of nearly 60 years.
Dramatically different in many core ways, the new neighbors hope to share the benefits of the city’s bustling Distillery District off Manchester Road and a boosted profile as a destination for bourbon tourism. The divergent approaches also show that there’s no one way to try to crack into the market for America’s Native Spirit amid a seemingly unquenchable worldwide thirst.
In the cards
Jeff Wiseman and his friend Pete Wright started Barrel House in 2008 with a few other investors who have since left the operation — a plan hatched among friends during a poker game.
“We wanted to restore a pre-Prohibition, small-batch-style distillery,” says Wiseman.
If you haven’t tried their RockCastle bourbon — or even spied it on the shelf — you’re not alone. Barrel House has been operating its copper still for eight years but only released bourbon twice, each tightly limited runs that sold out within days. Barrel House also produces the more available and therefore familiar Pure Blue Vodka, Oak Rum, Devil John Moonshine and Devil John Darkshine. This spread of spirits is very representative of many craft distilleries. That is, starting with with lightly or non-aged products that (hopefully) brings in revenue and provides time for the bourbon to mature.
Wright and Wiseman produce a new label but embrace older methods. The scale and focus are distilled in the company name: Barrel House Distilling Co., the entire operation in just a single building—the old barrel house— of the former James E. Pepper distillery complex.
Legacy label
Right next door, businessman Amir Peay and his Georgetown Trading Co. are creating a boutique distillery as part of a plan to return the James E. Pepper name to its historic home.
In 2008, the same year Barrel House fired up its still, Peay purchased the rights to the iconic James E. Pepper brand name. His company already produces rye, bourbon and ale under the James E. Pepper name.
Unlike his Barrel House neighbors, however, Peay doesn’t currently own a bourbon distillery. Many big names including High West Distillery in Utah, Iowa’s Templeton Rye, Whiskey Row out of Louisville and the extraordinarily popular Bulleit brands are produced through “sourced” barrels, that is the labels get their spirits from a third-party distillery. Peay relies on outside producers but says he takes an uncommonly close working approach with these partners in an effort to produce his bourbon.
Peay says that when he began he contacted every distillery in Kentucky seeking a source and described his needs.
“I got a lot of, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” Peay says.
After striking out at almost every distillery, Peay finally made his first product run as a partnership with Corsair Distillery in Bowling Green. However, growing the brand required finding another, larger distillery and Peay looked north to what was then the Angostura-owned Lawrenceburg Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The distillery was later purchased by Midwest Grain Products, and Peay's partnership there has endured.
Then in May of this year, Peay announced plans to build a new James E. Pepper distillery —in the old James E. Pepper distillery. Peay had spent years putting together a distillery development team of project managers, consultants and bourbon industry professionals, including Dave Scheurich, retired general manager and distiller for the Woodford Reserve Distillery. To find his permanent master distiller, Peay is looking to the University of Kentucky’s distilling education program.
Tourism target
While their methods and products diff er, Barrel House and the new James E. Pepper distillery both look to growing bourbon tourism as a source of revenue.
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail tourism program, which organizes and publicizes public distillery tours through the Kentucky Distillers’ Association (KDA), started in 1999 with only six distilleries. As of this August, there are nine stops on the original trail and the newer secondary Ky. Bourbon Craft Trail program founded in 2012 now boasts 11 small-scale distilleries. Plus there are about a half-dozen other distilleries in Kentucky not on the official trails that also offer public tours.
In recent years Lexington’s Distillery District has become a go-to food, drink and entertainment hotspot, home to a growing number of businesses including Ethereal Brewing, Middle Fork Kitchen Bar, Crank and Boom Ice Cream Lounge and The Break Room.
Barrel House’s Wiseman stresses the importance of the KDA’s work on tourism and said 2012 marked a turning point for his distillery. “If it wasn’t for tours and gift shop sales [from bourbon tourists], we probably wouldn’t have survived,” says Wiseman.
Handcrafted help
Wiseman and Wright learned how to make bourbon on the job.
“It was a lot of trial and error. Plenty of frustration but we knew to expect that,” Wiseman says. “Pete and I both have careers—we knew we were taking on second jobs for a decade. But we made a 10-year commitment to the project.”
But they also weren’t going at it alone— they were getting help from industry titans, too, including Jimmy Russell, master distiller for the Wild Turkey, and Chris Morris, master distiller for Woodford Reserve.
“Chris was here last week,” Wiseman says. “He talked to us about our barrel maturation.”
And the assistance wasn’t just during drop-in visits. If Wiseman or Wright had a question about making bourbon, they would ask for help.
“When they [master distillers] spit out an answer, it probably saved a year of figuring it out on our own,” says Wiseman.
Creation and collaboration
Peay likewise relies on the expertise of many others in his bid to guide the James E. Pepper name back to prominence. He also recognizes that unlocking his legacy brand’s worth requires more than just slapping the historic name on a modern bourbon from a big producer, a not uncommon approach itself.
But Peay says he works closely with his partner distillery to produce a historically accurate flavor profile for his bourbon. A history buff , he’s studied the company’s historic records and has been collecting James E. Pepper memorabilia, some of which will be on display at this new distillery.
Strength in numbers
It’s a rare industry where competitors support each other’s success so directly. But the operations setting up shop in Lexington’s Distillery District show the strength of the overall bourbon market and the growing success of bourbon tourism.
“I think that we [Kentucky] are going to continue to be the Napa Valley of spirits,” Wiseman concludes.
With two very different bourbon distilleries— one built from the ground up by the owners working at their small-pot still every day and the other developed by the some of industry’s best and brightest to revive a lost spirit—the city’s Distillery District is becoming an unmissable destination.
Tim Knittel is a veteran bourbon industry worker and watcher whose company Distilled Living provides education and training courses.