Five new Kentucky distilleries, some you can visit, buy bourbon bottles at now

Kentucky’s bourbon industry is booming, with new distilleries coming all the time.

Here are five spanning the state from from Eastern Kentucky to Western Kentucky, all worth adding to your whiskey map.

Some are up and running now. Others are under construction with plans for you to visit.

A couple have brands for sale now to buy; at least one you may never see on store shelves.

So far none of the new distilleries has joined the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

Here’s what you need to know about these newcomers (several of whom aren’t newcomers at all) to the Bluegrass bourbon scene.

Brothers Wright Distilling, Pike County

The $38 million Brothers Wright distillery promises to be a unique concept: The company will use a rehabilitated underground coal mine to age whiskey.

They plan to build a 12,000-square-foot distillery, rickhouse, welcome center, museum and restaurant on 20 acres on Ky. 292 in Pike County. Plans also call for lodging and an underground visitor experience down the road.

Brothers Kendall and Shannon Wright will age bourbon in a 1,400-acre underground mine that operated from 1913 to 1946, and the site already has the distiller’s first barrels inside.

The Wrights bought a 1,200-acre farm on the banks of the Tug Ford tributary of the Big Sandy River in 2020 to use as a corporate retreat then discovered the underground mine.

Brothers Wright, Brothers Wright Barrel Proof, Brothers Wright Reserve Bourbon, Brothers Wright Wheated Bourbon and Brothers Wright Rye Bourbon are available online and in select stores to buy now.

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J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery, Frankfort

The new J. Mattingly distillery opened Nov. 1 at 20 Reilly Rd. in Frankfort, moving there from a Georgetown location.

It was started by Jeff Mattingly, a descendant of distilling pioneer John Graves Mattingly, one of Kentucky’s earliest distillers: John Graves Mattingly’s first distillery in Marion County may have been the first registered distillery in Kentucky and the family helped develop at least nine distilleries and connections to George Garvin Brown of Brown Forman, the Willett family and the Samuels family, with Margie Mattingly Samuels creating the iconic Maker’s Mark design.

In 2010, Jeff Mattingly revived the tradition, starting his own craft bourbon business. Today his son Cameron has joined the team as vice president of production and they have opened a $6 million, 23,000-square-foot distillery with a gift shop, tasting bar and tours.

J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery has several releases and offers visitors a chance to blend their own bottle from a combination of barrels of bourbon, wheated bourbon or rye whiskey.

“We’re excited to be in Frankfort and we appreciate the warm welcome we’ve received from the community,” said Jeff Mattingly, in a statement. “Our slogan is ‘One Hell of a Pick,’ which came about when I was blending a batch with some bourbon experts from around the United States and it was so good we proclaimed it ‘One Hell of a Pick.’ That batch and that slogan will always have special meaning to me since it was one of the first bourbons sold and marketed in over 100 years under the Mattingly family name. Now, we’re starting another new chapter with our move to Frankfort, and we look forward to helping our guests blend their own ‘One Hell of a Pick!’”

Potter Jane Distilling Co., Springfield, Ky.

The Potter Jane Distilling Co. is the brainchild of two longtime distilling industry veterans from Maker’s Mark and others, Denny Potter and Jane Bowie, hence the name.

They have begun building their own $50 million distillery outside of Springfield with very definite thoughts about what they want to do with it.

“We both truly love bourbon and American whiskey and we want to make bourbons that remind us of why we fell in love with the industry,” Bowie said. They plan to make primarily traditional bourbon, both a wheated and a rye, aged in traditional style small rickhouses built on a hilltop.

“We’ll make whiskey for ourselves, put in the warehouse and not have it on the market for four to eight years,” Potter said. “While we wait on that, we’ll produce for other brands, contract distilling.”

Producing bourbon for others isn’t exactly new, Bowie said, “Go to Liquor Barn there are probably 1,000 SKUs on the shelves ... how many have their own distilleries? ... It’s nice to be able to make other people’s whiskey dreams come true by producing for them.”

They hope to be operations in January 2025, so you might see a bottle of “Potter Jane” bourbon on store shelves in 2030, they said.

Whiskey House, Elizabethtown, Ky.

The team that built Bardstown Bourbon Co. into a powerhouse behind many boutique bourbon brands is building Whiskey House. David Mandell said he and his partners, former Barton and BBC distiller John Hargrove and Daniel Linde, saw the opportunity for the contract distilling side of the business has only grown as the industry has consolidated.

“Whiskey House is the first of its kind to do nothing but flexible custom production,” Mandell said. “No investor barrels. We’re here for customers who need innovative liquid.”

And as always it will be up to the customer if they want to disclose on the label where the whiskey was distilled.

They don’t plan to release a “Whiskey House” label and have no plans to be open for tours but might (down the road) set up a tasting room so the brands that the work with have an opportunity to reach customers.

What they are building is big: They will start at 112,000 barrels and then in just a few years plan to double that. And everything will be data-driven so customers can analyze exactly what went into a particular liquid.

“We’ll be Willy Wonka for whiskey manufacturing,” he said.

“Whether you’re starting a brand or it’s one that’s been around a long time, you have to be innovating, that’s driving growth. There are still plenty of ways to do things differently. Plenty of running room, whether on the grain, the blending, the wood side. Lots of different variables you can work with.”

Western Distilling Co., Ohio County

The new $30 million Western Distilling operation had a grand opening in October in Beaver Dam, the first official distillery in Ohio County since Prohibition. The 25,000-square-foot distillery is at 1880 Old Liberty Church Rd., in the Bluegrass Crossings Business Center.

Western Distilling has 15 warehouses and will be able to distill over 50,000 barrels a year. Master Distiller and COO Jacob Call, an eighth-generation distiller who helped revive Green River Distilling, is already producing bourbon and rye whiskey with co-founder J.D. Edwards. The first barrel was filled in July.

The distillery will focus on contract distilling to start, with signature brands and a visitor’s center down the road, according to a news release.