Willett Distillery
American Whiskey Distillery
Willett Distillery Ltd, is a private family-owned and operated company located on the outskirts of Bardstown, Kentucky, on a site that began as a farm owned by the Willett family. Over the years, the company has bottled whiskeys that range from two years of aging maturity up to 28 years. The company was named Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KBD) between 1984 and 2012.
History
Origins and background (1841–1935)
The company was founded as the Willett Distilling Company in 1936. The company has remained under family ownership and operation at the same location since it was createdJohn David Willett (born in 1841) had been the master distiller for the Moore, Willett & Frenke Distillery, which he had formed with his brother-in-law Thomas S. Moore of Bardstown, and a Mr. Frenke of Louisville. In 1876, Willett fell ill and sold his interest in the company (he would recover and live another 38 years, passing in 1914).
John's son A. Lambert Willett picked up his father's profession in 1898, at the age of 15, with a five-year stint at the Mattingly Moore Distillery. Lambert Willett then worked for the Max Selliger & Co. Distillery for twenty years – eventually becoming one-third owner and superintendent of the plant.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willett Distillery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.