As seen in Food & Wine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask Drew Kulsveen whose bourbon, besides his own, he likes to drink, and he\u2019ll demur. \u201cI don\u2019t want to go on the record,\u201d he says, \u201cor people will start chasing after it.\u201d Kulsveen\u2019s opinion matters that much, because in the world of American whiskey, he\u2019s a bona fide celebrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kulsveen grew up playing amid his grandfather\u2019s rickhouses in the \u201cBourbon Capital of the World,\u201d Bardstown, Kentucky. Today, Willett is among Kentucky\u2019s last significant family-owned distilleries, and Kulsveen, 36, is its master distiller. It\u2019s a huge responsibility because Willett is legendary, yet for 30 years, during a long downturn in the bourbon market, the family distilled nothing. Now, the stills are operative again, expectations among whiskey lovers are fierce, and demand couldn\u2019t be higher. \u201cWe\u2019re running 24 hours \u2028a day, making as much bourbon as we physically can,\u201d Kulsveen says during a recent visit. For operations like Jim Beam, which distills nearly 40 times as much, Willett\u2019s 1,000 barrels a month is \u201ca drop in the bucket,\u201d says Kulsveen, \u2028\u201cbut it\u2019s a lot for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kulsveen strikes a different profile than other Kentucky distillers. He is so charismatic, says Fred Minnick, author of Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey<\/em>, that \u201cwhen he started making public appearances, he ruined it for everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Kulsveen stays humble. \u201cDistilling\u2019s not rocket science,\u201d he says. \u201cAs long as you use the right ingredients and pay attention, you can have a good product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are in Willett\u2019s limestone-columned distillery watching the contents of a 10,000-gallon fermenter roil. Gorging on the sugars in a soup of grains and water, yeast sends foaming ripples across the oatmeal-colored liquid. It is transforming the mash into beer that later will be rendered into alcohol in two huge stills: a gnome-shaped copper pot still, antique-looking but new; and a stainless-steel column still with a colorful past. Manufactured for the old Kentucky brand Waterfill and Frazier, the still wound up in Mexico during Prohibition, where it was used to make contraband. Drew\u2019s father, Even Kulsveen, bought it for a steal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The column-still purchase is one chapter in a storied history that has led Drew Kulsveen to this moment. It starts in the 17th century with Cognac-producing ancestors. The Willetts were French Protestants who escaped persecution from the Catholic church by moving to America. They settled in Kentucky, where they got into bourbon making in the late 19th century. Prohibition was a temporary setback. More significant was the blow dealt by vodka when James Bond\u2019s \u201cshaken, not stirred\u201d martini helped vodka top spirits sales by the 1970s. Seen as old-fashioned, bourbon lost popularity. By 1981, Kulsveen\u2019s grandfather had leased his stills to an ethanol producer that then went bankrupt, leaving only ruined equipment behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drew\u2019s father Even took over a few years later. His son joined him in 2004. But it took them until 2012 to start distilling again. In the lull, Willett became a cult NDP, or Non-Distilling Producer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were taking odd lots from Four Roses, Jim Beam\u201d\u2014forgotten casks and ones with flavors that couldn\u2019t be blended into standard labels. \u201cAnything under a few hundred barrels, we\u2019d scoop it up,\u201d Kulsveen recalls. Willett used the whiskey to make its own brands, including woodsy, spicy Johnny Drum; Rowan\u2019s Creek, named for a rivulet that runs through the property; and Noah\u2019s Mill, named after the gristmill that stands over it. To yield their lauded flavors, says Kulsveen, \u2028\u201cWe got really good at blending.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minnick confirms it: \u201cThey purchased well-aged stocks, let them mature, and would mingle them in small batches, so for the past 10 or 15 years, they put out some of the best product on the market.\u201d The whiskeys were coveted by aficionados partly because the operation was so tiny. For a long time, says Minnick, it remained \u201ckind of a secret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s changed. With the comeback of classic cocktails, demand for bourbon reignited. Today, American whiskey sales top $3 billion annually. But distillers can\u2019t just bottle on demand; whiskey must age. And the overstocks that Willett relied on had dwindled by the time they were able to reboot the stills. \u201cWe would have been in a world of hurt if we had not started back up,\u201d says Kulsveen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He leads me to one of the Willett rickhouses. With six stories of thick, wooden beams illuminated by southern sunlight seeping through small windows, the building holds 6,000 barrels of slowly aging bourbon and rye. Though Kulsveen intends to keep most of it for a decade or more, Willett has already released some of its own distillate in its cask-strength Family Estate bottlings as well as in the affordable Old Bardstown series. They\u2019re also slowly introducing it into their seven or so other brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kulsveen takes a drill to a cask, capturing the stream in tulip-shaped glasses before stanching the flow with a wooden plug. \u201cIt\u2019s all about figuring out the different profiles of the barrels and how they meld together,\u201d says Kulsveen. \u201cI want character. I want it to stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sniff, then sip. This is a five-year-old wheated bourbon and a new mash bill for Willett: 65 percent corn\u2014the main grain in bourbon\u2014plus 15 percent malted barley and 20 percent wheat. It is still young, the grain flavor not yet balanced by the wood, but it already tastes deliciously like orange marmalade on brioche toast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the old family recipes are still in use, wheated bourbon, which is smoother and sweeter, drives Willett\u2019s distilling nowadays. There are more updates, too. In terms of distilling, Kulsveen is experimenting with stave curing and different barrel woods. At the new visitor center, overseen by Kulsveen\u2019s wife, Janelle, a bar will open this spring for cocktails, library pours, and small plates. And the gristmill and some cabins have been transformed into guesthouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New recipes, new hospitality\u2014Kulsveen is balancing his heritage with innovation to create a Willett for the 21st century. I can already taste it in the glass: bourbon that\u2019s more approachable than in the past, yet deeply nuanced\u2014handcrafted by a fifth-generation Kentucky distiller with the stomach to let each barrel sit until it hits its sweet spot. \u201cTime is really the magical ingredient,\u201d he says, taking a sip. \u201cYou just have to wait, wait, wait.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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