A distillery on a family farm, 1936.

Willett is a family distillery in Bardstown, in Nelson County, Kentucky. English Wikipedia says the Willett Distilling Company was founded in 1936 on a farm the family owned, with construction beginning that spring, and that Lambert Willett and his sons built the business, led by A. L. “Thompson” Willett, who remained president until 1984. A history published on Fred Minnick’s site in March 2017 says a charter was granted to the company in 1936, and traces the family name in Bardstown whiskey back to the mid-1800s, when John David Willett co-founded the Moore, Willett & Frenke Distillery.

The company dates its first barrels precisely. In a September 2026 release it said the distillery was built on the family’s hog farm three years after Prohibition, and that its first barrel went into Warehouse A by St Patrick’s Day 1937; English Wikipedia, citing the company, gives the first batch as about 30 barrels on 17 March 1937. Its original brand, Wikipedia says, was Old Bardstown, which the 2017 history calls Thompson Willett’s flagship; an Old Bardstown Estate Bottled label is linked to that first 1937 batch, Wikipedia says.

The first Willett era ended in the early 1980s. English Wikipedia says that during the 1970s energy crisis the company switched from whiskey to ethanol for gasohol, and that when fuel prices fell the distilling equipment was shut down in the early 1980s.

Kentucky Bourbon Distillers.

The business passed to a son-in-law. On 1 July 1984, English Wikipedia says, Even G. Kulsveen, formerly of Hamar, Norway, and his wife Martha, Thompson Willett’s daughter, bought the company and the property. The Kentucky Distillers’ Association, honouring him in September 2019, said he was born in Norway, moved to the United States at 14, and met Thompson Willett while working as a glass decanter craftsman.

Under the Kulsveens the company was renamed Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, Ltd., the name it used as its main identity until 2012, and it worked largely as an independent bottler, buying whiskey from other distilleries, according to English Wikipedia. The KDA said that during the dormant years Kulsveen sold aged whiskey overseas, particularly in Asian markets. Many of the company’s labels, Wikipedia notes, do not name Willett at all, and use names such as “Old Bardstown Distilling Company” and “Noah’s Mill Distilling Company”; its bourbons include Noah’s Mill, Rowan’s Creek and Johnny Drum. The legal name has stayed: Spectrum News 1 described the company in December 2022 as Kentucky Bourbon Distillers Ltd, doing business as Willett Distillery.

The still came back on in 2012. English Wikipedia says test distilling began in January that year, citing the Whisky Advocate blog, and that the company brought back “Willett Distillery” as its main name and rejoined the KDA; that October it joined the first “Craft Tour” of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Its first whiskey from the refurbished distillery, a two-year-old cask-strength rye, was bottled in 2014, the reviewer Scotch Noob reported that November; rye has stayed part of the Willett Family Estate line, which English Wikipedia describes as barrel-proof bourbon and rye of varying ages.

Rye and its houses.

The seven brands in this group are all American whiskey names known for rye, often alongside bourbon: Sagamore Spirit, Old Overholt, Templeton, Pikesville, James E. Pepper, Willett and Catoctin Creek. They sit at very different points in the trade, from family-run distilleries to labels that belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single name can stand for a working distillery, a revived old brand or a whiskey made somewhere else and bottled under the label.

In the United States the word on the label has a legal meaning. Federal rules on spirits labelling (27 CFR 5.143) define rye whisky as whisky made from a fermented mash of at least 51 per cent rye, distilled at 160 proof or less and stored in charred new oak barrels at 125 proof or less; a whisky called “straight” must spend at least two years in those barrels. The same rules set out bourbon on the same pattern, with corn in place of rye. What the rules fix is the recipe and the barrel, not the look of the bottle, so the identity of each brand is carried by its name, its label and the place it claims.

That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whiskey is actually distilled, aged and bottled. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whiskey is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A bottle shaped like a still.

One Willett bottle carries its own story. Willett Pot Still Reserve, introduced in 2008 according to English Wikipedia, comes in a decanter which the company says was conceived by Even Kulsveen as “an exact replica of the patented Willett pot still built by Vendome Copper and Brass.” In September 2026 it announced a cask-strength version in the same bottle, to be released twice a year at the spring and autumn equinoxes.

The family still runs it. English Wikipedia says Drew Kulsveen is master distiller and that Britt Kulsveen was named president and “Chief Whiskey Officer” in June 2018; the company describes itself as independent and family-owned. In September 2019 the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame gave Even Kulsveen its Parker Beam Lifetime Achievement Award, the KDA announced, calling him “a beloved icon who patiently resurrected one of the state’s most historic distilleries”; accepting it, he said, “How many of us would have thought, 30 years ago, that we would be here today.” In September 2025 Craft Spirits Magazine reported that Kentucky distillers were mourning his death.

It is growing beyond Bardstown. In December 2022 Governor Andy Beshear announced that the company would build a new distillery operation and barrel warehouses on 150 acres at Springfield, in neighbouring Washington County, Spectrum News 1 reported, describing Willett as family owned and operated. English Wikipedia also records a bar and restaurant at the Bardstown site from 2019 and a collaboration with the band Kings of Leon.

For a design guide, Willett shows a brand carried by one object and a family name rather than by a single logo. Compare Michter’s, a whiskey name revived in Kentucky, and James E. Pepper, another Kentucky house that returned to distilling in the 2010s. For this guide we use a deep red, copper and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Willett’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.