Kentucky Peerless Master Distiller and COO Are Departing to Found a New Distillery

Kentucky Peerless Distilling Co. master distiller Caleb Kilburn and chief operating officer Cordell Lawrence are leaving the company to launch new distillery in Eastern Kentucky. The venture, to be called Eastern Light Distilling, will be built from the ground up in Rowan County near the town of Morehead, about 66 miles east of Lexington, and will represent an investment of more than $143.7 million.

The business plan calls for Eastern Light to be a custom contract distiller for craft whiskey makers—a model similar to those at Bardstown Bourbon Co. and MGP. The new facility will have a production capacity of 90,000 barrels annually, making a variety of whiskeys including bourbon and rye, but not limited to those. Both Kilburn and Lawrence will stay on at Peerless while they get the new project underway.

The new project is expected to create a total of 50 new jobs, not including the construction work need to build the site. Little was disclosed about the investors, except to say the venture will be locally owned.

Kilburn joined Kentucky Peerless in 2014 at age 22 as head distiller, and production began the following year. He quickly emerged as something of a wunderkind in the whisky world, producing expressions that were young and yet highly rated. In 2017 Kentucky Peerless straight rye finished at No.-15 on Whisky Advocate’s Top 20 list, and four years later its Double Oak expression ranked at No.-8. Cordell Lawrence joined Peerless in 2017 as director of global marketing and strategy, and became chief operating officer in 2021. He had previously worked in a variety of executive roles, including a nearly five-year tenure at Brown-Forman.

Peerless was launched in 2013 by Corky Taylor and his son Carson, descendants of the original owners. The first Peerless Distillery opened in 1889 and was shuttered just before Prohibition.