Willett Fills Its First Barrel at New Distillery

Four and a half years after breaking ground on a site in Springfield, Kentucky, Willett Distillery has filled the new facility’s first barrel. The milestone, which marks the completion of the project’s first phase, comes after the buildout of a 70,000-square-foot distillery campus, which currently includes a column stripping still with a large pot still and five barrel warehouses. The inaugural barrel was filled on Thursday, June 18th—also the date of the late Martha Kulsveen’s birthday—making the occasion especially poignant for the Kulsveen family, which has run Willett since 1984. Construction is not entirely complete, with a visitor experience expected in the coming years. All in, Willett invested about $93 million into the 150-acre Springfield site.

Master distiller Drew Kulsveen notes that while the new campus enables Willett to grow, the distillery remains anchored in Bardstown (about 20 miles northwest of Springfield), and the expansion is not a relocation. Every experience currently offered at Willett’s Bardstown home base, including distillery tours and dining at The Bar at Willett, will remain available, and the distillery will also continue its distilling, bottling, and warehousing operations at the site.

Willett’s collection of whiskeys includes the Willett Pot Still Reserve and Willett Family Estate rye (the latter of which is tricky to get your hands on), as well as the widely available Noah’s Mill, Rowan’s Creek, and Johnny Drum expressions. The Springfield site should enable the distillery to meet demand for its harder-to-find releases in the years to come, given that its about double the size of its original facility, and will likely help Willett move even farther beyond its original status as a premier non-distiller producer.