The bourbon was launched in October 1996, but the Kentucky site was already making whiskey in the days of Elijah Pepper and James Crow
Woodford Reserve bourbon, from the American company Brown-Forman, turns 30 this month: it was launched in October 1996, according to The Spirits Business. The brand is young, but the place where it is made is not. The distillery, on Glenn's Creek near Versailles, Kentucky, is a National Historic Landmark in the United States, and the brand's official website says bourbon has been made there since 1812.
The history of the site was pieced together by lawyer Brian Haara, an author who writes about bourbon and the law. Elijah Pepper, a farmer from Virginia, bought hundreds of acres along the creek and, by 1812, already had a house, a mill and a distillery there. He died in 1831, and his son, Oscar Pepper, took over the business. Between 1833 and 1855, except for two years, the distiller was James Crow, whose name gave rise to the Old Crow brand.
In 1838, Oscar completed a limestone building for the distillery, which came to be called the Old Oscar Pepper Distillery. After a family dispute and two bankruptcies, the property passed in 1878 to the partnership Labrot & Graham. In 1881, a federal judge ruled that the name Old Oscar Pepper Distillery referred to the place of production, not a trademark, and could therefore stay with the new owners, according to Haara.
According to the brand, the recipe is 72% corn, 18% rye and 10% malted barley, and the water comes from the distillery itself, filtered by the limestone underground. The bourbon combines whiskey distilled in copper pot stills with column-still whiskey and ages in new charred white oak barrels. Elizabeth McCall, who joined the company's lab in 2009, has been master distiller since 2023, and Chris Morris, who started in bourbon in 1976, became master distiller emeritus.
For the anniversary, the brand released two editions sold only at the distillery shop, according to The Spirits Business: a bourbon made only in the three copper pot stills, at 50% ABV, for US$64.99 per 375 ml bottle, and a single-barrel selection of Double Oaked in a ceramic decanter, limited to 150 units, at US$225. The distillery welcomes more than 200,000 visitors a year. In Brazil, the Bebidário catalog has two of the house's labels.
Sources: Woodford Reserve (October 8, 2026), The Spirits Business (October 8, 2026), Brian Haara (August 8, 2013).
