Kentucky Owl Whiskey

In 1916, just before the start of Prohibition, the US government confiscated all the Kentucky Owl barrels at the distillery and moved them to Frankfort, Kentucky, where they were stored in a secured warehouse. In 1922, that warehouse mysteriously burnt down (though rumours abounded that before the fire started, all of the barrels were placed on river barges and shipped to Chicago, where the stock was used as part of the Speakeasy movement). However, the fire saw the end of Kentucky Owl whisky for almost 90 years until Charles’s great-great-grandson, Dixon Dedman, found some paperwork in his family’s house and tried to recreate Kentucky Owl whisky once again.

Starting in 2014, he hand-selected barrels of straight Bourbon from distilleries within Kentucky to create small batches of spirit, meeting with a fantastic response from whisky connoisseurs and influencers alike. Kentucky Owl was subsequently sold to Stoli Group in 2018.