This straight bourbon comes from a Bardstown family distillery that has lived through the whole modern story of the bourbon business: founded right after Prohibition, quiet through the lean years, and distilling again today. Thompson Willett built the distillery on the family farm in 1936, and his father and grandfather were already in the whiskey trade before him. Even Kulsveen and Martha Willett Kulsveen took over in 1984, when demand for premium whiskey was falling. Once their own warehouses ran dry, they bought whiskey from other Kentucky distilleries, and that's how Willett built its long reputation as an independent bottler. The original estate started distilling again in 2012, and the fifth generation of the family now runs it, with Drew Kulsveen as Master Distiller. Willett's own distilling is traditional and hands-on: limestone-filtered spring water from the estate, sour-mash fermentation, and a second pass through a copper pot still modelled on the family's original patented design. It's a bottle with real history behind it that doesn't need to be treated like a trophy. Pour it neat, add a splash of water, or build an Old Fashioned around it.