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PSA: about half the brands on the shelf didn’t make what’s in the bottle. Most of them aren’t allowed to tell you who did.
Here’s how it usually works in bourbon. A brand buys its whiskey from a bigger distillery (that’s contract distilling), signs an NDA, and then builds its whole story around everything except where the whiskey actually came from. Kind of a funny spot to be in, for a category that runs on heritage.
I recently talked with Caleb Kilburn and Cordell Lawrence, who are trying to fix that. They’re building Eastern Light Distilling, a big contract distillery in Morehead, Kentucky. The twist: it isn’t planning a whiskey of its own. Every barrel is for someone else’s brand.
The NDA problem
Most contract distilleries also sell their own brand, and they make more money on it. So guess whose whiskey comes first? Caleb didn’t sugarcoat it. Clients get unpredictable supply, steep prices, and no right to say where their whiskey is made.
“If you don’t have access to those marketable assets, you’re hamstrung.” ~Caleb Kilburn
That means no talking about the water, the grain, the people, or the place. You get the liquid and a label, and you’re on your own from there.
“Even in the best contract distillery and client relationship, there is still a bit of animosity.” ~Cordell Lawrence
Who’s building it
These two aren’t new to this. Caleb helped build Kentucky Peerless Distilling from the ground up (he literally helped pour the concrete) and ran production there for ten years. Cordell spent over a decade at Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel’s, before becoming COO at Peerless. While they were there, they saw an opportunity to rethink how contract distilling works, and left to build it. Eastern Light was announced in 2023.
Lifting the curtain
Eastern Light’s whole idea is to take the stuff distilleries usually keep secret and let clients use it in their own marketing. And there’s good stuff to share. The site is less than a mile from Independent Stave’s newest barrel-making plant, where every barrel can be charred and toasted to a brand’s own specs. The water comes from Cave Run Lake in Daniel Boone National Forest, through a brand new treatment plant that filters out forever chemicals. For a small brand, that’s a lot of story you’d never be able to build on your own.
“Instead of taking all those valuable resources and locking them behind NDAs where the client can’t access them, we lift the curtain.” ~Caleb Kilburn
They’re even planning around 12,000 square feet for tours and a shop, and the tours are for their clients’ brands, not Eastern Light. Brands can bring their own distiller, or lean on Caleb and his team as the faces behind the whiskey. As Caleb put it, you basically get your own distillery “without the capex,” meaning without spending millions to build one.
Emma, our London-based New Rules editor, argued last year that nobody wants to go to your distillery tour, and that brands now have to go to people instead of waiting for people to come to them. Eastern Light is building a tour wing anyway, just not for itself.
I’m curious which way that one goes :)
Build the whiskey you actually want
Older contract distilleries were mostly built to make a short menu of whiskeys, usually a few standard recipes. That was fine when brands planned to stand out with their label alone. Eastern Light lets brands choose pretty much everything: the grains, the yeast, how it’s cooked, how the barrel is charred. And there’s no minimum order.
What this says about brands now
This is the bigger point. A bourbon brand used to be able to get by on a cool label and the right price. Not anymore. People want to know where their drink comes from, they hop between categories more than they used to, and the brands breaking through usually have a real product and a real story behind it. Secrecy and a few standard recipes don’t help much with any of that.
Eastern Light is betting the next wave of brands will be built by people who own their brand but rent the factory, and who want that factory to be part of the story.
“It’s not about Caleb and Cordell, our focus is on the craft brands that we support.” ~Cordell Lawrence
NEW RULES FROM EASTERN LIGHT
Your supplier’s incentives are part of your brand. If the people making your product also compete with you, it shows up in your price, your supply, and what you’re allowed to say.
Don’t sign away your provenance. Where and how a product is made is some of the most valuable material a brand has.
Own the brand, rent the infrastructure, and make the infrastructure part of the story.
Eastern Light Distilling is based in Morehead, Kentucky, with full production expected in late 2027 or early 2028.
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