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Inside the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi, still operating in its original location, the history is impossible to miss.
"The history of this place is surreal. You walk in, and you immediately see it," Kyle Merklein, master distiller at Holladay Distillery, said.
KSHB 41 visited the distillery in Weston after neighbors told us about it during our Let's Talk event.
Holladay Distillery's history and its bourbon have something in common — they both start with water.
"This section right here is the original spring that was officially documented by Lewis and Clark in 1804," Audrey Sisco, marketing communications manager, said, pointing at the location.
"Ben Holladay was from Kentucky — and as a Kentucky boy, seeing a limestone spring meant bourbon," Sisco said.
That spring would become the foundation of a distillery and a legacy that has lasted more than 170 years.
"The distillery started before the Civil War," Matt Jacquinot, national on-premise specialist at Holladay Distillery, said. "It feels like so long ago, almost like a time you could never imagine."
Some things, they say, haven't changed.
"The beginning and the end are about consistency: that water, that rickhouse and where that barrel sits. That's the thread that kind of runs throughout the company's history," Merklein said.
Even Prohibition couldn't stop the flow.
"During Prohibition, we could make medicinal whiskey one month out of the year," Jacquinot said. "So that was what kept the little lights on back then."
It's a history they work to preserve while growing.
"It's a fun thing where we can thread that needle, bringing in newer technology and advancements," Merklein said. "While still doing something that has been done in America for over 200 years."
It's a feeling they don't take for granted.
"It's a really amazing thing to be a small part of that history and to keep it going," Merklein said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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