When Rob Samuels, managing director of Maker’s Mark Distillery, talks about his grandparents buying Star Hill Farm in Loretto, Kentucky in 1952 and building a distillery there, he’s keen to add that his family had been making whisky in the state 160 years before that. Back then, farmers harvested their crop, sold what they could to make a living, and distilled the rest. Now, distillation is no afterthought. Today, Maker’s Mark produces 13 million original proof gallons and sources 48.25 million tons of corn and 11.8 million tons of wheat from its surrounding farmers. At that massive scale, it might sound like a fool’s errand to try to work with farmers on an individual basis to work out how to implement regenerative farming techniques to ensure the grains that go into the distillery’s mash tuns are grown conscientiously, but that’s exactly what happened in November 2023 when the distillery filled its first Certified Regenified barrel of Maker’s Mark.
“Bourbon making is a manufacturing process, but you can take steps that differentiate you,” says Samuels. “70 years ago, everyone acknowledged that whiskey [is] from nature — it’s an agricultural product. Today, the Star Hill Farm team is leading research into better understanding where flavour comes
