About
Stunning restoration of Colonel E.H. Taylor Jr.'s historic Old Taylor distillery (est. 1887) in Millville, Kentucky. The Romanesque castle and sunken gardens were painstakingly restored. Produces bourbon, rye, and an acclaimed gin. First whiskey releases in 2021 to immediate critical praise.
Production Details
The Castle & Key Tale
The limestone springs that bubble up through Franklin County have been drawing distillers to this Kentucky hollow since before the Civil War. In 1887, Colonel E.H. Taylor Jr. chose this very spot for his Old Taylor distillery, building a Romanesque castle that rose like something from a fairy tale among the bluegrass hills. For decades, the stone towers and sunken gardens anchored one of Kentucky's most ambitious distilleries.
Then came Prohibition, and time.
By 2014, when Will Arvin and Wes Murry first walked through the ruins, wild vines had claimed the castle walls and the copper stills had long since gone silent. The sunken gardens were overgrown, the limestone steps cracked and weathered. But that spring still ran clear and cold through the property, carrying the same mineral-rich water that had made Taylor's whiskey famous.
What followed was restoration on an almost archaeological scale. Every stone in the castle facade was cleaned and reset. The sunken gardens were excavated and replanted according to original blueprints. New copper stills took their place where Taylor's had once stood, but the bones of the operation—the rickhouses, the spring house, the very geography of whiskey-making—remained unchanged.
The water still flows from the same limestone aquifer, filtered through rock laid down when Kentucky was an inland sea. It carries the signature minerals that Kentucky distillers have prized for two centuries: calcium and magnesium that feed the yeast, iron levels low enough to let the whiskey age without interference.
In the restored stillhouse, steam rises from copper pot stills that produce not just bourbon and rye, but gin—a nod to the craft distilling renaissance that has swept American whiskey beyond its traditional boundaries. The mash bills honor Kentucky tradition while the methods embrace innovation, each batch a conversation between Taylor's ghost and modern ambition.
When Castle & Key's first whiskeys emerged from their barrels in 2021, they carried seven years of aging and more than a century of accumulated wisdom. The critics took notice immediately, but the real validation came from Kentucky itself—bourbon country nodding approval at the castle's return.
The spring runs as it always has, the limestone endures, and the stills sing their ancient song. In Franklin County, some stories are too good to stay buried.