There are plenty of hidden gems to discover when you visit Kentucky bourbon country. One you’ll want to add to your bourbon bucket list is the J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery in Frankfort.
The craft distillery is less than two decades old, but it has ties to more than two centuries of Kentucky whiskey making. Seven generations of Mattinglys have been involved with eight different distilleries in the Bluegrass State.
The current iteration, J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery, was founded by sixth-generation family member Jeff Mattingly and his wife Melissa. The number 1845 is a nod to the year that John Graves Mattingly and his brother Benjamin Franklin Mattingly started the J.G.Mattingly & Brother Distillery. Located in Marion County (south of Bardstown), the distillery was registered as Distillery #2, but there are some who think it might have actually been the first distillery registered in Kentucky.
J.G. had another first on his resume: he perfected the continuous-flow columnar still, a.k.a. the Coffey still, which offered a much faster way to distill whiskey than the traditional pot still.
Since 2010, J. Mattingly 1845 has shared space with Glenn’s Creek Distillery outside Frankfort, Three Boys’ Farm Distillery (now Whiskey Thief Distilling Co.), before spending time in Georgetown, and eventually moving into its current home in 2023. The building, like many in Frankfort, was at one time a state government office building and even a diesel mechanic shop.
J. Mattingly 1845 became a member of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association last year.
In terms of location, J. Mattingly 1845 is less than a mile from Buffalo Trace Distillery, which just across the road. Thankfully, they’re on slightly higher ground so the recent flooding that caused such problems at Buffalo Trace stayed outside the building at J. Mattingly 1845.
Mattingly Family Distilleries
J. G. Mattingly & Brother (1845) RD #2
J. G. Mattingly & Brother (1860) RD #353
B F. Mattingly Distillery (late 1860’s) RD # 14, located at St. Mary’s in Marion Co.
Marion County Distillery (1878) RD #372
J.G. Mattingly & Sons (1883) RD #2 and RD #6 (two distilleries) AKA Glendale Distillery, AKA Bonnie Brothers Distillery
B.F. Mattingly Distillery RD #4
Mattingly & Moore Distillery (B.F. was part owner) (1876) RD # 272
J. Mattingly 1845 (2010) KY-DSP 20030
“A What You See is What You Get Distillery”
I recently had an opportunity to tour the J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery. My tour guides were Harry Richart IV, President; Cameron Mattingly, Vice President of Operations, and Tyler Teller, Vice President of Finance. (And yes, Cameron is Jeff and Mellissa’s son and is the seventh generation of the family to call whiskey their work.
“We’re what I call a ‘what you see is what you get distillery,’” Mattingly said. “We don’t have the super pretty column copper stills. We don’t have a fully automated line working. Everything we do is by hand. We don’t have the ability to hide anything, and I think people like to see the raw way that it’s done here.”
The distillery room revealed a 125-gallon pot still that generates a barrel a week. (Triva fact: The pot was originally a soup pot in a prison that they bought in an auction.) “Our operations definitely a lot more simplified because we’re doing 10,000 cases a year and not 11,000 cases in an eight-hour shift like Jim Beam,” Mattingly said.
The first six barrels rest there in the distillery room and are about 16 months old. There are around 600 barrels aging in a warehouse in Midway, Kentucky. J. Mattingly 1845 gets its barrels from Canton Cooperage in Lebanon, Kentucky.
After we left the distilling room, Richart handed me a toasted barrel stave, one of the individual pieces of oak that make up a bourbon barrel.
“What makes us different…is what we call our double staving method,” Richart said. “With our light whiskies and our rye whiskies, we’ll break down old bourbon barrels and take an axe to it and split it into small pieces. That’s why you get uneven splits. What it does is open up that natural grain. We’ll take a sander and knock off of the nasty dirt and rust on the outside. These are going to be re-charred or toasted and dropped right back down in the barrel.”
Like most craft distillers, J. Mattingly 1845 sources whiskey from places like MGP in Indiana and Green River Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky, while they’re waiting for their homegrown products to come of age. The team of master blenders combines the sourced whiskey into the various products including bourbon, rye, and light whiskey the distillery offers for sale. J. Mattingly has.a robust direct-to-consumer business and is available in 10 states. The distillery hopes to expand to another five states by the end of the year.
In another room, we saw several standard hot plates with standard kitchen pots full of a variety of wax colors to seal the filled bottles. Mattingly said the company originally purchased a $15,000 wax machine, but the wax pots worked much better.
I later learned that another family member was Margie Mattingly Samuels, who was married to Bill Samuels, Sr. of Maker’s Mark fame. A Mattingly family history says “Margie created the packaging, including the shape of the bottle, the look and font of the label, the signature red wax, and even the Maker’s Mark name. Margie is also credited for inventing bourbon tourism.” So even the wax pots are a nod to the family’s history of innovation in whiskey making.
Bourbon Tasting and Blending Experiences
There are three different experiences that visitors can sign up for at the J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery.
First, the 30-minute Magnificent Seven Tasting (from $20 per person) offers a distillery tour and a chance to sample each of the seven different bourbons and ryes the distillery offers.
I “sat in” on this tasting for a few minutes with four ladies who were visiting from North Carolina and Illinois. Dakota Towles, Head of Bottle Blending Experience, was our guide. He did a masterful job educating and entertaining the group, while sharing lots of whiskey knowledge and telling the J. Mattingly 1845 story. (And, of course, plenty of delicious samples.)
Next, the 45-minute Single Barrel Tasting Event (from $60 per person) offers visitors the chance to thieve directly from the barrel and then sample three bourbons, three ryes, and one American light whiskey.
Finally, the premier experience is the one-hour VIP JMatt Private Event (from $175 per person), where you become the Master Blender (with help from a pro!) to choose from a selection of single barrels and create your own blend. Once you’re happy with the blend, you get to bottle it, choose a name and customize the label, and choose your wax color and hand dip it yourself. (Thanks Margie!)
“We’re the only place in the state, and the country, that will actually let you blend whiskey,” Richart said. “There’s a ton of people that will let you come in a do a single barrel experience…we do that. But the heart and soul of (our experience) is blending and putting things together.”
I “blended” myself into a group that had just finished making their selections of which barrels were going into the final blend in their bottles. Once that “fun but a bit stressful” task was behind them, they were enjoying deciding on the names of their unique expressions for the labels and what color combinations to use on the bottles’ wax.
Even if you can’t make to the distillery in person, you can still blend you own bottle online (“Pick your whiskey, choose a bottle, select a custom wax, and customize your label”) and have it shipped to you.
A Commitment to the Military
One of the special programs that J. Mattingly 1845 offers is its commitment to work with a variety of military and veteran organizations. The distillery offers custom bottles that help benefit the men and women associated with those organizations.
The distillery has worked to issue special bottles on behalf of the Navy Seal Foundation (the Sea, Air, and Land Trident Collection), and the Forgotten Coast K9 veteran service dog organization, among others. Special releases have included the POW/MIA Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey, the 10th Mountain Division Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey, the Mogadishu Mile Bourbon, and a Pearl Harbor Commemorative bottle.
Here’s what Richart said last year when the Trident Collection was released, “J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery is honored to have been chosen to create the American Whiskey for the Navy Seal Foundation. We have tremendous respect for our military branches and feel privileged we can partner with the Navy Seal Foundation on this initiative.”
Light Whiskey (Hated No More)
Another category J. Mattingly offers is a number of light whiskey products. (I had to admit my ignorance, when Mattingly asked me if I was familiar with the category.) Mattingly told me that light whiskey first came into the market place in the late 1960s. It has no specific mash bill requirements (although corn is usually dominant) and tends to be sweeter and higher proof, but lighter in color since it is aged in used bourbon barrels. The initial reaction? “Everyone hated it,” Mattingly said.
Another run of light whiskey in the early 2000s brought a similar reaction. “People still hated it,” Mattingly said.
But in today’s whiskey renaissance, light whiskey has found a new and appreciative audience. In fact, the light whiskey offerings are the number one sellers in the J. Mattingly 1845 gift shop. Here’s one light whiskey option you can pick up:
J. Mattingly 1845 Double Staved™ 9-Year-Old Light Whiskey AIR EDITION (part of the Navy Seal Foundation Trident Collection)
Mashbill: 99% corn; 1% malted barley
Flavor profile:
(front-palate) Full-bodied and complex with sweet notes of crème brulée crust, yellow cake, and sweet graham cracker;
(mid-palate) Fruity notes of apple pear and gentle tropical fruit; and
(finish) Maple syrup overlap with gentle oakiness at the back end.
The next time you sit down to plan a trip to Kentucky bourbon country, make sure you put a stop at J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery on your itinerary. It’s an authentic and hands-on experience that you won’t find at too many stops along the way. You might even say it’s “one hell of a pick.”
“Through our custom blending experience, we believe when all is said and done, the decisions you’ve made, the blend you’ve created represent as Jeff Mattingly likes to say, “One hell of a pick.” And to hear our friends who’ve created their own blend…when they have the final decision of the flavor profile…it truly represents their own “One hell of a pick!”
J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery
When You Go to J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery
Frankfort, Kentucky
20 Reilly Road
Frankfort, KY 40601
Monday – Saturday
8:30am – 5:00pm EDT
Sunday Noon – 6:00pm EDT
Book a distillery experience here.
“Starting with breaking down oak barrels, sanding them down, and cutting them into small pieces before re-charring and adding to agin barrels, the double staving process has evolved, and now includes experiments with differing grain cuts, heat treatments, and the amount of staves added to the barrel.”
