Neeley Family Distillery
Family-owned and -operated by father and son duo Roy and Royce Neeley since 2015, Neeley Family Distillery is a small, independent distiller of award-winning, world-class whiskey, moonshine, and absinthe based in Sparta, Kentucky.
For master distiller Royce Neeley, whiskey is in his bloodline, spanning eleven unbroken generations of distilling lineage, dating back to the mid-1700s when his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather James immigrated to the US from Ireland with copper pot stills in tow. With a long and storied history of both licensed and illicit distillation throughout Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, the Neeley family has been distilling spirits in America longer than the United States has existed. In fact, the family’s moonshine recipe remains unchanged: just corn with cane sugar for fermentation.
Like generations before him, Royce has been making whiskey legally—and illegally—most of his life, stubbornly adhering to the traditions that make Neeley whiskey great: sweet mash fermentation in cypress, wild yeast harvested by hand, and pot still distillation, to name a few. With a BA from Transylvania University and an MBA with an emphasis on distillery tourism and operations from Midway University, Royce eats, drinks, and sleeps whiskey—literally: he slept in the distillery for its first two years of operation.
After graduation, Royce turned to his father and successful construction company owner, Roy, to build out the distillery where all production of Neeley Family products takes place. The low-slung, unassuming building with its log cabin exterior and museum in the front contains a small but mighty facility densely packed with a collection of copper pot stills, wooden fermentation vats, stainless steel mash cookers, and the ambrosial aromas of Kentucky sweet mash.
Starting with grain grown on a nearby family farm, Neeley uses a custom hammer mill to create a course grist which is then sweet mash fermented in open top cypress vats for five days using calcium-rich, limestone-filtered water and wild yeast cultivated from a family farm in Warsaw, Kentucky. Copper pot stills are used to produce the bourbon and rye whiskeys used in all Neeley Family Distillery brands, including Hidden Barn (a collaboration between Neeley and former Old Forester Master Taster Jackie Zykan), and a traditional French absinthe still from the 1890s, restored with the help of Vendome, is utilized to craft the distillery’s lauded Absinthe Verte—the most decorated American absinthe and first in the world to receive San Francisco World Spirits Competition’s Platinum Medal.
Aged in air-seasoned, toasted, level-two-charred barrels from Kelvin Cooperage, Neeley Family Distillery whiskeys remain grain forward despite their time spent in barrel, displaying aromas and flavors that can be directly attributed to a meticulous fermentation and distillation processes. And while the distillery has only been legally operational for under a decade, Royce has established himself as a rising star in American spirits, having earned Neeley Family Distillery numerous awards and accolades while broadening the American whiskey landscape.