Colonel E.H. Taylor Jr. built this distillery in 1887. He designed the Bottled-in-Bond Act, invented bourbon tourism, and chose this Frankfort, Kentucky hillside for its limestone spring. Then the distillery closed in 1972 and sat in ruins for four decades. In 2014, it was reborn as Castle & Key, and today it produces some of Kentucky's most acclaimed small-batch bourbon while serving as the production home for Pinhook, one of the most distinctive NDP brands in American whiskey. This is contract distilling as craft partnership, not industrial supply chain.
Castle & Key Distillery occupies one of the most historically significant sites in American whiskey. The property at 4445 McCracken Pike in Frankfort, Kentucky, was originally built in 1887 by Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., the man widely credited with professionalizing the bourbon industry. Taylor, who also championed the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, constructed the Old Taylor Distillery with European-inspired architecture, a castle-like facade, a classical spring house, and sunken gardens designed to make the facility a destination. It became the birthplace of bourbon tourism.
The distillery operated for decades before falling into disrepair after closing in 1972. For over 40 years, the Old Taylor site sat abandoned, its castle walls crumbling, its warehouses empty, its gardens overgrown. In 2014, Will Arvin purchased the ruins and began a painstaking restoration. The facility was renamed Castle & Key Distillery, and production resumed with a focus on craft spirits, seasonal gins, and small-batch bourbon and rye whiskey.
The first bourbon distilled at the restored facility began aging in 2017. Castle & Key’s first bourbon release, a 4-year-old expression, arrived in 2022, marking the first bourbon produced at the historic site in nearly five decades. A 6-year-old small batch bourbon followed in July 2025, earning Gold Medals from the ASCOT Awards, the New York International Spirits Competition, and the International Wine & Spirits Competition.
Castle & Key’s contract distilling role is selective and partnership-driven, fundamentally different from the high-volume operations at MGP or Bardstown Bourbon Company. The distillery does not run a broad contract program servicing hundreds of clients. Instead, it partners with a small number of brands that work directly with the Castle & Key production team to develop custom mashbills and aging programs.
Pinhook Bourbon is Castle & Key’s primary contract client and a brand that has been intertwined with the distillery since its earliest production days. Pinhook was founded by Sean Josephs, a former NYC sommelier and restaurateur (Char No. 4, Maysville, Kenton’s), who applies a wine-inspired “vintage approach” to bourbon: rather than blending for a consistent house profile year after year, each annual release is a unique expression of that year’s best barrels.
Since 2017, Pinhook has distilled proprietary mashbills at Castle & Key for both bourbon and rye releases. Josephs works directly with the Castle & Key team to formulate recipes and selects barrels for each vintage release. Breaking Bourbon noted that the partnership positions Castle & Key as a potential “new major player in the realm of contract distilling” for Kentucky whiskey.
Pinhook’s product lines include the Flagship Bourbon (annual release, typically aged 3-4 years), High Proof limited releases at or near cask strength, the Vertical Series (tracking a single barrel set across multiple years of aging), and the Collaboration Series including a Double Oak expression. The rye releases, including the Rye’d On expression that was the first whiskey released from the restored Old Taylor site, are also distilled at Castle & Key.
Before partnering with Castle & Key, Pinhook sourced whiskey from MGP. The shift to Castle & Key marked a deliberate move toward a production partner where Pinhook could have hands-on involvement in mashbill design and barrel selection from day one.
Castle & Key also distills for other brands, including Whiskey Row Bourbon, though the distillery keeps its full client list relatively private. The operation processes up to 1,000 cases a day through its bottling line, suggesting capacity beyond just the Castle & Key and Pinhook brands.
Castle & Key distills everything on site, from grain to barrel. The restored facility uses a combination of modern production equipment installed within the historic architecture. Every drop of spirit sold under the Castle & Key name has been “made within the castle walls, from still to barrel to bottle,” as Lead Blender Brett Connors puts it.
The distillery runs column still distillation and produces bourbon, rye, and gin. The bourbon and rye mashbills are not publicly disclosed in exact percentages, but the 6-year small batch bourbon is bottled at 50.5% ABV and the Experimental Series releases run at varying proofs up to 105+, suggesting the distillery is working with a range of grain bills.
The 2026 Experimental Series showcases the distillery’s creative range: a Restoration Rye finished in cherry liqueur cask, a Wheated Bourbon finished in Martinique Rhum casks, plans for a white port bourbon, orange wine finishes, and a Tokaji wheated bourbon. Each release is limited to two barrels and available only at the distillery.
The water comes from the same limestone spring that Colonel Taylor selected in 1887, filtered through the Kentucky limestone that has supplied Frankfort-area distilleries for centuries. Buffalo Trace sits just a few miles down the road, drawing from the same geological formation.
Castle & Key ages its whiskey in new charred American white oak barrels in rickhouses on the Frankfort property. The aging environment benefits from central Kentucky’s climate, with the dramatic seasonal temperature swings (hot, humid summers and cold winters) that drive aggressive barrel interaction.
The progression from 4-year to 6-year bourbon releases indicates that the earliest barrels laid down in 2017 are now reaching a maturity sweet spot, and older expressions will continue to emerge in the coming years. For contract clients like Pinhook, the aging timeline means that the whiskey distilled under partnership agreements is gaining complexity year over year, with the Vertical Series specifically designed to showcase that maturation arc publicly.
Castle & Key represents a very different model of contract distilling than the industrial-scale operations. Where MGP serves 50+ brands from a catalog of established recipes and Bardstown Bourbon Company offers 500 points of customization for 300+ clients, Castle & Key works with a handful of partners on deeply collaborative, small-batch production.
For Pinhook specifically, the Castle & Key relationship is more akin to a winery’s vineyard partnership than a traditional contract distilling arrangement. Josephs is involved in mashbill design, barrel selection, and blending decisions. The whiskey is not just produced at Castle & Key; it is co-developed there. That level of involvement is only possible at the scale Castle & Key operates.
This matters for consumers because it means a bottle of Pinhook bourbon is genuinely a different product than Castle & Key’s own releases, even though both are distilled on the same equipment in the same building. The mashbills differ, the barrel selections differ, and the blending philosophy is entirely separate. It is transparency through design rather than transparency through disclosure.
Castle & Key Small Batch Wheated Bourbon is a wheated expression that showcases the softer, rounder side of what the distillery’s production can achieve. The wheat-for-rye swap produces a gentler palate entry with honey and pastry character.
The 6-Year Small Batch Bourbon (released July 2025, 50.5% ABV, $39.99) represents the current peak of Castle & Key’s own bourbon program, offering the depth and complexity that only comes with extended aging.
The Experimental Series offers distillery-exclusive, two-barrel releases each month, featuring innovative finishes that push the boundaries of Kentucky whiskey while honoring Taylor’s original spirit of exploration.
Castle & Key is simultaneously a preservation project and a production facility, a bourbon history museum and a working distillery, a heritage site and a contract partner for one of the most innovative NDP brands in the market. That combination of old and new, preserved and reimagined, is what makes it unique in the contract distilling landscape.
When you taste a Pinhook vintage release, you are tasting whiskey distilled in a building designed by the father of modern bourbon, from a spring he selected in 1887, by a team that restored his vision from literal ruins. That provenance is not marketing. It is limestone and architecture and water and time.
OAKR’s blind tasting panel strips all of that context away and evaluates purely on flavor. Whether Castle & Key’s own expressions or Pinhook’s vintage releases score higher on your personal palate is a question only objective tasting data can answer. The story is extraordinary. The liquid has to stand on its own.
Bourbon enthusiast, spirits industry analyst, and the voice behind OAKR's distillery guides, brand reviews, and bourbon education content. Visiting distilleries, dissecting mashbills, and translating the craft into data since 2024.
Castle & Key was built by the father of modern bourbon in 1887, abandoned for 40 years, and restored to produce award-winning whiskey. OAKR’s blind tasting data tells you whether the liquid lives up to the legacy.
