Bulleit Proof

6 Family Business

1987.

MY NEW BEGINNING. I’m going to become a bourbon distiller, using my great-great-grandfather Augustus’s family recipe that features a larger rye component than in other bourbons. To raise funds for my start-up, I decide to go fund myself. I take out a home equity line on my house, and then I take out another loan, the two loans totaling $1M. I soon enter into a contract with Leestown Distilling Company, where I will distill my bourbon and age it in barrels. One problem. That will take a good six years, 10 for my premium batch. I need bourbon now. I find a solution. Ferdie Falk and Bob Baranaskas, the owners of the company, summon me to Lake Success, New York, a sleepy village on Northern Long Island. We meet offseason, so I miss the stampede of beautiful people summering, but I don’t mind. I put my faith in faith, then in people, and I try to watch for signs. Symbols. I couldn’t dream of a more symbolic place to launch my company than in a town called Success.

So I agree to distill at Leestown Distilling and purchase a small amount of bourbon from them straightaway, a fairly common practice. I need a name. I go with Thoroughbred, buy some generic bottles, slap on some labels with uninspired design, well, virtually no design, and distribute the stuff locally. I am off and running. Well, off and stumbling.

I toy with names for my company, finally decide on KenAgra, short for Kentucky Agricultural Incorporated, since bourbon is in fact an agricultural product ...