What is the oldest operating bourbon still in Kentucky? That depends. Here's what we found

The 200-year-old still on display at the Frazier History Museum in downtown Louisville could certainly make bourbon today, if someone wanted to try it.

But just because the 19th century technology can work doesn’t mean that modern distillers have the patience to use it. These copper giants are often considered the heart of a distillery, and remarkably, beyond automating parts of the process, still technology hasn’t changed much throughout United States history.

Meaning, this relic from the 1800s can distill bourbon ... as long as you have an open fire and 19th century know-how.  

"It's extremely difficult to do, to make whiskey over an open fire," Chris Morris, master distiller emeritus for Woodford Reserve, told The Courier Journal. "We know how to run stills, but we don't know how to run this kind of still."

In honor of Bourbon Heritage Month, I attempted to track down the oldest operating and inoperable stills in the commonwealth. The more I asked about stills, though, the more I learned the answer to "what's oldest" is as subjective as the tasting notes in bourbon.

This copper still that was made between 1802 and 1867 -- exact date is unknown -- was recently unearthed while the Woodford Reserve Distillery was being built in Versailles, Kentucky. The site was the Old Oscar Pepper Distillery. Historians think the still was buried so it wouldn't be confiscated to be melted down for munitions during the Civil War. Sept. 8, 2025

The still at the Frazier, 829 W. Main St., for example, was discovered in recent years buried in the ground at what is now the Woodford Reserve Distillery near Frankfort. Morris tried to piece together as much of its mysterious history as he could. He looked at tax records, which showed that at one point there were as many as five potstills on that property. The serial number on it links it to a coppersmith in Lexington, and history says that Elijah Pepper was distilling on that site as early as 1812. Beyond that, though, it's hard to know when it was used and why someone buried it in the ground.

Morris teamed up with Louisville-based Vendome Copper and Brass Works, 729 Franklin St., to refurbish the antique still. The construction team that dug it up only found the still's boil pot, so the Vendome craftsmen needed to build an entirely new top. They studied plans for stills from that era and took a few cues from a still at the Smithsonian Institution that once belonged to President George Washington.

By the time they finished the project, the still had an early 19th century bottom and a 21st century top. While that’s certainly a dramatic gap, this antique isn’t alone in the sense that it’s taken on new parts.

A 300-gallon batch still system at Vendome Copper & Brass Works is shown. The century-old family-owned firm supplies pot stills and column stills to giants of the bourbon industry and many craft distillers around the world. All vessels are hand-made.July 24, 2014

“Keep in mind that stills wear out,” Morris told me. “So, there might be a still that's allegedly old, but it's been rebuilt over-and-over again. Especially, the 100% copper stills — they wear out.” 

In a way, stills are similar to classic cars. Even if a Ford Model T still runs, it's not driving on tires from the 1920s.

Rob Sherman, the vice president of Vendome, estimates about 75% of stills in Kentucky’s bourbon industry were installed in the past decade during the most recent bourbon boom. The bulk of the old stills that are still in operation were built during a production boom in the 1960s. When bourbon slumped in the 1980s, many distilleries put off repairs to their stills, which caused plenty of problems. Delaying maintenance can eventually cause so many leaks that stills become unrepairable. 

Typically, a still's outer shell needs to be replaced every 20-30 years, and the inner trays need to be replaced every seven to 10 years.

Donnie Evans polishes copper to a mirror finish at Vendome Copper & Brass Works. The century-old family-owned firm supplies pot stills and column stills to giants of the bourbon industry and many craft distillers around the world.July 24, 2014

For many distilleries, though, it’s hard to let a still go.

“Some of the premium brands or the old brands, they don't want to change anything,” Sherman told me. “They want everything to be the same, so the bourbon tastes the same. They want that historical value of everything with nothing changing.”

Maker’s Mark, for example, still operates the still that was on the Loretto property when the Samuels family purchased the old Burks’ Distillery in 1953. The original distillery, and its still, were built in the 1800s. When the company added a second and third still in 2001 and 2015, respectively, it copied the original still design exactly.  

“All of Maker's Mark's still designs date to the early-1800s, and we have carefully maintained each of them over time," Maker's Mark’s master distiller Blake Layfield told me. “We have continuous maintenance and replacement cycles to keep everything in top shape.”

The replacement cycle puts that original still at about 14-years-old, even if it’s more than 200-years-old in spirit.  

Brown-Forman Corporation's oldest Kentucky-based still, which dates to 1933, went into semi-retirement about two years ago, Morris told me. The company, which owns Woodford Reserve, Old Forester and Cooper's Craft among other spirits, added a few new stills from Vendome and moved the 1933 one into reserve. It’s hooked up and it can work, Morris explained, but they don’t need to use it.

Copper stills have been part of our country's spirit scene since well before the country's founders signed the Declaration of Independence, Jack Rein, executive director of The Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History in Bardstown told me. They grew in popularity alongside America's copper industry. Prior to that, distillers would make whiskey in hollowed out logs. 

The Getz Museum, 114 N. 5th St., Bardstown, is home to a dynamic collection of artifacts that date back to the pre-Colonial period and up to American Prohibition. So, it did not surprise me at all that the oldest still I tracked down for this column was at the museum.

What did surprise me, though, is that its original owner never distilled in Kentucky.

This still, which is on display at the Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History in Bardstown, belonged to George Washington. The former president opened a whiskey distillery in 1797.

After his presidency, Washington opened a distillery on his estate at Mount Vernon in 1797. In 1799, his operation produced nearly 11,000 gallons of whiskey valued at $7,500. To do this, he operated five copper potstills for 12 months a year, and one of those potstills is on display in The Getz Museum.

Really the only way to preserve a still like Washington's, which is seemingly in its original form, is to use it sparingly. If the distillers at Mount Vernon had kept making whiskey with it for decades after Washington's death, it wouldn’t be here today. Copper erodes naturally during the distillation process, Morris told me. Without maintenance and new parts, the copper becomes thin enough to crumble into dust.

“Every time you run your still, it gets thinner, and thinner, and thinner, and thinner, until finally, the still will collapse,” Morris said. “It will get a hole. It'll breakdown, in essence.”

Stills aren’t built to last forever. They’re built to make bourbon.

And honestly, what I learned more than anything while writing this column is that the true age of a still is far less important than age on the bottle of bourbon it makes.

Reach Courier-Journal features columnist Maggie Menderski at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: What is the oldest operating bourbon still in Kentucky? That depends. Here's what we found