WHEN GREAT WHISKEY MAKING WATER IS RIGHT UNDER YOUR FEET.

When Ken Lewis said “let’s do it! Let’s build a great distillery,” the first thing we did was to look for a source of water superior to Newport’s municipal tap. And, brothers and sisters, did we ever find it! Directly beneath New Riff Distilling, under the land that Mr. Lewis has owned since 1992, lies an aquifer. We drilled a private well 100 feet deep into this aquifer and gained a water source that is just big enough to run a distillery of this size—and with a temperature of 58˚F every day of the year, it saves us a huge amount of energy. Thanks to the limestone-packed hills to the south of the distillery, this groundwater packs a wallop—with up to four times as much dissolved minerals as are found in the typical municipal water supplies used by nearly all traditional Kentucky sour mash distilleries. Yeast like minerals. We like yeast. And so it begins…with the water.