The story starts around 1830 with Augustus Bulleit, a Louisville tavern keeper who distilled a distinctly high-rye whiskey — and then vanished from the historical record after his death in 1860. More than a century later his great-great-grandson Tom Bulleit, a Kentucky lawyer, spent years reconstructing what he believed the family recipe had been, launching Bulleit Bourbon in 1987 as a deliberately unfashionable proposition: bold, dry, and spicy at a moment when the market wanted soft and sweet. The mash bill is the whole identity — roughly 68% corn, 28% rye, and 4% malted barley, far more rye than most mainstream Kentucky bourbon, producing the peppery, dry profile that made it a bartender's bottle long before it became a household name. Diageo acquired the brand in 2000, and in 2017 Bulleit opened its own $115 million distillery in Shelbyville on a former tobacco farm, ending years of contract production; it's now among the most architecturally striking stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, with a visitor center that opened in 2019. The range covers the 90-proof flagship, the acclaimed Rye added in 2011, the 10 Year, Barrel Strength, single barrel releases, and the newly permanent Bulleit '87, a bourbon-and-rye blend finished on toasted American and French oak staves.

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