Maker's Mark started with a fire. In 1953, Bill Samuels Sr. — sixth generation of a Kentucky distilling family — burned the 170-year-old family recipe in his fireplace and started over, buying the historic Burks' Distillery in Loretto for $35,000. His target was a bourbon without the burn. Rather than wait years to test mash bills by distilling and aging, he and his wife Margie baked loaves of bread with different grain combinations; the wheat loaf won, and reportedly Pappy Van Winkle himself helped refine the wheated recipe that followed: 70% corn, 16% soft red winter wheat, 14% malted barley, no rye at all. Margie, an artist with a chemistry degree, invented nearly everything else — the name, the squared bottle, the hand-torn label, the Scottish "whisky" spelling honoring family heritage, and the hand-dipped red wax seal, making her the first woman directly involved with a distillery inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. The first bottle was dipped in May 1958. The distillery, now Star Hill Farm, sits on its own limestone-filtered spring lake, is a National Historic Landmark, and remains the only major distillery that hand-rotates every barrel from top to bottom of the rackhouse, aging to taste rather than time. The range runs from the flagship through Maker's 46, Cask Strength, 101, the Wood Finishing Series, and Private Selection barrels.

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