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Former Four Roses Master Distiller Jim Rutledge has unveiled plans to open a new distillery in Middletown, Kentucky, located east of Louisville. Rutledge’s partners in the venture are Stephen Camisa and Jon Mowry, both co-managing partners of Bedford & Grove LLC, a liquor wholesaler and distributer.
Rutledge announced his intention to start his own distillery several months after leaving Four Roses in late 2015. He set out to finance the project with crowdfunding, but Rutledge was forced to shut that down after roughly a week. The crowdfunding campaign was only ever intended to raise seed money for the project, and it’s abrupt termination put a cloud over the effort.
Now Rutledge is back, presumably with more conventional financing. The plan is similar to the one hatched in 2016: the build a $20 to$25 million facility, named for Rutledge. Luckett & Farley and Pod Architecture & Design, both participants in construction of Rabbit Hole Distillery, are engaged in the engineering and architecture of the JW Rutledge Distillery.
