Jeptha Creed has built its distilling ethos around terroir. The Nethery family has been involved in farming in Shelby County, Kentucky for generations, so when Joyce and Bruce Nethery were looking for an additional family business to start with their children, a farm-focused bourbon distillery fit the bill perfectly.
The family farm is located at the foothills of the Jeptha Knob, which gave them the name, and their farming know-how and love of flavor led them to start with Bloody Butcher corn to give their bourbon a notably different flavor profile from standard Kentucky bourbon. Now a decade into their journey, the Nethery family has released a solera-aged bourbon that showcases some of the heirloom corn varietals they’ve grown and distilled over the years.
“The ‘Jeptha’ in Jeptha Creed comes from our home farm where we still live and represents 250 years of family heritage right here,” says founder and master distiller Joyce Nethery. “It also represents state, local, and Bible history. The Knobs were named by Squire Boone and Daniel Boone when they came in and explored Kentucky in the late 1700s. Creed is our promise to stand by honoring those values as we grow.”
Joyce is a chemical engineer by trade, while her husband, Bruce, is a generational family farmer and her daughter, Autumn Nethery, focuses on sales and marketing. While Joyce says it is sometimes a trial to work so closely with her family, each member has complementary skills, which works out beautifully.
Over the years Bruce has tracked down and propagated numerous heirloom corn varietals, from Hickory King white corn to Oaxacan Green corn, to Jimmy Red and Bloody Butcher red corns, to Blue Clarage corn — and everything in between. He always has a patch of new seed stock going behind his house, which he often harvests by hand for seed stock for the next year’s growing season.
“Being a farmer distiller, to me, means that we are capturing the essence of the land, of the terroir, of the work and the energy and the effort that goes into growing the corn and then distilling it, and being able to control that process all the way, literally from the ground all the way to the glass,” Joyce says.
To celebrate a decade of terroir-driven, non-GMO, heirloom-corn-based bourbon, Jeptha Creed’s latest project utilizes a solera system that includes barrels of bourbon distilled from each corn varietal the distillery has cultivated and distilled so far. All the barrels share the same mash bill — 75 per cent heirloom corn, 20 per cent malted rye, and five per cent malted barley. Each barrel is aged a minimum of four years, though some are much older.
The solera system is made of barrels stacked in a pyramid shape with the oldest barrels on the bottom and the newest barrels on the top. The idea is that all the barrels of whiskey will mingle and the solera will retain characteristics from all the whiskeys added to it, even long after the old barrels are removed and new barrels are added. In another 10 years, all the current whiskey characteristics will still be there and new heirloom corn varietals will be added to the mix.
“Ten years in the industry has been such a blessing to us,” Joyce says. “I am thrilled to be here. It's been such a journey, and we have learned so much along the way.”
Jeptha Creed’s 10th Anniversary Solera-Aged Bourbon will be bottled at 100 proof. It represents a decade of dedication, hard work, and terroir-driven flavor experimentation that will continue to evolve as the family develops new heirloom corn-based non-GMO bourbons.
Jeptha Creed 10th Anniversary Solera-Aged Bourbon will debut at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival on September 10, 2026. It will be available at Jeptha Creed Distillery from September 17 and appear in markets after this date. Learn more at jepthacreed.com.
