Ten Years After Its First Barrel, Leiper's Fork Distillery Is Copying Its Stillhouse Instead of Moving It

Leiper's Fork Distillery filled its first barrel in the spring of 2016. It marked ten years with a party on Southall Road on Saturday, October 17, where it released a blended anniversary whiskey called "A Decade of Distilling: Grain to Glass." For anyone who lives along Leipers Creek Road or Old Hillsboro Road, the bigger change involves the copper still in the timber-framed stillhouse. In June 2025 the plan was to move it downtown. The most recent reporting says Nashville is getting a copy of it instead.

What ten years built on 27 acres

The Tennessean's 2016 opening coverage named Lee and Lynlee Kennedy as the husband-and-wife owners. The distillery's own history says Lee had been distilling at home for more than two decades. After Tennessee changed its law in 2009, he spent three years working to change Williamson County's rules so he could open a commercial distillery.

The site sits just outside the village. The tasting room and gift shop are in a log cabin that the Williamson Herald reported was built in the 1820s and moved from Dickson County. Next to the cabin, a timber-framed stillhouse holds a 500-gallon copper pot still. The distillery says it makes about 25,000 gallons a year.

The anniversary blend shows what a decade of patience produces. It combines straight bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye. The regular lineup gives a sense of how long this distillery waits. The distillery's whiskey page lists a 100-proof bottled-in-bond bourbon aged five years, a Tennessee whiskey aged six years and a rye aged seven years. A distillery that filled its first barrel in 2016 couldn't have put bottles with that much age on the shelf in its first several years.

The plan in 2025, and the plan described in October 2026

When the expansion to Nashville Yards was announced, the June 12, 2025 release on Business Wire described a straightforward swap. Lee Kennedy would move the 500-gallon still, named "Ginger," from Leiper's Fork to the new downtown site and install a new 1,000-gallon system in its place.

On October 2, 2026, The Daily Pour visited Southall Road and described a different arrangement.

The Daily Pour piece doesn't mention Ginger by name and doesn't explain the change. Its description is consistent all the way through, though. The village keeps a 500-gallon still, and downtown gets a smaller one cast in the same shape. The Franklin Beacon reported on October 5 that the Nashville Yards location is targeting mid-January 2027. The distillery's own Nashville Yards page still says "Opening Fall 2026."

Why a half-size copy fits the way this place makes whiskey

The distillery has already done this once. In downtown Franklin, its House of Spirits bar runs a 50-gallon still, where head distiller Sterling Rogers has been making rum, liqueurs, vodka and limoncello in small runs. Downtown Nashville will follow the same pattern at a larger scale. Devin Walden, a Kentucky native who was previously master distiller at Big Machine Distillery and worked at Woodford Reserve, will run the 250-gallon still at 21 Platform Way S. She'll use the distillery's usual mashbills and experiment with small runs of other spirits. Both outposts are smaller than the original. The 500-gallon still is the one tied to the farms.

The farms are the reason the arrangement makes sense. Kennedy told The Daily Pour, "We could save ourselves a lot of money if we bought our grains from Cargill and bought our malt from BSG, but that's not the way I want to do things." The same article describes the full supply chain:

• Corn, rye and barley come from Walnut Grove Farms in Schochoh, Kentucky, about 50 miles north of Nashville, and from two Franklin-area farms, River Bound and River Grange.
• Sam Halcomb of Walnut Grove started growing non-GMO corn specifically for Leiper's Fork. He's also growing rye, a crop he says Southern farmers have to relearn because the varieties available were adapted for colder climates.
• Riverbend Malt House in North Carolina malts Halcomb's barley and kiln-toasts it into a Vienna-style malt.
• Milling and charcoal burning for the Lincoln County Process both happen off-site near Kennedy's house.

The process is just as deliberate. Leiper's Fork uses a sweet mash, with no backset from earlier batches, and fills its barrels at 110 proof, well under the 125-proof legal ceiling. Filling at a lower proof means more water, more volume and more barrels. The Daily Pour also reported that the distillery is in the process of joining the Estate Whiskey Alliance, a group that certifies whiskey made from grain grown on estate-owned or controlled land and produced entirely on site.

A whiskey that tells a field-to-bottle story has to keep its main production close to the fields. As the plans are described now, the stillhouse off Southall Road remains that center, and the downtown site becomes a well-built showroom with a working still of its own. The tasting room at Nashville Yards will be named for Samuel Claybrook Locke, a Locke family ancestor and Prohibition-era federal agent, so even the downtown branding points back to the family's history.

The last two weekends of the outdoor season

Tourists will soon be able to get a version of this whiskey a short walk from Broadway. Locals still have the original at the cabin. Tasting room hours are 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. It's closed Monday and Tuesday. Tours start at the top of each hour and run about an hour. The Daily Pour recommended booking with Paul Bissett, the head of tours and education. He's a Scotsman, a former William Grant & Sons brand ambassador, a British Royal Navy veteran and the author of nine books on whisky. The tasting on that visit included the Old Natchez Tennessee White Whiskey, both bottled-in-bond releases, a single-barrel rye and a distillery-exclusive bourbon finished in a maple cask.

Timing matters this time of year. The distillery's live music on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays runs March through October, and so do its cigar nights on the last Friday of each month. That makes Haunted Cigar Night on Friday, October 30 the last cigar night of 2026. It runs from 6 to 9 p.m., is free and open to the public, and Franklin Walking Tours will tell local ghost stories starting at 7 p.m.

Around the village into November

The distillery is a short drive from the rest of the village, and the late-fall calendar has a few fixed dates.

• Farm Market Friday at the Davis General, 5600 Leipers Creek Road, runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on October 23 and 30 and on November 6, 13, 20 and 27. Vendors bring produce, beef, chicken, pork, sourdough, dairy, eggs, canned goods and tallow products.
• Mahj in the Creek is Wednesday, October 28, at Crown Winery, 4165 Old Hillsboro Road. Fork of the South organizes it, Crown Winery supplies the wine, and BAM Foods Catering handles the food.
• The Copper Fox Gallery, 4136 Old Hillsboro Road, has a Kristi Hyde Winter Trunk Show with a Spees glassblowing demonstration on Sunday, November 8, from noon to 4 p.m. An Anthony Martin blacksmith demonstration follows on Sunday, November 15, from noon to 3 p.m.

You could fit all of it into one Friday this month. Pick up sourdough and eggs at the Davis General before 2 p.m., take a tour at the cabin in the afternoon, and stay on Southall Road for the ghost stories at 7.

I've watched a lot of Franklin businesses decide how to grow without leaving the place that made them. The Kennedys' answer is a smaller copy downtown, with the 500-gallon still in the village. If you have land, a historic building or a family property out toward Leiper's Fork and want to talk through what changes like this mean for the area, Loy Hardcastle is glad to sit down with you. Let's Connect.