Kentucky Owl, Whiskey Brand With Mercer Ties, Declares Bankruptcy
Image: kentuckyowlbourbon.com.
Robert Moore
Herald Staff
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A legendary whiskey brand with deep connections to Mercer County has declared bankruptcy.
Kentucky Owl Bourbon, a premium blended whiskey which can retail for hundreds of dollars and sell for even more on the collectible market, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy along with Stoli Group USA, according to Reuters.com.
Both companies are U.S.-based subsidiaries of the Luxembourg-based Stoli Group, which is not filing for bankruptcy, according to Reuters.
The two companies are seeking bankruptcy protection from a Dallas, Texas-based court to deal with $84 million in debt, according to Reuters.
Kentucky Owl was founded by C.M. Dedman in 1879 and operated until 1916, when the distillery was closed due to Prohibition. In 2014, Dixon Dedman, C.M. Dedman’s great-great-grandson, revived the brand, releasing the first 1,250 bottles of small-batch blended bourbon. Stoli Group, the distributor and manufacturer of Stolichnaya and other Stoli-branded products, purchased Kentucky Owl from Dedman in 2017. While the blended whiskeys—bourbon and rye—Dedman created at Kentucky Owl remain hot items on the collector’s market, he left the company in 2021. In 2023, Dixon introduced another line of blended whiskeys, which are sold under the 2XO label in partnership with Prestige Beverage Group.
The 2017 sale of Kentucky Owl attracted considerable attention here in Mercer County, especially after Stoli announced plans to build Kentucky Owl Park, a $150 million state-of-the-art distillery and tourist destination in Bardstown. Stoli had ambitious plans, including pyramid-shaped distillery buildings, a luxury hotel and a train station. At the time, many local residents wondered why Stoli was not building the Kentucky Owl distillery here in Mercer County.
However, despite breaking ground in 2018, the project faced significant delays, with only limited progress made on the site, according to thebourbonflight.com.
Stoli has been embroiled in a decades-long legal battle with the Russian government, which is seeking to reclaim ownership of vodka brands that were privatized in the 1990s, according to Reuters.
Russia attempted to bring what Stoli’s lawyers call “politically motivated” criminal charges against Stoli Group’s owner, Yuri Shefler, and seize Stoli’s assets, according to Reuters.
Earlier this year, the Russian government took possession of Stoli’s last two distilleries in that country, which are worth approximately $100 million, according to court documents. The company also suffered a data breach and ransomware attack in August that caused severe disruptions to its global business, forcing the company to rely on manual bookkeeping for critical business activities, according to Reuters.
Dixon Dedman’s family owned and operated one of Mercer County’s biggest attractions, the Beaumont Inn, for more than a century. In 2022, they sold the Beaumont to relatives.
lol are they still selling?