New Riff Distilling, Llc.

New Riff Distilling is the Cincinnati-adjacent Kentucky distillery built on a single premise: every release should be bottled in bond — at least four years aged, exactly 100 proof, the product of a single distillation season at a single distillery — and the bottled-in-bond standard should be treated as a starting point, not a marketing badge. Founded in 2014 by Ken Lewis, the longtime owner of Newport, Kentucky beverage retailer The Party Source, the distillery sits on the Ohio River in Newport directly across from downtown Cincinnati, occupying a converted industrial site that opened to the public in mid-2014 with stills running and the first barrels going into rickhouses immediately.

The production philosophy is uncompromising in ways that show up directly in the bottle. All grain is non-GMO. None of the standard whiskey range is chill-filtered. Sour mash is run with proprietary yeast strains the distillery has cultivated since opening. The signature mash bill — 65% non-GMO corn, 30% rye, 5% malted barley — is unusually high in rye for a bourbon, which is the source of the spice-and-mint character that distinguishes New Riff Bourbon from the standard Kentucky shelf. The 100% Rye release runs even further in that direction, and the Single Malt expression (released annually starting 2020) is one of the only American single-malts that uses 100% Kentucky-grown malted barley.

Master Distiller Brian Sprance has been on the team since opening, and the distillery's quiet release cadence — bottled-in-bond standard, no big-marketing limited drops — has built secondary-market demand without secondary-market hunting culture. The Single Barrel Bottled in Bond program in particular has become a quiet cult favorite among bourbon writers, with the high-rye spice profile providing a meaningful alternative to the typical 70-percent-corn Kentucky pour.

The visitor experience is straightforward and producer-led: small-group tours through the still room, the fermentation tanks, and the warehouses, ending in a tasting room with bottles available for direct purchase. Newport's Ohio-river setting and proximity to downtown Cincinnati makes it a natural complement to a Kentucky Bourbon Trail trip that wants to start at the northern edge of bourbon country rather than the southern.