Unicorn is currently hosting a groundbreaking auction of Willett bourbon, featuring bottles from the golden era of the distillery's sourced whiskey program. That means you can find epic ryes, storied B/C-prefix wheaters, and some of the oldest barrels Willett ever bottled—some of which are making their Unicorn debut.

So many legendary expressions are available, so we've chosen a select few to highlight. First up, we have LeNell's 'Red Hook' Rye (Barrel 1, 2006), one of the original bottles selected by LeNell Camacho Santa Ana for her store in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This rye was produced at Bernheim from a 51 percent rye mashbill, and stands today as one of the most famous rye whiskeys ever released. Willett Family Estate 10 Year Bourbon 'Pilgrims of Hope' Private Barrel Selection (Barrel 5196) also makes an appearance, selected by Drew Kulsveen and Jim Sichko, a Kentucky priest, to commemorate Pope Francis’ 10th anniversary as the 266th pope. This is a hazmat-level bourbon that clocks in at 144.2 proof.

A few other bottles of note include Willett Family Estate 23 Year Bourbon 'Bourbon Bonanza Benefit' Private Barrel Selection (Barrel B79), the only B/C prefix barrel officially associated with the Willett Bourbon Bonanza charity event, making its first appearance at Unicorn. Another notable rye whiskey is Rathskeller Rye 'Seelbach Hotel' Private Barrel Selection, a private selection for the famous Louisville hotel bar. One of the oldest Willetts ever bottled is also up for auction, Willett Family Estate 28 Year Bourbon 'Rogin's Tavern' Private Barrel Selection (Barrel 68). This bourbon, which was a pick for Rogin’s Tavern in Japan, is making its Unicorn debut.

For the very first time, Unicorn is offering a Willett Purple Ticket experience. Just 32 bottles, each lot marked with a purple ticket, include an invitation for the winning bidder to enjoy a private, Unicorn-hosted dinner at Willett, with curated food and pours of some of the most iconic Willett whiskeys. You can browse the entire collection now.

To mark this groundbreaking auction, we are re-running Susannah Skiver Barton's interview with Drew Kulsveen from last summer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Unicorn Review: When I think of Willett, I divide the company’s modern history into three phases: the Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KBD) era, when your parents were bottling for many brands; the early 2000s when you started accelerating toward distilling; and the current era of making all your own whiskey. What is the next phase?

Drew Kulsveen: KBD never went away. That’s still our company name. It’s the same corporation.

In the early 2000s, when me and my sister joined, we were like, "Let's go out and meet our customers and talk about our brands and focus on ourselves." Then that's when all that started to transition and shift, and it was exciting.

We built this amazing new facility for future generations to continue to propel our company and help people learn about Willett. I could walk into 50 places in Chicago right now and people have not heard of or tasted Willett. There's so much opportunity for us and we just have to keep knocking on the doors.

The new facility in Springfield is definitely exciting, especially at a time when other distillers are slowing production. Tell me about it.

It allows us to continue the things that we're doing in Bardstown on a much different scale. And it's security—to have a secondary site so if something were to happen, we at least have a backup plan. The scale is about two and a half times our production at Bardstown. We'll obviously grow into that, but we've also built in space for future production. If it needs to continue to grow, we've set that opportunity up for us to do so very easily.

You very well may need that extra capacity soon, because Willett has a strong international presence, right?

Yeah, my father was one of the first people to export to Asia and we still have those relationships. We sell all over Europe. Before any of the current downturn, Britt and I were like, "We need to restructure this and find a better way to do this.” And we have.

We've got great partners around the world. Our exports are actually up even with tariffs and all the stuff going on in the world. There are some people that are not doom and gloom that are actually doing really well. I'm glad to say that we're one of those few companies that's thriving right now.

We're patient. We're not looking for what's happening this half of the year or the quarter or the next 120 days. We look at things from a bigger picture perspective of what's going to happen in five, ten, 20, 25 years. That's the business that we're in. If you look at the numbers, the market's down three or four percent. Why are you panicking when things are down single digits for a very short period of time when you've been riding on this cloud for the last 20 years? I don't understand it.

Taking a long view is part of your advantage as a family company, right?

Our strength is being able to make consistent, decisive decisions across the board. Literally, Britt and I can make a split-second decision, and we're able to do that with confidence. It's not like we're doing that because we have the ability to do it; we think it's the right thing to do.

Opportunities sometimes are very time-based. A lot of these large companies, they'll have a meeting about a meeting to have a meeting, and we don't do that. We need substance; we need information so that we can give direction. If you don't have that, you don't have good communication. When you don't have good communication, that's when really bad things start to happen.

The hospitality side of your business sets a high standard, even with so many other excellent visitor experiences in Kentucky. How does that fit in with the production side?

You're literally coming to our home. We spend more time there than anywhere else in the world, and we want that environment to feel welcoming. We feel that that is more important than the whiskey business because it creates a great experience and a great memory. When you're having a great whiskey to pair that with, it's something that you're going to talk about forever.

So many KBD bottlings have achieved mythic status. Do you aspire to create whiskeys at the distillery that reach those same legendary heights?

I don't think our intention ever was to create what it turned into. It just kind of happened. We knew the whiskey was amazing and special. It was probably the most expensive bottle of American whiskey on the shelf [20 years ago]. These bottles that are now four, five, six figures didn't exist back then.

Our intention's never been to do that. At the end of the day, my goal is to create an amazing whiskey that you enjoy. That brings me happiness, and I'm glad that people have the patience and the money, and also the ability, to have these bottles to preserve for the future. But one day I want them to be enjoyed. That’s the reason that we strive for excellence—we really want people to open that bottle and share it and enjoy it.

Have you held onto a lot of those older, in-demand bottlings?

Yes, but it's not to hold onto them because they hold so much value in the marketplace. We're holding them back to share with people. I want to share them with the next generation of whiskey drinkers. I want them to understand and have the ability to not just hear about something, but actually try it.

I don't want a museum. I don't want to see a collection of Willetts that are just there to take pictures of for social media. I want people to come and enjoy them. I want people to have the experience to try something that they thought they'd never be able to try. We’ve purposefully held bottles back so that people will have that experience in the future.

Does it bum you out to see people bragging about their unopened bottles?

It’s fine. It's theirs. They own it, they get to do whatever they want to with it. Would I do that? Absolutely not. I'm the kind of guy that's going to open that bottle and not think about it and just enjoy it.

These bottles are very relevant for a reason. They have been opened, they have been enjoyed, and that's why they fetch so much money. And one day somebody's kid's going to make a bourbon and Coke in high school with it. There is the risk of that happening. I've heard stories like, “My wife was making a bourbon dessert and she used the 20-year-old Willett Family Estate.” If you would've actually drank that bottle, that would not have happened.

You’ve said you hate the word “allocated,” but you do have to allocate some things, right?

Yeah, we have to, but we don't really control the way that that's done. We trust the people that represent all of our brands in the marketplace to do the right thing by Willett. They know who our best customers are. They know the people that are actually supporting the entire line and supporting our overall business. At the end of the day, that's how we stay in business and can continue to grow, by having loyalty to people that really do care about Willett.

Speaking of core range, brands like Noah’s Mill and Rowan’s Creek are really excellent but they fly under the radar. A lot of people don’t realize they’re made at Willett. Is that by design?

Britt and I intentionally have left a lot of these things alone. When we reintroduced Old Bardstown, we went back to the original bottle shape, label color, and label design from when it first came out in the 1940s. We were trying to replicate when our family first put whiskey in a bottle after Prohibition.

The same thing is done with those other brands that our father created in the '80s and '90s. We've left them the way that they are. You can walk down any bourbon aisle today and recognize that those bottles probably could use a little refreshing design on the package, but then it's just going to start to look like everything else. We like that era of when the term “small batch” was reinvigorated and reinvited people back to American whiskey from an era when they had no taste for it.

We do go out and talk about these brands. I tell people that Rowan's Creek is my favorite whiskey that we make that you can actually find on the shelf. It’s delicious and I'll stand behind it 100 percent. It’s a great product at a great price. These are the driving forces of Willett, even though they don't say Willett on the brand.

When Willett Pot Still came out, it drew a strong backlash from some bourbon drinkers. Have the haters come around?

I don't care about the hate. I think it's good and healthy to have some criticism. The way I look at things is—this is our number-one selling brand, and if people didn't like it, they wouldn't buy it. It might not be the bourbon for the person chasing Willett Family Estate. But I can literally walk into any bar and drink any bottle of bourbon on the shelf and be a happy person walking out. I don't have to drink the rarest and most expensive thing to be happy and satisfied.

I think that there's a group of people that feel like their status is better represented when they criticize a lot of brands. They probably haven't tasted Pot Still since it came out, so I don't believe them. When that brand first came out, it was sourced liquid. It transitioned to a blend of sourced and our distillate. Now it's our stuff and we're crushing it.

That's what drives our business. Our customers direct our sales. They tell us what to make. They tell us what to produce, what to put into glass. And the fact that Pot Still is still the driving force tells me that there's a lot of love for it.

The distillate that goes into that product could literally be Family Estate one day. It’s really interesting that people don't make that correlation.

Your dad was from Norway, which has a thriving whisky scene of its own these days. Have you tried any Norwegian whiskies?

I have. People probably don't know this about Willett, but we import gin and aquavit from a small producer in Norway, and brandy and Cognac from France because that's where the Willetts came from originally. We are working on bringing some Norwegian whisky over. It's delicious.