Editor’s note: September 25 is National Daughters’ Day! All month long, we’ve been highlighting mother-daughter duos who are collaborating to inspire the community and excel in business. Enjoy!
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Picture the Netherly family 10 years ago. Joyce is a chemistry whiz with industrial distillation experience. Her daughter, Autumn, is fascinated by Kentucky’s complicated pre- and post-Prohibition history and the land her family has lived and worked on for centuries. Father/husband Bruce gets an irreversible idea to start a distillery. We caught up with mother-daughter team Joyce and Autumn Nethery to find out how Jeptha Creed came to be, and what makes it different from the dozens of distilleries around it.
Where does your family’s fascination with bourbon come from?
Autumn: We opened in November 2016, but we started kicking around the idea of opening a distillery in 2013. It started with my dad. He was the one who was really interested in it, and my mother was in industrial distillation for years before she became a high school chemistry teacher. She thought it was kind of crazy at first. But he kept going on about it, and if he’s got something he wants to do, he’s going to figure out how to do it. So she found a course called Moonshine University, got him signed up, and then, conveniently, he couldn’t go. My mother had already paid for it, so she went! That’s when she learned we could marry his agricultural background with her distillation knowledge to develop Jeptha Creed.
What’s something that your formal distilling education did NOT cover?
Joyce: The full impact of all laws on the books for spirits was only partially communicated in my course. Those pieces are something that we’re still fighting, and we’ve been fighting for years, and we’re still fighting to try to get parity with at least beer and wine. Distilled spirits are suffering under many prohibition-era stuff — you know, 100-year-old laws and a three-tier system. It doesn’t even just change from state to state, but from city to city. There are counties in the same state that approach liquor differently.
Where does the name come from?
Autumn: The name comes from our home farm. We sit at the foot of these hills called Jeptha Knobs. It’s where I was born and where my dad grew up. My family’s been in the area for 200 to 300 years. After we decided to build the distillery, I started searching for distillation history in Shelby County. The county had gone dry in 1910, and the last legal distillery I could find any documentation on closed in 1895. So, it’d been quite a while.
In that process, I learned that Squire Boone and Daniel Boone named Jeptha Knobs after a biblical warrior in Judges 11 when they were exploring Kentucky and mapping the area. So, we had a family history, state history, and a biblical component my mother loved. So we said, “Jeptha. That’s going to be our name.” We chose Creed as a promise to be open and honest with our customers about what’s going into their spirits.
When sourcing ingredients and creating new spirits, what informs and inspires you?
Joyce: We started with three bourbons. We self-source 100% of the corn that we use in our products. We do partially source the malted rye, malted wheat, and malted barley from other companies. But the corn is 100% ours. And as time has gone on, we have expanded the varietals of corn we’re growing and the bourbons we’re making. We’ve laid down a blue corn bourbon that I call “Bruce’s Blue,” named for my husband. We’ve laid down white corn bourbon, pink corn bourbon, and several different varietals of corn since then.
Describe the experience of coming onto your property for a visit.
Autumn: As far as visitors at the distillery, that was always something we planned on doing. The distillery is not on our home farm because we didn’t want visitors going on the home farm. Plus, the road to get back to our farm is complicated and not necessarily fun for a tourist. In 2014, the county was dry, so we wouldn’t have been able to have a tasting room if we remained on the home farm. So, we had to find a location with all the utilities we needed, fit within the zoning regulations, and was either within the city of Shelbyville or could be annexed into Shelbyville. That alone took us about a year. But we found our place right on the line of Shelbyville so we could be annexed into the city and have a tasting room.
The big issue was that we needed a road. We had to build a bridge across the creek that looks like a river when it rains. We didn’t want people to have to use four-wheel drive to get to us. (I’ll just add that I never want to build a bridge again!) Then, we built a visitor center and an events area and designed the distillery with visitors in mind, thinking about the paths they would walk through.
What’s a common misconception that people have about the bourbon business?
Joyce: The other day, I was doing a tasting in a liquor store, and a couple asked me where we source our corn. That’s not us at all. We grow the corn ourselves. So, one of the things that we are always focused on is educating people on how “ground to glass” is not just a saying for us. It’s not just a marketing thing. It’s at the core of who we are, what we’re doing, and what we’re about. The corn is different, and it makes a flavor difference. We have to educate people about all of those pieces.
What’s something people are surprised to learn about you?
Joyce: Autumn’s taking flight lessons to become a pilot and fly her plane.
Autumn: I’m just going to fly myself, not other people. I’m not trying to make a career change!
Where can we find you on your days off?
Joyce: It’s more like hours off. You can find me on the farm, in my gardens, or in my canning kitchen, canning up produce for the winter. I take the “ground to glass” thing very seriously. And after COVID and all those empty vegetable shelves, I thought, this is stupid. I’m going to have my own stock. So, I’ve been canning the past few years, and you’ll find me putting up some tomato sauce, green beans, corn, or any of the produce coming out of my garden or the farmers’ market.
Autumn: I usually just hang out with my dogs when I’m off. I have three dogs that I love to death.
What’s your favorite Jeptha Creed product?
Joyce: That’s like asking which kid I like best! What’s the purpose, what’s the objective, and what skill set do I need? Then I can pick the kid. In general, I am going to pick a bourbon. It’s going to be on the rocks, and it’s going to be a higher proof, cask-strength.
Autumn: If I’m going to grab a bourbon, I like our Bottled in Bond Rye Bourbon. I’ll typically drink it in a high ball on my day off or at home.
Besides faith, family, and friends, name three things you can’t live without.
Joyce: The dogs, acres and acres of land, and shelter.
Autumn: Dogs are also on my list, water (not just drinking water, but ALL bodies of water), and a memory foam pillow.
Lightning Round:
Favorite hidden gem in Kentucky:
Joyce: There are a couple of little family-run mom-and-pop grocery stores around here where you can grab lunch (they don’t really have groceries anymore). There is an old-fashioned one called Carriss’s Grocery in Southville, and another is The Farm Kitchen on US 60.
Last vacation:
Autumn: Initially, I thought I would be our master distiller. But I was under 21, and no one wants to teach you to make something you’re not legally allowed to consume. So, I went over to Edinburgh, Scotland, to learn. Turns out I did not inherit the chemical engineering mind that my mother has. But while I was over there, I became friends with a classmate, and she just got married in London in May, so I went back for that.
What’s on your bedside table:
Joyce: A little bowl with jewelry in it that I ought to wear more!
Go-to birthday present (to give):
Autumn: I typically plan my birthday presents around the recipient. If I’m giving you a bottle of liquor, it probably means I don’t know what else to give you! But that’s my go-to.
Thank you for chatting, Joyce and Autumn. All photos courtesy of Jeptha Creed.
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