Jeptha Creed has always been a family business. In March, Master Distiller Joyce and Director of Sales and Marketing discussed the challenges and rewards of being a mother-daughter team and a majority women-owned business (link). This month, in honor of Father’s Day, Autumn and Hunter Nethery talk about their dad, Bruce.
When Autumn is asked to describe her father in one word, the first that comes to mind is “trailblazer.” Bruce bought his first swath of land at 18 and has been farming and running his own businesses ever since. “He likes to make his own path,” Autumn explains. Bruce isn’t afraid to try new things and new approaches. For example, Bruce was one of the first people to try hydroponics in Kentucky, a method of growing plants without soil. “Now, you see hydroponics all over the state!”
Hunter says “loving” is the word that best describes his dad. He says that’s because it’s always been evident “the amount of care that he puts into everything he does, and the amount of care and love that he puts into the animals that we have on our farm.” Hunter recalls joining 4-H as a child, and that Bruce immediately opened up the family farm to host 4-H meetings when he saw a need. “He went straight into it, to help the kids and to help the community.”
While Joyce and Autumn took center stage in the early years of Jeptha Creed, Bruce and Hunter have always been involved in the business. “My dad has contributed a lot to Jeptha Creed,” Autumn says, “things that people may not have even realized came from him.” The very idea of Jeptha Creed, a distillery creating spirits from grains grown on the family farm, has been Bruce’s dream for years. He and his wife Joyce wanted to create a business that they could pass down to their children, and Jeptha Creed was the perfect fit. Autumn recalls that early on, Bruce’s drawing of an H-shaped building inspired the unique shape of the distillery. The bottle design of the bourbon is another example of Bruce’s influence. “That came from a drawing he did six years ago of the tree of life… our bottle looks a little bit different than his original design, that’s what we used as the basis.”
Many things make Jeptha Creed a unique distillery. Like our bourbon bottle design and the shape of our building, many of these things are deeply connected to our dad and his heritage. Our locally grown ingredients, our commitment to being ground to glass, and our deep roots in our region are inseparable from the legacy of the Nethery family, and our dad, Bruce Nethery. See more of our Father’s Day video by clicking here!