E. W. Ripy Jr

James Rippey was born in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland in March 1811. James and his two siblings emigrated to America, entering the country along the Delaware River at the Port of Philadelphia. An immigration worker who filled out the paperwork for the three children misspelled their last name as “Ripy”. The trio discovered that the legal process to get their name changed back after the misspelling was too lengthy and far too expensive, so they decided to keep it as it was. Within a very short time, the siblings moved to a small Kentucky town called Lawrenceburg around 1830.

In 1840, James married a local Bourbon County girl whose name was Artemesia Walker. He later became a successful merchant and distributor of household goods, including whiskey, in the mid-1840s and 1850s. With his success, James began buying up a number of small distilleries in and around Anderson County. James and Artemesia had three children. The two sons who lived to adulthood were James P. Ripy (born in 1844) and T.B. Ripy (born in 1847).

In 1869, James and his two sons built a larger distillery on the Kentucky River. The distillery eventually was run solely by T.B. and at that time was renamed simply the T.B. Ripy Distillery. Thomas Ripy would go on to become the largest distiller in the world over two decades between 1880 and 1905.

The T. B. Ripy Distillery was folded into the Kentucky Distillers and Warehouse Co. in 1902. T. B. Ripy’s sons, Ernest Ripy (Sr.), Forest Ripy, and Ezra Ripy, then opened the Ripy Brothers Distillery. In 1905, Forest acquired the Old Hickory Springs Distillery and went to work for himself. The Ripy family had ties to many distilleries throughout Anderson County, but then in 1920, Prohibition closed them all down.

Meanwhile, Ernest had three sons in quick succession: Robert, Thomas, and the youngest, Ernest Whitney Ripy, Jr., born in 1913. E.W., Jr. was born in Lawrenceburg and graduated from Lawrenceburg High School in 1931. He was intelligent, crafty, and thought to be Anderson County's first Eagle Scout, having received that honor at age 15.

E. W., Jr. graduated from Purdue University in 1935, and in 1936, began his career in distilling, and thus the next generation of Ripys entered the business. Post-Prohibition, the Ripy Brothers Distillery reopened in 1937, but the Great Depression emerged soon after that, and the distillery struggled. In 1939, World War II started, and the distillery was sold to Alvin and Bob Gould of Cincinnati, who christened it the J.T.S. Brown Distillery. E. W. also married Bernita “Nita” Frazier in January of 1936. E.W. served the U.S. Army with the 45th Field Artillery Battalion in the 8th Infantry in World War II from 1941-1945. He was awarded a Bronze and 2 Silver Stars for his service in Germany, and left the battlefield a full Colonel. Following his commission, Col. E.W. Ripy Jr. served in the Army Reserve all the way up to 1973.

After World War II ended, the owners of Austin Nichols, a New York liquor distributor, started purchasing whiskey from the distillery, now called Wild Turkey. During the 1960s, the Ripy brothers created a brand of Bourbon called Ezra Brooks. They packaged it in a square bottle with a black label and even stated on the label that it was “Charcoal Filtered” so they could claim some market share from the very popular Tennessee Whiskey, Jack Daniels. The Ripys sold that brand in the early 1970s to the Medley Distilling Co. In 1972, Austin Nichols purchased the J. T. S. Brown distillery from the Goulds, and it was renamed the Wild Turkey Distillery, which today produces Wild Turkey.

E. W. had worked at this distillery that his father started for a total of 42 years, despite it no longer being linked to his family name for the vast majority of that time. E.W. Ripy, Jr. passed away on March 25, 2002, in Lexington, KY, at the age of 89. He was survived by his wife, 4 daughters, nine grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.