Mollie Lewis, president of New Riff Distilling, leads the Newport, Kentucky craft distillery her father Ken Lewis founded on a simple principle: take the harder, more honest road. Twelve years later, that philosophy has produced a World’s Best Bourbon.
New Riff Distilling
When New Riff Distilling entered the World’s Best Bourbon competition, they submitted the $40 bottle sitting on everyday shelves, not the rare limited release that most distilleries would reserve for a moment like that. That decision is the clearest expression of how New Riff operates: built in Newport, Kentucky when the bourbon trail ran through Louisville and Bardstown, printing its mash bill on the label before that was fashionable, and staying 100% family-owned in a category that private equity has been consolidating for a decade. The distillery calls this being respectfully different, and they have been living it since day one. I sat down with Mollie Lewis, president of New Riff Distilling, to walk through the decisions behind it.
Dave Knox: Your recent news is remarkable. New Riff Bottled in Bond was named World’s Best Whisky. Tell me about that moment and what it has meant for the business.
Mollie Lewis: We are still pinching ourselves at the distillery, Dave. This has been such an exciting whirlwind. We did not know we were going to receive this award. They kept it very close to the vest. They invited us down, and we only found out in real time with everyone else in the audience. What an amazing feeling, for Brian Sprance, our master distiller, to walk up on stage in front of all of the heritage distilleries and accept that award. It was a dream come true for us and for Northern Kentucky.
Knox: What is particularly significant is that this was not a specialty release. This was your flagship bottle, $40, available on shelves in all 50 states.
Lewis: Absolutely. What it shows is that we put quality into every release and every bottle we make, even our flagship, especially our flagship. If you are looking for New Riff on the shelf, you do not have to buy a specialty release. You buy our flagship, and you are getting the world’s best.
Knox: New Riff has such a fun founding story, different from most distilleries. Your father Ken Lewis ran one of the world’s largest independent liquor stores for decades before launching this. Tell me that origin story.
Lewis: My father, Ken Lewis, is a serial entrepreneur. He lives on the edge and really thrives in the unknown. He built liquor stores in Louisville, Kentucky, and then his largest, on the border of Ohio here in Northern Kentucky: The Party Source in Bellevue, still to this day the largest independent retail liquor store in the country. He had his finger on the pulse of what was happening in the bourbon industry, fell in love with bourbon himself, and realized there was no distillery of size in Northern Kentucky. His vision was to create one and give it everything he had. He sold The Party Source to its employees through an ESOP, and that is how we funded and built New Riff from the ground up. Twelve very short years later, here we are.
Knox: What did those decades of running retail give him in terms of insight into the market opportunity?
Lewis: He is a very strategic person. He saw the bourbon industry taking off in Kentucky and knew the right moment to get in, probably a few years ahead of many of the private equity firms that later entered the space. He was also adamant about his pricing strategy. I remember the early days when you could put a $100 price tag on a two-year-old bourbon and it would fly off the shelf. He was very adamant about not doing that. He wanted New Riff fairly priced. He wanted anyone to have access to our flagship Bottled-in-Bond whiskey, not just high end collectors and aficionados. There was initially some internal pushback. But he maintained that integrity on pricing, and I think it has really served us long term.
Knox: You describe him as a serial entrepreneur. How does that entrepreneurial DNA show up in New Riff every day?
Lewis: It is exactly our ethos, the essence of who we are. Ken set the stage by creating something that literally did not exist until he built it, and that philosophy has trickled into every aspect of what we do. Our production team, led by Brian Sprance, is truly entrepreneurial. They push limits, test the waters, and create whiskeys rooted in tradition but that have not been seen in the market before. We like to think we were at the forefront of making single barrel programs a core offering for Kentucky distilleries. That spirit lives in everything we do internally.
Knox: Many companies use “family-owned and independent” as marketing language. You are the real thing. What decisions has that independence allowed you to make that a corporate owner never would?
Lewis: Transparency has been a pivotal marker for us from day one. We encased our continuous column still completely in glass, so when you drove up to the distillery you could see exactly what we were making. We put our mash bill on the bottle before other distilleries were making that a common practice. That transparency created trust early on. Consumers knew what they were getting was exactly what we told them they were getting. No smoke and mirrors. If Brian wants to create a new whiskey, he has carte blanche. We trust his commitment to doing things the right way, and that trust has extended outward to our consumers as well.
Knox: Independence is expensive in this industry. Whiskey ages, inventory builds, cash is tied up for years. How do you think about staying fiercely independent as the rest of the industry consolidates?
Lewis: It is who we are. Staying independent and respectfully different is who we are. There are real headwinds. There is a lot of consolidation happening. But we are fighting with everything we have to remain independent, because it matters not only to what we put in the bottle but to what we say about our brand.
Knox: New Riff was not your first brand to market. Tell me about OKI.
Lewis: We did not want to release any whiskey we made ourselves until it was at least four years old. So there was a hurry-up-and-wait phase you simply cannot speed up. We purchased barrels from MGP across the river in Indiana, aged them, and released a separate brand called OKI in the interim. It was a great way to learn about working with older whiskey and get out to meet people in the industry while we waited. We were transparent about the sourcing and proud of the product. We bottled OKI at eight years and finished it at 12. And when New Riff was ready, we walked away from OKI entirely.
Knox: Not many companies walk away from years of brand equity like that. Was there ever a moment of real doubt?
Lewis: Honestly? In the early days I thought, my gosh, maybe we should have connected the brands. We were not sure how New Riff would be received in the market. OKI had developed a real cult following. So there was a moment of: are we shooting ourselves in the foot here? But we kept coming back to our roots. We did not want the New Riff name on anything that was not produced, aged, and bottled at our facility in Newport. OKI did not fit that bill. If we had been a larger or corporate entity, there probably would have been a very different conversation. I feel privileged that we were able to stick to our guns. It built real trust in the whiskey community.
Knox: Two decades ago, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail essentially meant central Kentucky. New Riff helped change that. How did you think about building a bourbon destination in Northern Kentucky?
Lewis: There is a very rich distilling history here in the Greater Cincinnati area. Pre-Prohibition, there were several distilleries on both sides of the river. That history was here, but Northern Kentucky had not really been a focus for bourbon tourism in a long time. We accepted the challenge of being an hour and a half from Louisville, the same from Lexington. We were committed to putting Northern Kentucky back on the map. There are now nine other distilleries in Northern Kentucky we are proud to call neighbors. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail recognizes us as the anchor at the Northern Kentucky end. The B Line, which stands for the Bourbon Line, has become a regional tourism destination drawing visitors from all over the world. We think we have built something really special here.
Knox: New Riff has been an amazing partner to so many regional brands, from Graeter’s Ice Cream to Rhinegeist to Colonel D’s Spices. Why has collaboration been so central to how you build the brand?
Lewis: We believe in collaboration. There are so many exciting brands and stories in the Greater Cincinnati area. Graeter’s, Rhinegeist, Mad Tree, Colonel D’s, which is a family-owned spice shop of quality. We share the same philosophy with all of them. We are celebrating this region’s story together, saying: we support you, you support us, and we are all stronger for it. Collaboration has been one of the most exciting parts of being involved with New Riff.
Knox: Social impact has been a core part of the brand as well. Tell me about the mission and how you bring it to life.
Lewis: Our mission is to become a great small distillery of the world. Right underneath that: we want to use our whiskey as a vehicle for good. Any employee at New Riff who has been with us for any length of time can recite both in tandem. Ken always took care of his people. One of the reasons he converted The Party Source to an ESOP was for the benefit of his employees. New Riff was born with that same belief: take care of your people, your people take care of you. It is the golden rule. We have a brand called Headliner, now in its third year, where all proceeds from each release go to a selected local charity. We created a distillery exclusive dedicated to Silver Grove, a small town here in Northern Kentucky, and we have donated just over $90,000 over three years so they could build an arboretum. Giving back is not performative for us. It is really a part of our blood.
Knox: Walk me through what it means that the World’s Best Bourbon was chosen in a blind tasting.
Lewis: One hundred bourbons were selected and tasted completely blind by a series of master and really influential tasters. Our $40 bourbon was in a tasting with whiskies priced at several hundred dollars a bottle, very rare releases, all price points. And the truth was in the palate. People chose our whiskey not for its name, not by price, but because it tasted best to them. It proves: trust your gut, like what you like, do not equate price with quality. Taste is subjective. Go with what you actually think is best.
Knox: In 2025, New Riff expanded to all 50 states and into Europe and Canada. How do you balance that national and global push with staying true to your Northern Kentucky roots?
Lewis: It is a tightrope to walk. We feel well-known regionally. Folks know our story, get us, support us. As we travel farther from the region, it is harder to keep that story going. The circle is larger. We just keep doing what we are doing and trust that our customers will tell our story. The World’s Best designation accelerated what regional distilleries often take decades to build.
Knox: The business also went through a leadership transition recently with Ken stepping back. What has that been like?
Lewis: It has been an exciting time. Ken is our founder, and there is always adjustment when the founder steps back. We divided his role into three people, and honestly it has taken that many people to fill his shoes. Ken is still involved as a board member. But what is exciting is that our leadership team is now two-thirds female. It is a new era for New Riff. We are focusing on continuing Ken’s legacy while building toward the kind of multi-generational independence he always envisioned for the distillery. We are professionalizing certain aspects of the business, growing up, moving with the time. Hopefully we will be doing this for generations to come.
Knox: What excites you most about the next five years?
Lewis: Every day we get closer to achieving our mission of being one of the great small distilleries of the world. A few years ago, we were still really introducing New Riff to the community. Now when I work events in different parts of the country, folks know who we are. They know where Newport, Kentucky is. Newport is a pretty small place, but we are putting a star on its map. The momentum feels real, and I hope we are just getting started.
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