Marianne Barnes Eaves

Although Marianne Eves was raised in Kentucky, she grew up in a dry county and her parents never drank much so she wasn’t really exposed to the whiskey culture that’s pervasive there. She was a tomboy and enjoyed auto shop, eventually getting and spending time working on her muscle car - a 1972 Oldsmobile 98. She did well academically, and at age 14 she received a letter from Duke University asking her to enroll based on her pre-ACT scores. Marianne declined, not feeling confident to take such a big step at that young age. 

When she graduated high school, she took some time to help her mother open a business but soon realized she needed to decide what she wanted to do next with her life. A self-proclaimed nerd and a lover of math and science, she decided to pursue a Chemical Engineering degree at the University of Louisville. During her sophomore year, she was required to find an internship for her degree and initially thought she would pursue a career in the biodiesel or renewable energy field. She then discovered a research and development co-op position was available at Brown-Forman, well known for its products such as Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester. That was the beginning of her career in whiskey.

At Brown-Forman, Marianne started working on tasting panels and found she really enjoyed the nuances of whiskey and wanted to learn as much as possible. She was hired by Brown-Forman in 2012 and quickly rose through the ranks. Within a couple of years, she became the first Master Taster at Woodford Reserve Distillery, working closely with master distiller Chris Morris. At that time, Brown-Forman also positioned her as “the face of the brand” and hired her a speech coach and had her attend PR training sessions. This was all quite new to Marianne who had always thought of herself as a very introverted person.

In addition to working on Woodford Reserve products, she was in research and development at Jack Daniel’s, with one of her more notable projects being the creation of JD Malt, which introduced her to the complexities of different grain bills and fermentation processes. Marianne is also credited with creating the Old Forester Whiskey Row Series.

Marianne loved working at Brown-Forman and had no intention of leaving. However, one day she was approached by Peristyle LLC, the company that purchased the historic Old Taylor Distillery, defunct since 1972, and located down the road from Woodford. They wanted her to visit Old Taylor to show her their plans for the dilapidated distillery. During her visit, she was totally blown away by the beauty of the massive limestone castle. That distillery would eventually become today’s Castle & Key distillery, named to honor the castle-like architecture of the buildings and the key-shaped spring house on the grounds.

Peristyle needed to hire a Master Distiller and offered the position to Marianne. It was a tough choice for her. Although they were grooming her to take over Chris Morris’s Master Distiller position at Woodford when he eventually left one day, Marianne had ideas of things that she wanted to experiment on and knew in a big corporate environment that she would be limited in what she could do. So, after 6 years with Brown-Forman, she decided she would take the leap and become the Master Distiller at Castle & Key.

In 2015, Castle & Key officially named Marianne as their Master Distiller, making her the first woman Master Distiller since Prohibition. There were a few other women that did perform these duties at various distilleries before her, but they were never given the title of Master Distiller. In the 60’s, one such woman was up for the job of master distiller but was not promoted because women were required to wear dresses and skirts to work at that time and she would have to walk on grated floors. Her employer thought that if she had a skirt on men would get distracted, so she wasn’t offered the job.

Marianne’s job at Castle & Key was not your typical Master Distiller job. When she arrived at the distillery it was still in shambles. She had to determine where all the equipment would be located and set up all their processes and recipes. She did everything - inspected grain, tested the quality of the water, drilled barrel heads. It took Marianne over 2 years before all the equipment was set up and the first barrel was filled. Despite her success at Castle & Key, Marianne left the distillery in 2019, saying she wanted to pursue other opportunities. Marianne cannot comment on what happened at the distillery because she has an NDA with Castle & Key. The “D” stands for “disparagement” rather than “disclosure,” which means that she cannot say anything bad about them.

When she left Castle & Key, she became an independent spirits consultant and was soon asked to become the Master Blender for Sweetens Cove. Sweetens Cove is a historic golf course just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It has a ritual where players take a shot of whiskey on the first tee the first time they play the course and a shot of whiskey on the 19th hole after every round. Sports celebrities Peyton Manning, Andy Roddick, and sports announcer Jim Nantz are part of the ownership group that purchased the golf course and decided to create a whiskey that paid homage to the course’s rituals and values. They acquired 100 barrels of a 13-year-old Tennessee bourbon and asked Marianne to blend it. Pregnant with her first daughter when she began sampling (and spitting) each barrel, she ultimately blended the final batch.

Marianne is currently working with four South Carolina based partners, one of which is Daniel Rickenmann, the Mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, to produce a bourbon inspired by the south and southern cooking. That bourbon is named Forbidden and is the only one to feature white winter wheat and white corn. They eat a lot of white corn in the south, however it’s more expensive and less starch-laden than the yellow dent corn that’s typically used to make bourbon. Forbidden is the first bourbon Marianne has had control over from grain to glass. She stated that the name is a “little descriptive of her career and a nod to the fact that women were essentially forbidden to work as master distillers per a Kentucky law until the early 1970s.” The initial 5-year release of Forbidden was all distilled at Castle & Key, and aged there for 1 year before the barrels were moved to Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBC) where it aged for another 4 years. In 2020, Marianne officially moved the distillation process to BBC, using the same recipe with the same yeast and the same low-temperature fermentation methods that she used at Castle & Key. Marianne is currently working to construct a brand home for Forbidden called Eavesdrop which will be in downtown Louisville.

Marianne’s other projects include a blended rum at the Pahokee, Florida-based Otherland Society, a fourth-generation farming family who have been framing for over one hundred years. The rum, called Wild Hare, is a blend of 8-year-old South American Rum and 10-year-old Caribbean rum, aged in former whiskey casks and that drinks like a bourbon. She’s also blended the 2nd batch of Black Steel Bourbon - a bourbon owned by internationally known gamer Dr Disrespect.

In addition to her distilling and blending projects, Marianne established the Eaves Foundation, which focuses on education, mentorship, and scholarships to support underrepresented communities in the beverage industry. And when she’s not working, Marianne is spending time with her two children, Andi Lane and Billie Mae, and her partner Kevin Venardos who is the founder and ringmaster of Venardos Circus. Her family travels across the United States with the circus. She converted an old freightliner that used to carry the circus tent (which the circus grew out of) into her mobile laboratory and workspace where she continues to innovate as they travel around the country for 40 weeks a year.

Contributed by: Jeannie LaBella, Bristow, Virginia

with support from Dustin Bowman, The Bluegrass Region Section Editor, Smyrna, Tennessee