The past is all around as you stroll through the distillery grounds; a wagon filled with whiskey barrels, an old mill stone found over top a Civil War era sword, iron benches on the front porch and the Victorian house on the hill that was home to the Burke's. It was the Burke family who owned this distillery until Prohibition shut them down and ruined the family business. David Pickerell, Maker's Mark Master Distiller, says that it was not Prohibition but Repeal that ruined the bourbon distillers chances of competing in the market once the United States went wet.

"If the government had given distillers notice a few years before Repeal they would have had time to start back up again and have product ready when Repeal went through," says Pickerell. Instead, the necessary aging of bourbon slowed down production once it was legal again and many families did not have the capital to risk and left the business. The Burkes and their Happy Hollow Distillery were just one of the many that lost the battle. Originally opened in 1805, the Maker's Mark Distillery is the oldest, continually operating bourbon distillery and the Samuels family the oldest, continually operating bourbon distillers (aside from no commercial production during Prohibition and shortly after). The two make a perfect match with such a heritage. Yet, even with this lineage, it took the Samuels years to recover from a dry market and, as with almost every Kentucky distiller that wanted to get back in the business, it took outside investment to get up and running again.