[INTERVIEW] Kentucky bourbon master eyes global expansion with Korean bartenders

Jefferson’s Bourbon founder Trey Zoeller was in Seoul last week for a special event in Korea, offering a unique opportunity to introduce his Kentucky-based brand to Korean consumers.

It marked the finale of a six-month program involving 40 Korean bartenders who explored the brand and developed their own cocktails using its bourbon.

Zoeller, who founded the brand with his father, Chet Zoeller, in 1997, came to Korea to recognize the bartenders whose cocktails for the Camp Jefferson program sold the most and best reflected his vision for the brand.

In 2023, Zoeller and his late father were inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. During the event, he shared insights into the brand with the participating bartenders, explaining how his passion for outdoor adventure helped shape its identity beyond bourbon-making traditions.

Zoeller said he was surprised to see his bourbon transformed into a variety of creative cocktails he had never imagined before.

“I loved it. There was so much creativity that came through so many different variations of products that I never had. I tasted every one of them, judged and picked out my favorite. The winning cocktail was probably not the most complex but more to my liking, which I typically drink bourbon on a big rock. It’s kind of an old fashioned,” Zoeller said in an interview with The Korea Times last week.

“The bartenders were much more knowledgeable than others around the world. They know their history, they know combinations. Some of them brought their own ingredients. They were so enthusiastic about it.”

Zoeller said the program took bartenders out of their usual workplace environments to challenge their creativity and test their abilities.

The approach mirrored how he sought to push the boundaries of traditional bourbon-making, experimenting with new ways to enjoy the spirit and ultimately developing Jefferson’s Bourbon. Bourbon dominated the U.S. spirits market during the so-called Golden Age of American spirits from 1963 to 1970, and Zoeller’s home state of Kentucky is home to more than 100 bourbon distilleries

Zoeller loaded a 1,000 barrels of bourbon made using a traditional recipe onto a container ship and sent them on a voyage around the world. As the vessel crossed rough waters, the motion of the ocean caused the bourbon to move in and out of the wood, creating distinctive conditions for maturation.

By the end of the voyage, the clear spirit had taken on a caramel-brown color and developed the signature flavor of Jefferson’s Ocean, one of the brand’s flagship labels.

“So usually we go out of Savannah, Georgia, down through the Caribbean, around Australia, through Korea, back across the Pacific to the west coast of the U.S., back through the Panama Canal, up the east coast of the U.S., across the Atlantic to Europe, back to the U.S., down to Kentucky. They encounter daily sea conditions, whether it’s calm, moderate, rough or very rough, like hurricanes or typhoons. We lose barrels from time to time,” he said.

The idea of aging bourbon at sea came from Zoeller’s research into how bourbon was first made and transported in the early days of Kentucky whiskey production.

“When people started distilling in Kentucky, they were in the wilderness, so they had to put it in barrels and float it down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River to New Orleans, then put it on ships and sail around Florida before taking it back up to New York and Boston,” he said.

“When that whiskey went on that journey, it changed from being colorless to looking like this and having all that flavor. They were like, ‘Wow, this is so much better than the stuff we’re making up here. We want more and more of it.’ So the distilleries started getting bigger and bigger.

“So it’s really going back to how bourbon was originally made and, at the same time, building on traditional bourbon maturation with another step by taking it on these voyages.”

Rise of bourbon in US

Bourbon, a type of whiskey, is subject to strict U.S. regulations designed to preserve its traditional character, Zoeller said. These include using a grain mixture containing at least 51 percent corn, aging the spirit in new, charred oak barrels and adding no flavoring or coloring. Although there is no minimum aging period for bourbon in general, Zoeller said Jefferson’s Bourbon follows a six-year aging process.

These requirements add to production costs, making bourbon one of the more expensive types of whiskey to produce and bottle, he said.

“When I started my business, 99.9 percent of all bourbons were made in Kentucky. Now, it is made in all 50 states but still 95 percent is made in Kentucky,” he said, citing a huge fluctuation of local temperatures in the state which maximizes the depth of maturation extracting new tastes. “A joke about the weather in Kentucky is if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’s going to change.”

Jefferson’s Bourbon entered the market amid a three decade decline in the drink’s popularity, as Scotch and malt whiskies dominated the market. About a decade after launching the brand, Zoeller witnessed what he described as a “meteoric rise” in bourbon’s popularity.

“People started understanding the nuances of bourbon and how delicious it is and what goes into it. They really geeked out on it,” he said.

Zoeller said he sees a similar opportunity in Korea, where the whiskey market is dominated by highball-friendly whiskies and single malts.

“There is now a global perception that bourbon is even superior to Scotch whiskies. Here, that perception hasn’t come yet, but if we can show what has happened in other places, then I think that prestige will come with it and will open people’s minds and they’ll be looking for it,” he said.

Zoeller said he hopes Korean consumers will learn the story behind the voyage taken by each bottle.

“I try to put a story in every bottle — the story of Jefferson’s Ocean, where we put barrels on ships and sail them around the world to bring in some great flavors. The salt is able to get in so it’s salty. When we cross the equator, it caramelizes the sugars in the wood so you get a salted caramel flavor,” he said.

Zoeller said Korea was the first overseas market Jefferson’s Bourbon returned to after the company halted exports during the COVID-19 pandemic, when surging U.S. demand left it with insufficient supply for international markets. Pernod Ricard Korea began importing the brand again in 2024.

“We had to stop all exports because our sales rose so much in the U.S. we did not have enough to supply the international market and we made the decision to stop all exports. Two years ago we decided to start export again and Korea was our first market to go into,” he said.

Zoeller, a longtime friend of Korean American celebrity chef Edward Lee, who also hails from Kentucky, said bourbon pairs well with Korean fried chicken, particularly varieties with bold flavors and spices.

“He and I were drinking bourbon and then went to his restaurant and then I said what food should we order to pair with bourbon? We chose Korean fried chicken that had some great spice on it. But the bourbon really didn’t have enough spice to hold up to the chicken. So we talked about creating a new whiskey and created Jefferson’s Chef’s Collaboration, which was actually two bourbons mixed with a rye whiskey. It worked phenomenally well together,” he said.