LORETTO, Ky. — In honor of Earth Month, University of Kentucky (UK) forestry researchers and Maker's Mark team members planted 2,000 white oak seedlings at Star Hill Farm, home of Maker's Mark Distillery. 

Maker's Mark said this complements plantings over the last several years and brings the world's largest white oak tree research repository to 10,000 trees across 24 aces, representing more than 400 varieties of white oak. Trees range in size from six inches to several feet, Maker's Mark added.

The work is part of a partnership formed in 2020 with UK's Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment establishing the repository to preserve the species used to make bourbon barrels. The project is designed to last generations, and researchers study the white oaks that are both the most resilient and best enhance the flavor of bourbon, Maker's Mark said.

“Bourbon is nature distilled,” said Rob Samuels, managing director of Maker’s Mark and eighth-generation distiller. “So it’s incumbent upon us to protect the environment that gives us the ingredients for bourbon. That’s what this project is about: gaining more knowledge of white oaks so that all of us in the bourbon industry can work better with nature now and into the future.”

Newly charred white oak barrels are essential to the aging of bourbon and are often reused to age other spirits such as scotch, Maker's Mark said.

“This is a dream project,” said Seth DeBolt, director of the James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits at UK. “The plan is for this research to continue for a hundred years or more into the future, and that’s the beauty of the relationship UK has with Maker’s Mark. It’s a shared vision of protecting nature.”

Maker's Mark added DeBolt is leading a separate project where UK researchers are mapping the genome of a white oak dubbed MM1, or the "Mother Tree," on Maker’s Mark property. Researchers believe it may be Kentucky's oldest white oak and have an age between 300 and 500 years.