Two Black Men Are Aiming To Build A Kentucky Distillery On Land Previously Owned By A KKK Leader

By Jasmine Browley ·Updated September 28, 2023

Two Black founders are aiming to change a hurtful part of history through business empowerment.

Earlier this year Aaron Floyd and Antonio Santago joined forced to open  D.A.A.D Distilling in an effort to galvanize single fathers through their shared interest of quality bourbon. The next step? Launching a family-friendly distillery in a location once owned ruled by a Kentucky KKK member.

“Garrard County is a place where we come to free our minds,” Floyd shared about the Lancaster area of Garrard County as reported by Black Enterprise’s Iman Milner. “We came to the nature preserves here. It’s very peaceful and relaxing. We really had a strong gravitational pull to that area, and we wanted to really just reshape the area and change the ties to that particular area.”

The plan is to leverage the venture as an attempt to create community amongst single fathers, and celebrate their efforts to bettering the lives of their children.

“Growing up without a father, I had a stepfather, and I actually just met my biological father three years ago,” Santago said. “After having a long conversation with him, he pretty much explained to me my main purpose of being a father and what I needed to do.”

If they open the distillery, it would put the two in an elite space that have notoriously shut out Black people from ownership. In Kentucky, home to 95 per cent of all Bourbon production, it is an $8.6 billion industry but only a marginal amount of producers are Black,

D.A.A.D Distilling is working to secure 100 acres of land which will carry more than $1 million, which they are working to raise via GoFundMe.

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