James E. Pepper is an important figure in the history of US distilling, campaigning in 1890 to get the state of Kentucky to allow him to bottle his own whiskey at the distillery rather than to sell it by the barrel to distributors. He was also chief proponent of the Bottled in Bond Act in 1897, along with Colonel E.H Taylor Jr, and was the first to introduce the strip stamp that became a legal requirement on such products.

The original distillery was purchased by the Schenley company shortly before the repeal of Prohibition, who demolished it and built a new distillery under the James E. Pepper name. It operated until 1958 when it again fell silent before being rebuilt in 2017, filling its first barrel just before Christmas that year.

The whiskey distilled in Indiana and laid to rest in single cask #18D for 11 years. Hand bottled at distillery No.5 in Lexington, Kentucky.