JTS Brown

The brand was named after John Thompson Street Brown Jr., who together with his half-brother George Garvin Brown, opened a wholesale liquor business that later became the Brown-Forman corporation. The brand was originally produced by J.T.S. Brown and Sons in 1855, and ownership of the brand eventually devolved to Heaven Hill, a company founded in 1935.

Prior to its destruction by fire in 1996, Heaven Hill had its distillery in Bardstown. After the fire, distilling capacity in the Louisville area was temporarily made available as a goodwill gesture by the Brown-Forman corporation, and Fortune Brands also assisted with some capacity at its Jim Beam distillery. Heaven Hill subsequently opened a distillery called the Bernheim distillery in Louisville (very close to Brown-Forman's distillery), where Heaven Hill's distilling has been conducted since then. Although Heaven Hill no longer operates a distillery at its company headquarters in Bardstown, its rick houses for aging and its bottling operations were kept in Bardstown, about 40 miles away from the current distillery.