Marc Dottore, founder of Dueling Grounds Distillery in Franklin, Kentucky, is committed to doing things the way he believes they should be done, even when everyone tells him there’s an easier path.
New Tunes and No Shortcuts
Marc came to the whiskey business from Nashville’s music business, where he spent 40 years working in management and on the technical side of touring. When Marc decided he needed something more stable than the feast-or-famine nature of the music industry, he didn’t rush into distilling. He started with a 25-gallon still in 2013 and spent years perfecting his recipe before ever selling a bottle.
Marc doesn’t take shortcuts that have become commonplace in craft distilling.
“I wanted something that I could build,” he told me during our conversation. While many craft distilleries buy whiskey from larger producers and finish it in specialty barrels or rebottle it under their own label, Marc took the hard road. He makes every drop himself.
For the first two years, Dueling Grounds had no whiskey to sell. Marc waited for his product to age properly. Even after two years, he only had young whiskey. It took four full years before he could offer a properly aged bourbon. Most small business owners need cash flow immediately, but Marc believed in building something authentic from the ground up.
“It was really important to do a couple of things,” Marc explained. “It was to be authentic with what I do and transparent”. He emphasized that he wanted to look customers in the eye and tell them honestly that Dueling Grounds made their whiskey, didn’t buy it, and didn’t finish someone else’s product. That transparency has become his calling card.
Local Grain and Local Values
What makes Dueling Grounds different from other Kentucky bourbon producers?
Dueling Grounds makes every drop of whiskey in-house and sources all grain from a single Kentucky farm. Every grain comes from one farm: Walnut Grove Farm in Chapel, Kentucky, about 15 minutes from his distillery.
This local approach represents a fundamental difference in how Marc thinks about business. He could get cheaper grain from industrial suppliers, but he chooses to support his community instead.
The Haltem family runs Walnut Grove, and Marc has known them since he moved to Franklin in the 1990s. They grow non-GMO corn, which they clean to number one quality. The red winter wheat comes from the same farm, and the barley gets sent to South Fort Malting House in Cynthiana, Kentucky, for malting before returning to the distillery.
“As much as possible, if I could spend money with my neighbors, that just made sense to me,” he said. Those neighbors have returned the favor many times over, giving him their best prices, extending credit when needed, and loaning equipment in a pinch.
Marc makes another unconventional choice with his barrels. While most bourbon producers use number four char barrels, which give whiskey more color and a stronger wood flavor, Marc uses number three char.
“A lot of people like the number four chars,” he acknowledged, “but for me, it’s also a little too woody. And I like something with a little less wood. I want to be able to taste the underlying grains and not just taste the barrel”.
A Systematic Growth Strategy
Marc’s production philosophy differs dramatically from the growth-at-all-costs mentality that has shaped much of the craft distilling boom.
He started with six 25-gallon barrels made on his tiny electric still. At that scale, with inefficient 10-to-1 ratios of mash to finished product, he was getting about two and a half gallons of product per day. It took him more than a year to fill those six barrels.
Today, Dueling Grounds makes between 100 and 150 barrels annually, though Marc has the capacity to produce up to 500 barrels. He recently installed a thousand-gallon stripping still, which has dramatically improved his efficiency.
What used to require six days a week at 12 hours per day now takes three days a week at eight hours per day.
Marc isn’t rushing to max out his production capacity. “It’s kind of the way I’ve always done things,” he explained. “It’s just like a systematic slow growth approach, a little better every year, a little better every year”.
A Different Kind of Product Line
Marc’s bottle lineup started with a two-year bourbon that he released when customers encouraged him to bottle what he’d been giving them to taste. That evolved into his bottled-in-bond expression, which became his workhorse at $55 and 100 proof.
His single-barrel expression takes the opposite approach from the bottled-in-bond. While the bottled-in-bond calls for careful blending of four barrels to achieve consistency, the single-barrel celebrates variation.
Marc produces whiskey year-round in an unheated, uncooled space, which creates natural variations. Summer fermentations with wild yeasts differ from slow winter fermentations with better conversion. “This is living color, and this is Technicolor,” Marc said, comparing his two main expressions.
His special reserve red label showcases older whiskey and unusual releases, including Kentucky Bourbon Festival bottles and milestone barrels. This year, he’s released several six-year double-barrel blends at 110 proof, which proved so successful that he just received approval for a permanent black-label six-year expression.
Similarly, Marc also has four bottles from his original six barrels that have crossed the nine-year mark. These founders’ club bottles will be released by the end of the month.
Marc is candid about the challenges facing craft distillers. “There is less shelf space,” he acknowledged, noting that celebrity-backed brands take up significant retail real estate.
But Marc is doing what he’s always done: pivoting and adapting. His gift shop business has remained stable, within 5% of last year. He added a full kitchen two years ago, serving pizza and pretzels, which has strengthened his cocktail and bottle sales. He partnered with Bottle Nexus to enable direct-to-consumer shipping through licensed retailers. And he’s opening a second tasting room in Cave City, Kentucky, near Mammoth Cave National Park.
Four Frequently Asked Questions About Dueling Grounds
How did Dueling Grounds Distillery get its name?
The distillery name comes from Linkulmpinch, an area on the Kentucky-Tennessee border that hosted over 40 pistol duels in the early 1800s. Located along the Cumberland Trace, this spot became famous for settling disputes between lawyers and politicians through formalized combat.
The duels weren’t typically fought to the death but rather to draw first blood and settle matters of honor. A stagecoach inn at the site maintained matched pairs of pistols to ensure fairness, and the location’s border position made it convenient for participants from both states to meet on neutral ground. The dueling tradition ended when the Kentucky and Tennessee Bar Associations threatened to disbar any lawyers caught dueling.
Why does Dueling Grounds use wheat instead of rye in its bourbon mash bill?
Kentucky is a wheat-growing state, and Marc prioritized using locally sourced ingredients from neighboring farms. While rye bourbon has gained popularity, Marc chose wheat to support local agriculture. Walnut Grove Farm in Chapel, Kentucky, supplies its red winter wheat along with all its other grains. Marc’s entire supply chain is within 15 minutes of the distillery.
What is the Cave City tasting room project that Dueling Grounds is developing?
Marc is opening a second tasting room in Cave City, Kentucky, near Mammoth Cave National Park, which attracts six million visitors annually. He recruited MB Rowland Distillery to open next door, and Balance Distilling is moving its entire operation nearby. The city designated the area as an entertainment district, allowing the distilleries to create a bourbon destination that benefits all participants through collaboration rather than competition.
How does Dueling Grounds maintain quality while keeping production small?
The distillery produces only 100 to 150 barrels annually despite having a capacity for 500 barrels. Marc employs two full-time distillers who work with recently upgraded equipment that has improved efficiency from six 12-hour days to three 8-hour days. This approach allows Marc to maintain his hands-on quality control, use sweet-mash processes with rigorous cleaning, and oversee all aspects of production from grain selection to barrel charring.
A Final Note on Dueling Grounds Distillery
Marc Dottore’s approach to bourbon is simple and on-target: local ingredients, patient aging, and transparency about what goes into every bottle. If you’re curious about whiskey made without shortcuts or sourced product, Dueling Grounds also offers tastings and tours.
Dueling Grounds is headquartered in Franklin, Kentucky, and ships through retail partners for those outside the state.
View the full podcast with Mark Detore at whiskeyshenanigans.com. And for more conversations with fascinating people in the whiskey world, check us out on Instagram @whiskeyshaniganspodcast and Facebook.