Sean Josephs, Charles Fulford and Jay Peterson founded Pinhook in 2011, starting with 20 barrels bought from Lawrenceburg Distillers in Indiana (now MGP) and aged in Kentucky. The name is an old thoroughbred term for buying young horses and bringing them to racing maturity, and each release is tied to a named racehorse. The first bourbon came out in fall 2014. In 2017, when Castle & Key restarted the old Old Taylor Distillery in Frankfort, Pinhook began distilling its own bourbon and rye mash bills there, and those barrels now form its core range. Josephs, a sommelier, is master blender and treats each year's blend as a vintage, setting proof batch by batch rather than matching a fixed profile.