Ruth Hunt Candies: The Mt. Sterling Kitchen Behind Kentucky's Blue Monday Bar

Ask a Kentuckian about candy and there is a good chance the conversation turns to Mt. Sterling. That small Montgomery County town, about 34 miles east of Lexington, is home to Ruth Hunt Candies, the company behind the Blue Monday bar and a long list of bourbon balls, caramels and cream candies. With Halloween this weekend and the holiday gifting season close behind, here is the story of how one woman's home kitchen became a Kentucky institution.

A bridge club, a home store and a Main Street factory

In 1921, Ruth Tharpe Hunt began selling the candy her family and friends had always loved. Meijer's profile of the company says the sweets started out as treats shared with her bridge club before friends urged her to sell them. Demand soon led to a small store in her home, at a time when, as the Kentucky Department of Agriculture notes, female-owned businesses were rare.

The business outgrew the house. In 1930, Hunt built a small factory on Main Street in Mt. Sterling, and she ran the company with her daughter, Emily Peck, until the 1960s. Peck carried it on until 1988, when the Kezele family and Tobby Moore took over. Meijer's profile says Larry Kezele bought the company that year at age 39 after a career in local government, while Moore had started there as a high school student with a summer job. In 2001, the company moved into a new factory complex at 550 N. Maysville Road, near Interstate 64.

How the Blue Monday got its name

Of the roughly 70 kinds of candy Ruth Hunt makes, the most famous is one of the oldest. The Blue Monday is a bar of bittersweet chocolate wrapped around a Kentucky pulled cream center, and the company says customers have enjoyed it for more than 80 years. Its name comes from a traveling minister who told Ruth Hunt that every Monday he needed "a little sweet" to help him through his blue Monday. You can try the original for yourself with our Blue Monday Pulled Crème Candy.

Ruth Hunt's cream candy, like the rest of the lineup, is still made the old-fashioned way. According to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, the company uses Hunt's original recipes with real whipping cream, butter, sugar and chocolate, with no additives such as wax, and the candy is stirred by hand in large copper kettles over open flames. The company's own history describes huge old marble slabs in the factory as well.

Bourbon balls and a Woodford Reserve partnership

In 1996, Ruth Hunt began making Woodford Reserve Bourbon Balls with bourbon from the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Woodford County. Over the years the line grew to include bourbon caramels, Mint Julep Bourbon Balls and Bourbon Butter Crunch. In our shop you will find Woodford Reserve Bourbon Balls with dark chocolate and pecan, the cool, minty Mint Julep Bourbon Balls and the toffee-style Woodford Reserve Bourbon Butter Crunch.

The bourbon balls travel well beyond Kentucky. The state agriculture department reports that Delta Air Lines bought small boxes of Ruth Hunt bourbon balls for every passenger on a special flight of Kentucky Derby goers, and that the company's postal desk ships candy worldwide.

Holiday rushes and cocoa prices

Valentine's Day and Christmas are Ruth Hunt's two biggest holidays, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, with bourbon balls and cream candy in demand at Christmas. Valentine's week is a rush all its own. WKYT reported in February 2026 that Feb. 13 and 14 account for 50 percent of the business's annual sales, and that the company had ordered 25,000 pounds of strawberries and 1,000 pounds of grapes to dip in chocolate for those few days.

The same report described how Ruth Hunt handled a sharp jump in cocoa prices. Moore told WKYT the increase was one of the largest he had seen in almost 40 years in the business, but the company absorbed much of the cost rather than passing the full increase on, partly because chocolate makes up only part of many of its candies.

Ruth Hunt's story on stage

In 2026, Ruth Hunt's life became a play. The Sweet Life: The Ruth Hunt Story, written by Kentucky playwright Cat Rhoden Goguen, was commissioned by Gateway Regional Arts Center in Mt. Sterling through a project supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. It premiered in Mt. Sterling in February 2026 and was then presented at Actors Theatre of Louisville. On Aug. 29, an all-Kentucky company gave a one-time industry workshop performance at the Jerry Orbach Theater in New York, where audience members received Blue Mondays and Woodford Reserve Bourbon Balls.

Bringing a taste of Mt. Sterling home

Ruth Hunt still sells from its factory store in Mt. Sterling and a shop on Walton Avenue in Lexington, and Meijer, which brought the candy onto its shelves after opening in Lexington in 2000, now sells it in stores in places like Lexington and Louisville. If you can't make the drive, start with a classic Ruth Hunt Bourbon Balls Equine Collection box or the Assorted Chocolates Equine Collection for a host or teacher gift. Ruth Hunt Caramels and the Ruth Hunt Chocolate Bars are easy stocking stuffers.

A Blue Monday tucked into a lunch box or a care package is a small way to share a story that started more than a century ago in a Kentucky kitchen, and it may help someone get through a Monday of their own.