Whisky Advocate: Bardstown Bourbon Company’s Latest Expansion Is Its Biggest Yet
October 11, 2024Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBC) has unveiled another major expansion, and this one tops all its previous ones. The company has opened a second, entirely new distillery on its 400-acre campus in Bardstown, Kentucky. The site now houses three column stills and 48 fermentation tanks. Including BBC-owned Green River Distilling in Owensboro, Kentucky, which it acquired in 2022, BBC now has an annual capacity of 18 million proof gallons. That’s not all that far behind James B. Beam Distilling Co., the biggest Bourbon company in the world, which produces 25 million proof gallons annually.
Counting total output in barrel terms, BBC was producing 25,000 barrels annually when it opened its doors in 2014, and today it can produce 289,000 barrels.
Inevitably, such major expansion efforts raise the question of where all that Bourbon will go. While Bardstown’s expansion story is remarkable, it isn’t the only distillery to ratchet up production over the last decade. That trend, along with some recent soft sales numbers in parts of the whiskey world, has spurred jitters over an impending glut.
Bardstown CEO Mark Erwin acknowledges the industry’s high production levels in recent years. “As an industry, we did have some unsustainable industry growth coming out of the pandemic and there is some rebalancing occurring as the industry normalizes,” he says. “Our industry, like any other, is cyclical, and performance and prices will fluctuate.”
Erwin remains bullish on the future and Bardstown Bourbon Company’s place in the market as it pushes forward. “We believe that there are still substantial growth opportunities within the American whiskey category,” he says, citing premiumization, as well as tourism and distillery visits. “We’re long-term believers in our industry, specifically in our business model that will enable us to succeed and continue to grow.” Whisky Advocate has the full story.
Subscribe to Shanken News Daily’s Email Newsletter, delivered to your inbox each morning.
