April 27, 2022 – Groundbreaking is expected in June for Heaven Hill’s return to distilling in Bardstown, Kentucky. The family-owned distiller plans to build a $135 million dollar distillery in Bardstown. When it opens in 2024, the distillery will make Heaven Hill’s first whiskey in Bardstown since the historic 1996 fire that destroyed the Shapira family’s original distillery.
The announcement comes after Tuesday night’s approval of zoning changes for the site by the Nelson County Planning Commission. The distillery will be built on a 61-acre vacant piece of land just east of Bardstown Community Park along Highway 245, just west of the proposed Kentucky Owl Park development. This represents a shift away from Heaven Hill’s main campus on Loretto Road southeast of Bardstown, home to the company’s main bottling facility and maturation warehouses along with the newly-expanded Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience visitors center.
“The people of Bardstown have helped us create and build our brands over all these many years, so it’s a special homecoming to bring distilling back to this community,” Heaven Hill President Max Shapira said in a news release. “Our new distillery will honor our long-time Bardstown roots while applying state-of-the-art equipment and processes to produce the highest quality American Whiskey and build upon our meaningful partnership with Bardstown and the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” WhiskyCast has requested interviews with Heaven Hill executives, and this story will be updated with additional information.
The project has also been approved for $1.5 million in economic development incentives by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority on March 31. According to Heaven Hill’s application for those incentives, the new distillery is expected to create 25 new jobs when it opens and increase to 38 jobs over a ten-year period. That goes along with the company’s plans to start with an annual production capacity of 10 million proof gallons of spirit and eventually expand production to as much as 30 million gallons per year. As of now, there are no plans to build maturation warehouses at the site. Instead, the distillery’s output will be matured at Heaven Hill’s existing warehouse sites located around the Bardstown area.
The new distillery is intended to supplement Heaven Hill’s existing production at the Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, and that distillery will continue to produce whiskey after the new distillery opens. Heaven Hill has expanded the Bernheim facility three times since acquiring it following the 1996 fire, but the site is landlocked by the surrounding neighborhood and has little room left for expansion.
Links: Heaven Hill