Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBC) has unveiled another major production 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 whisky world, has spurred jitters over an impending whiskey 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.”
For a company that was founded on the principles of bespoke contract distilling, offering what’s billed as 500 points of production control for hundreds of clients, Bardstown Bourbon is also continuing to grow its reputation for its in-house brands including the Bardstown Bourbon Origin, Discovery, Collaboration, and Fusion Series, among others. How much of its production goes to its clients, like Jefferson’s, Hirsch, Blue Run, Five Trail, and more, versus itself is, therefore, an interesting point to consider in the years ahead, and the need to dial both up to higher degrees is part of the impetus for such capacity increases.
“Our custom distillation business has always been the most critical part of our business, and that remains true today,” Erwin says, estimating that 20% of the company's production is reserved for its own labels. That level will remain more or less the same with the new firepower added to the arsenal. “Custom distillation for our partner brands will always be the majority of our business model and the primary focus for most of our organization.”
Despite doubling production since 2018, Bardstown Bourbon uses 30% less energy than it did six years ago. That feat was accomplished primarily by capturing the heat produced by distillation and redeploying it across the facility. BBC also emphasizes water conservation and is now able to purify and recycle 90% of the distillery's operational water for reuse across the property, for applications including cleaning and cooling.
As part of the expansion, on-site warehousing totals more than 1 million barrels stored at the facility, with the distillery projecting that warehouse capacity to grow to 2 million barrels in the years ahead.
