Heaven Hill Celebrates Its New Bardstown Distillery With a Commemorative Release

From 1935 until 1996, Kentucky distiller Heaven Hill made its whiskey at its original distillery, Old Heaven Hill Springs, in Bardstown. On November 7, 1996, that distillery was destroyed by fire. Since then, Heaven Hill has produced its whiskey at its Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, but it had a homecoming of sorts this past April, when it filled its first barrel at the brand new Heaven Hill Springs Distillery in Bardstown. With then new distillery now fully operational, Heaven Hill has marked this milestone with a new bourbon that ties together its past and present.

Heaven Hill Master Distillers Unity is a 27-barrel blend of bourbons that includes one 34 year old “pre-fire” barrel—the very last one Heaven Hill had in its arsenal—distilled in 1991 by then-master distiller Parker Beam. The remaining barrels consist of 6, 8, and 14 year old bourbons, all of which were produced at Bernheim. Their makers include former master distillers Parker Beam and Denny Potter as well as current master distiller Conor O’Driscoll. Just 4,000 bottles of Heaven Hill Master Distillers Unity are available, allocated exclusively to Heaven Hill Springs and the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience in Bardstown. The whiskey has a cumulative mashbill of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley, is priced at $225; and bottled at 107 proof, in a nod to the original barrel entry proof used at Old Heaven Hill Springs Distillery (today, Heaven Hill whiskeys enter the barrel at 125 proof). If the whiskey's name sounds familiar, that's because Heaven Hill previously released a whiskey called Master Distillers' Unity in 2013, after Beam made news of his ALS diagnosis public. That whiskey is related to this new one in the sense that it too combined whiskey distilled over generations (and across distilleries) for a special occasion.

Bourbons from Old Heaven Hill Springs Distillery have long stoked interest among whiskey fans, though these days they’re few and far between as the remaining barrels dwindle. Heaven Hill has bottled some of these pre-fire barrels, including a 27 year old barrel proof bourbon that was distilled between 1989 and 1990 (and introduced in 2018) and various editions of Elijah Craig 23 year old, but similar whiskeys have also come from independent bottlers Single Cask Nation, That Boutique-y Whisky Company, and C. Dully. How did barrels of pre-fire Heaven Hill get into the hands of such bottlers, a couple of whom are based in Scotland? The story goes that a substantial number of Old Heaven Hill Springs barrels were shipped to Scotland in 2006, where they aged for another 12 years before being vatted in stainless steel, then sold to the highest bidders. Since then, Single Cask Nation has debuted a 24 year old Kentucky bourbon (from an unnamed distillery, but all signs, including those literally on its label, point to pre-fire Heaven Hill) and That Boutique-y Whisky Company is on its first batch of its own 24 year old Heaven Hill—both are priced around $300.