Stitzel-Weller Is for Sale…But Not Its Name or Its Stills

Royce Neeley, master distiller of Sparta, Kentucky’s Neeley Family Distillery, had first seen the listing online. The 1.34-million-square-foot Stitzel-Weller campus in Shively, inclusive of 15 rickhouses (with capacity for nearly 330,000 barrels), a bottling line, and thousands of square feet of office space, was up for sale, listed at $34.8 million. But there’s a catch: the distillery building itself, which housed the original still and whiskey-making equipment, is not part of the deal. He absorbed that information and went about his day, forgetting about it until a few weeks later when he got a call from a realtor asking if he would like to buy Stitzel-Weller.

The answer was a decisive no. “It doesn’t come with the IP, so you don’t get the Stitzel-Weller name, but I’d want the distillery too,” he says. “It’s a little funny to sell the distillery and not include the actual distillery.” He notes the age of the warehouses that are for sale, too—they date back to the 1930s, making them just under a century old…a potential headache, even in the best of circumstances, as many 100 year old rickhouses are in need of some TLC. For the right buyer, however, this could be a more alluring opportunity.

The distillery was founded in 1935 by spirits distributor W.L. Weller & Sons and A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery, and at its helm were Arthur P. Stitzel, Alex T. Farnsley, and Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle Sr. Over the course of their stewardship, the three men introduced legendary bourbon brands, among them W.L. Weller, Old Fitzgerald, Rebel Yell (now known as Rebel), and Cabin Still. The whiskeys were notable for their inclusion of wheat, not rye, in the mashbill, a move that brought wheated whiskeys into the limelight. The most revered of its brands are now scattered across different ownership: Sazerac lays claim to W.L. Weller, Heaven Hill makes Old Fitzgerald, and Luxco owns both Rebel and Cabin Still.

Stitzel-Weller Distillery itself, meanwhile, has been owned by Diageo (or one of its forerunner companies) since 1972. Diageo's predecessor United Distillers shuttered Stitzel-Weller in 1992, and since then, there has been no distilling of consequence. The warehouses can be used, and the rest of it functions as a tourist site more than anything else. But some investment has been made—Diageo put $2 million into the site back in 2014, debuting a new visitor center, bottling line (which closed earlier this year), and tiny hybrid still capable of producing up to two barrels of whiskey per week. And last month, the company unveiled Stitzel Reserve, a series that’s set to spotlight archival barrels; many of which are currently aging within the 15 warehouses that are now on the market.

Where would those barrels go? A Diageo spokesperson points to an existing plan that will shift the majority of maturing and warehousing operations from Stitzel-Weller to its other Kentucky facilities in Shelbyville and Lebanon over the next two to three years. Outside of selling off "unused portions of the property," the distillery will remain the same, according to the spokesperson, who flags that the visitor center will not be changing in any capacity.