by The hits just keep coming for our friends at Bardstown Bourbon Company.
In less than five years, their 100-acre campus in Central Kentucky has gone from cornfield to state-of-the-art distillery to become one of the top ten U.S. whiskey distillers by volume. Now that they distill more than 50 different mashbills of bourbon for more than 30 outside clients, in addition to their own bourbon, they’ve added bottling to their operation.
Late this spring, Bardstown Bourbon Company fired up its brand new bottling line in a newly constructed facility, across the parking lot from the distillery, restaurant, and bar complex.
Of course, the new facility is bottling Bardstown Bourbon Company’s own products like the popular Discovery and Fusion Series of bourbons. In addition, it bottles spirits for products like Blue Run Spirits, Lucky 7 bourbon, and 15 Stars bourbon, among others.
On a recent rainy Thursday afternoon, Bardstown Bourbon Company’s Digital Media Manager, Brandon Smith, walked me through the sparkling new bottling facility.
“With so many clients that we’re distilling for, it only made sense for use to bottle it too,” Smith said. “If we can create the product for them, why shouldn’t we bottle it at the same time. As we scale and grow our business and move more cases, it only makes sense for us to be able to control that quality.”
In addition to the tremendous revenue opportunities, adding bottling makes Bardstown Bourbon Company a complete spirits operation now. “We’re truly grain to glass now,” Smith said. “ We do the whole process from distillation, maturation, blending, bottling, design…we do it all in-house now.”
Smith says they aren’t currently competing with the giants in the industry in terms of bottling volume, but they have plenty of room to grow. Their primary clients are in a niche of brands bottling up to 40,000 or 50,000 cases a year.
The sophisticated, computer-guided bottling system was custom-built by U.S. Bottling Machinery Company in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Smith showed me several testing rooms, quality control labs, and sanitary rooms used by both Bardstown Bourbon Company staff and the clients they bottle for. For you technical types, their website says this about onsite testing capabilities: “Temperature & element simulation, adhesion testing, finish and cap analysis, and testing for light, shaking, and age are all part of our in-depth review.” (The usual, I guess.)
The facility includes warehouse space for the bottles, labels, caps and corks, and boxes that go together to get the liquid ready to ship to its final destination.
While there are no immediate plans to put the bottling facility on the main tour of Bardstown Bourbon Company, Smith didn’t rule it out as part of a specialty tour in the future.
Bardstown Bourbon Company describes its facility as “the most sophisticated distillery in the nation.” Having already toured the distillery several times and now seeing this amazing bottling facility, you’ll get no argument from me.
Bardstown Bourbon Co. Bottling
By The Numbers
- Groundbreaking: 5/21/20. Start of production: 5/12/21.
- Number of employees in the bottling facility: 25.
- Annual Capacity: 800,000 cases (but easily expandable to grow well beyond that capacity).
- Number of labels that can be automatically applied to a bottle: 5
- Percentage of the bottling production for other clients’ products: 90%
- Number of clients: Currently we have been contacted by over 90 groups and are still working on finalizing agreements.
