A little over a year ago, ground was broken for the Bulleit Distillery in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Construction is moving right along, and there’s even a completed warehouse ¾ full of bourbon barrels that have been relocated from the Stitzel-Weller property in Shively.
The remarkable thing about the warehouse: barrel storage is palletized rather than ricked, which is an odd sight to see in Kentucky, especially from the company that owns the home of the patented rick system invented by Frederick Stitzel. Nonetheless, the warehouses are state-of-the-art with fans and windows that open and close as needed and a containment system that can hold all the liquid filling the 55 thousand barrels stored within.
The distillery will employ around 30 people when it is done. The still house is being built to accommodate 9 fermentation tanks and a column still, and there’s room for more fermenters if the need should arise in the future. The stills will come from Vendome, according to Bulleit Director of Operations Dan Feeser.
“We’re excited to start participating in Shelbyville and Shelby County,” says VP of Distillation, Maturation, and Engineering Pauline Rooney, adding “I’m so proud to be here in Kentucky.”
This project is estimated to cost around $115 million when it’s complete, and an estimated $2-3 million of that is going toward protecting the environment. Diageo plans to maintain a 100 acre natural conservation site around the perimeter of the 300 acre property, to reforest 30 acres once construction is complete, and to prevent untreated water from reaching the nearby lake in the event of a natural disaster by using a bio pond. They are also preventing wildlife in the pond from being impacted by siphoning water off very slowly and placing it in a holding pond.
The distillery is projected to be up and running by late June to fall of 2016. It remains to be seen whether there will be a visitor’s center out there, though Rooney points out it would make more sense to put in a visitor’s center if Shelbyville were a wet county.
Photos Courtesy of Maggie Kimberl and Diageo
