In a time of transition for the whiskey industry, with brands growing while some sourcing houses shift strategies, Whiskey House of Kentucky (Whiskey House) has officially begun operations.
This new facility is located on a 176-acre campus in the T.J. Patterson Elizabethtown Hardin County Industrial Park. Whiskey House will produce bourbon, rye and American whiskey.
Whiskey House was initially founded in 2022 by David Mandell, John Hargrove and Daniel Linde, the team that started and built The Bardstown Bourbon Company. As the first distillery designed from the ground up to focus solely on large-scale, flexible, contract whiskey production, Whiskey House has no brands of its own and a campus closed to the public.
“Thanks to our incredible team, construction partners, service providers and vendors, we’ve delivered the most advanced distillery in the United States in just over two years,” says Mandell. “Our state-of-the-art facility not only provides unmatched quality, flexibility and production capabilities, but we’ve also assembled the best team in American whiskey to deliver exceptional customer service for our exclusive brand partners.”
The design, fully automated system, sequence of operations and proprietary software enable Whiskey House to run multiple mashbills, including small, craft production runs, while maintaining complete consistency of production, the company says.
The company received its Kosher certification from Star-K and is in the process of obtaining the following certifications: ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, 22000, 17025, 2018 FSSC, ISO/IEC 27001 and British Retail Consortium.
Whiskey House is also designed to capture and reuse latent energy throughout the production process, resulting in a 50% decrease of energy consumption as compared to the EPA’s Energy Star Certified Distilleries, the company says.
“Whiskey House truly sets a new, high bar for advanced manufacturing in the whiskey industry,” says Hargrove. “We’ve created the most flexible distillation system in the country, capable of producing excellent whiskey while enabling tremendous customization at the same time.”
Whiskey House’s fully integrated operational and information technology infrastructure captures and analyzes data across the entire manufacturing process. With the addition of its artificial intelligence applications, the company aims to continually improve quality and efficiency, increase production yields, expand sustainability initiatives and provide critical, real-time information to customers about their liquid. Whiskey House received a Microsoft for Startups Founder’s Hub Grant to accelerate the implementation of AI in all aspects of its manufacturing and distillation process.
“Our technology infrastructure provides customers unprecedented access to every datapoint about their whiskey production, including critical financial, inventory, and quality metrics,” says engineering & technology vice president Roger Henley. “This information will not only help our customers improve their businesses, but it will help brands tell deeper, richer stories, leading to more innovation and transparency across the industry.”
Produced by Vendome Copper & Brass Works, Whiskey House’s distilling and processing equipment is built around a 48-inch custom still and 14, 33,000-gallon closed-top fermenters. The company started operations with greater than seven million proof gallons of annual capacity (112,000 barrels) and will expand to more than 14 million proof gallons (224,000 barrels) in 2027.
The Whiskey House campus includes plans for 33, 41,496 -barrel traditional rickhouses; a 50,000-square-foot palletized warehouse; a spent grain processing facility; a bottling facility; a rail system; as well as access to one of the highest yielding hydro stratigraphic limestone aquifers in the region, which sits 120 feet below the property.
Whiskey House’s traditional rickhouses employ a design structure that is long and skinny with extra-large air channels underneath to ensure consistent airflow and uniform maturation for every barrel, the company says.
Whiskey House will also track barrels with a specially printed QR code designed to provide access to complete track and trace data. From the time the grain arrives on the property to its final maturation journey, this technology captures batch, quality, and control information throughout the distillery lifecycle, and defines each barrel’s location down to the rick position.
Whiskey House construction is led by Bardstown-based Buzick Construction and financed by Truist Bank.
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