A $350 Million Dollar Investment, AI and More: A New Venture From the Minds Behind Bardstown Bourbon Co. Could ‘Reshape’ the American Whiskey Industry

A mockup of Whiskey House of Kentucky’s state-of-the-art facilities (Photo: Whiskey House of Kentucky)

On Thursday, the minds behind Bardstown Bourbon Company unveiled Whiskey House of Kentucky, a cutting-edge facility set to open on July 1, 2024. Founded in 2022 by David Mandell, John Hargrove and Daniel Linde, Whiskey House of Kentucky is a first-of-its-kind distillery being built from the ground up that will focus entirely on high-volume contract whiskey production.

The operation will be build on 176 acres in the T.J. Patterson Industrial Park in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

Mandell, Hargrove and Linde were part of the team that built Bardstown Bourbon Company. They have planned on a $350 million investment over the next decade. The team plans to hire 50 employees in 2024 and plans to expand to over 100 by 2027.

“Whiskey House will reshape the contract whiskey market in the United States,” Mandell said in a news release. “As the bourbon market continues to grow, we see the need for additional distilling capacity with more customer focused solutions. We will provide the highest-quality production, guaranteed capacity and exceptional customer service for our brand partners.”

The development plan consists of 16 41,500-barrel rickhouses, a 50,000-square-foot palatized warehouse facility, a grain processing facility, a bottling plant, a rail system and access to a high-yield limestone-based aquifer that sits 120 feet below the facility.

Additionally, Whiskey House houses a 48-inch custom copper still and 33,000-gallon closed-top fermenters. The total initial capacity for Whiskey House’s operations includes over 7 million proof gallons, and the team intends to double production in 2027.

Whiskey House also received a Microsoft for Startups Founder’s Hub Grant to implement the use of AI during every aspect of the distillation process.

“We’re making major investments in the technological capabilities of the distillery that will immediately make Whiskey House the most advanced contract whiskey production facility in the United States,” Hargrove said.

The distillery’s plans to use information technology are meant to analyze data and use AI to improve the final quality of the distillate, increase output and offer real-time information to Whiskey House’s customer base about their final product.

“For the first time, our customers will have access to every data-point about their whiskey from start to finish,” Whiskey House Engineering and Technology Vice President Roger Henley said in a news release. “Not only will this information enable brands to create more innovative products and share more compelling stories about their whiskies, but it will also help optimize their business with critical, financial, inventory and quality reports.”

According to Forbes, Whiskey House will not be involved in investor barrels, and the facility intends to exclusively work with producers who want to make whiskey brands.

“Doing that drives prices up and it ties up capacity for brands that need that production,” Mandell told Forbes in regards to investor barrels. “It creates a bubble in the market and it’s really not healthy for the industry.”

Forbes reported that Whiskey House is already drumming up a fair amount of interest from potential brands within the bourbon world, including from Marci Palatella, the owner of Bardstown, Kentucky-based Preservation Distillery.

“The concept with Whiskey House is, you’ll never have that problem with us,” Patella said, according to Forbes. “They are not working with investor barrels. That’s a big deal. Not producing their own brands is setting them apart.”

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