WhistlePig Gets Rid of Facility at the Center of Whiskey Fungus Controversy With $17M Sale

(Photo: WhistlePig Whiskey)

WhistlePig Whiskey has sold a complex of spirits aging warehouses in Moriah, New York, for $17 million, according to the Adirondack Explorer. The otherwise unassuming facility was at the center of a years-long dispute with locals over the first documented outbreak of Baudoinia Compniacensis, or whiskey fungus, in the state.

On Monday, it was reported that the Vermont-based distiller sold the warehouses to a Delaware-based company called Zags 26 LLC, of which little information is publicly known apart from the fact that it buys real estate. WhistlePig subsidiary Moriah Ventures reportedly renewed its distilling license earlier this year, indicating that the premises can continue to age and bottle spirits until at least the spring of 2029.

Local officials told the Adirondack Explorer that they were not aware the complex had been sold.

Tensions between WhistlePig and the Moriah community came to a head in 2023, when it was reported that black Baudoinia fungus had begun spreading to nearby businesses and residences. The mold is formed when airborne ethanol vapors from aging spirits mix with atmospheric pressure. Though research indicates that it’s not dangerous to human health, whiskey fungus is known to damage property, cling to cars and kill trees.

The story quickly made headlines across the state. Locals dubbed it everything from “black schmutz” to the “devil’s bulls–t,” rallying around calls for WhistlePig to take responsibility and pay for the cleanup.

WhistePig formally denied culpability for the outbreak, claiming that the accusations were “founded more on conjecture than on any objective evaluation.” The distiller did, however, agree to clean nearby homes on a case-by-case basis “in the spirit of cooperation.”

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation later determined that WhistlePig was responsible for the outbreak, and the distiller agreed to a corrective plan to provide free power washing to homes within a 960-yard radius of its rickhouses.

WhistlePig is a popular rye whiskey brand distilled at a renovated dairy farm in Shoreham, Vermont. The brand’s barrel warehouses in upstate New York were its only facility outside of its home state, excluding a recently opened tasting venue in Kentucky.