The more than $35 million investment includes plans for the addition of three bourbon maturation warehouses to house more than 165,000 barrels of bourbon, new stills, expansion of the existing bottling line and improvements to increase general efficiency and productivity. It is projected to add 15 new jobs over the life of the project.
The three new pot stills, to be built, as need dictates, will be made of copper and housed in the existing distillation building. Brown-Forman claims that the Woodford Reserve distillery was the first distillery to use copper pot stills and the triple distillation process to handcraft bourbon today.
Master distiller Chris Morris said: “The world’s growing taste for premium North American whiskey is driving record exports of these US spirits.
“Woodford Reserve experienced a record volume of nearly 250,000 nine-litre cases and grew net sales by 28% globally in fiscal 2013. We believe strong consumer interest in bourbon will continue and we’re expanding our production capacity in an effort to meet this demand.”
