Tiny Athertonville, Kentucky Is Still in the Whiskey Business (Part Two)

 

ZAK Cooperage, formerly Seagrams Distillery, DSP-KY-20. 

In 1899, John and Peter Atherton sold their distilleries in Athertonville to the Whiskey Trust, which operated them until Prohibition. After Prohibition, the property was acquired by members of the Cummins family. The Athertons went on to do other things. John got a high school named after him.

In 1848, Richard Cummins came to Kentucky from Ireland. He was a yeast maker by training. Yeast-making was a specialty occupation that served bakers, brewers, vintners, and distillers. Although most could and did make their own yeast, hiring a specialist was often more cost-effective.

Richard Cummins transitioned from commercial yeast-making to distilling when he worked at distilleries in Kentucky and Illinois mid-century. In 1858, he opened his own Kentucky distillery at Raywick in Marion County. After the Civil War, he built a second distillery near Athertonville called Coon Hollow. Like John and Peter Atherton, Cummins ultimately sold Coon Hollow to the Trust, which folded it into Atherton’s distilleries. Unlike the Athertons, however, the Cummins family remained active in the distilling business.

Arthur Cummins, a nephew of Richard’s, worked for his uncle and learned the yeast-making and distilling trade. Arthur and his sons, Arthur J. and Charles, worked at several whiskey plants and were employed as distillers until Prohibition. 

After Prohibition, the Cummins brothers and Hunt Collins built a new distillery in Athertonville, starting with whatever was left of the previous plants. Insufficiently capitalized, they soon sold it to R. L. Buse Co., a Cincinnati whiskey broker. 

A decade later, during WWII, Arthur J. formed a partnership with a different Collins. They repurchased and repurposed the Athertonville distillery to make high-proof alcohol for the war effort. Although Collins had the larger interest and was the firm’s president, they named it Cummins-Collins because of the Cummins family’s reputation. Cummins became president when Collins died in 1945.

After WWII, the Cummins-Collins Distillery was converted back into a whiskey plant. The team that built it was a who’s-who of the industry in that era. Walter C. Wagner was the architect. Matt Corcoran & Company, Kentucky's oldest coppersmiths, designed and built the stills. The Henry Vogt Machine Company built and installed the boilers and stokers. H. G. Whittenberg was general contractor. W. E. Caldwell Company built and installed the mash cookers, fermenting tubs, and milling equipment. 

The new distillery had a capacity of 220 barrels per day. It had a cooling system that allowed it to run all summer. Its four warehouses had a total capacity of 85,000 barrels. Three warehouses were masonry, one was steel-clad. Everything was state-of-the-art.

One of their bourbons was called Old Knob Creek and inspired the later Suntory product.

Cummins-Collins soon fell to the juggernaut that was the Seagram’s Company. Although ownership changed, the distillery continued to be called Cummins-Collins. Although the whiskey it made was used in many Seagram’s products, Cummins-Collins came to be most associated with the Antique bourbon label.

In 1972, a fire heavily damaged the facility. It was quickly rebuilt, operated until 1987, then closed for good. 

In 1990, Bert and Bruce Zimlich acquired the property and repurposed it as a cooperage, making new barrels for the bourbon industry, and refurbishing used barrels. Now known as ZAK Cooperage, they offer a range of custom toasting, charring, and air seasoning options. “Our tailored processes ensure that every barrel we produce surpasses industry standards, preserving and enhancing the integrity of the spirits they hold.” Zach Zimlich is the master cooper and director of operations. Jessica Ann Zimlich handles sales and customer relations.

So, Athertonville today may be tiny, little more than a wide spot in the road (U.S. 31E), but it has been an important part of Kentucky's bourbon industry for 226 years.

Tiny Athertonville, Kentucky Is Still in the Whiskey Business (Part One)

 

Atherton High School, 3000 Dundee Road, Louisville, KY, is not in the whiskey business, but was named for a prominent distiller.

Atherton High is a public high school in Louisville, Kentucky. It serves about 1,400 students. It was named after John Atherton; a prominent Louisville businessman and politician of the late 19th and early 20th century who helped reform the city’s school system. Founded in 1924 as J. M. Atherton High School for Girls, it became co-ed in 1950.

The school’s web site includes a 307-word biography of John Atherton, mentioning some of his business and civic accomplishments. Conspicuously absent is any mention of the source of his great wealth: the making and selling of whiskey. 

Today, Athertonville, Kentucky is a tiny, unincorporated community but in the 19th century it was a bustling distillery town, surrounded by farms that supplied its distilleries with grain, fruit, seasonal labor, and customers. 

The town was named for Peter Atherton, its founder, who was John Atherton’s father. Peter Atherton came to Kentucky in 1791 with land grants from Virginia for about a thousand acres. Among his many enterprises was a distillery on the west bank of Knob Creek, near its junction with the Rolling Fork. He operated there from 1800 until 1834. It was a small distillery, one of many, doing primarily local business, typical of that era.

Peter Atherton and Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Whitehead were newlyweds when they arrived in Kentucky. Children came fast, two girls and a boy. We don’t know much about them. In 1834, with the kids long since grown and gone, Peter closed the distillery and retired. Betsy, age 55, died that same year. 

Peter, then in his early 60s, remarried. His new wife, another Elizabeth, was 28. They had two sons, Peter and John. Peter was six and John was three when their father died. Elizabeth remarried and by all accounts the boys had a happy and secure childhood.

Although Peter Atherton, the Boone family, and many others distilled on Knob Creek from a very early date, it was the younger son of Peter Atherton’s second marriage, John McDougal Atherton, who put the town named for his father on the whiskey-making map almost a century later. 

A fanciful rendering of the Atherton distilling interests.

In 1867, John opened his new Atherton Distillery. It made sweet mash whiskey, about seven barrels a day. He later bought a sour mash distillery a few miles away, which he relocated to his site but on the opposite bank of Knob Creek. Working with him was a cousin named Alexander Mayfield, so they named the second distillery A. Mayfield & Co. Their Mayfield Sour Mash Whiskey became a successful brand. 

Among Mayfield’s customers was George Garvin Brown, the founder of Brown-Forman. His original Old Forester Bourbon was a blend of whiskey from Mayfield and two other distilleries. 

Athertonville grew up around its distilleries. John Atherton steadily expanded his operation, acquiring two additional plants. At its peak, the entire enterprise produced about 50,000 barrels of whiskey a year. 

In addition to the distilleries, Atherton owned most of the town; about 75 houses that he rented, a 100-room hotel, blacksmith shops, and livery stables. His brands included Atherton, Mayfield, Clifton, Windsor, Howard, Carter, Kenwood, Brownfield, and Baker.

John Atherton was joined in the business by his son, Peter. Business was good and both men became wealthy. Their offices and homes were in Louisville, 50 miles away. They didn’t visit the distillery every day, but when they did, they took the train. Atherton’s distilleries had helped build the spur line from Athertonville to New Haven, where it connected to the main line that ran between Louisville and Nashville.

In the late 19th century, as distilleries like Atherton’s grew larger and more modern, continuous stills replaced pot stills, and railroads gave every producer an unlimited potential market. This quickly put everyone in competition with everyone else. The market became flooded with whiskey, driving down prices and, therefore, profits. 

Several attempts were made to ‘rationalize’ the industry by limiting production through consolidation, ideally by creating a monopoly or near-monopoly. 

This had already been done in other fields. John Rockefeller did it with oil. There were hundreds of small producers in the Western Pennsylvania oil fields, but Rockefeller controlled them by controlling the refineries. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick had a monopoly with steel. Cornelius Vanderbilt controlled the railroads. James Duke did it with tobacco and Joseph Benedict Greenhut did it with whiskey. Their industry-spanning monopolies, known as trusts, are illegal now but weren’t then, although the various trusts committed plenty of illegal acts in pursuit of their goals. 

Greenhut’s Whiskey Trust began in Peoria, Illinois, which then rivaled Kentucky as a producer of distilled spirits. Its formal name was the Distillers' & Cattle Feeders' Trust. The Kentucky version was called the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company. The two trusts did not compete with each other but rather cooperated to drive everyone else out of business.

In 1899, the Athertons cashed out and sold their distilleries to the Trust, which operated them until Prohibition. John was 58 and Peter was 37 at the time of the sale. 

To say the Athertons were well-connected in Louisville would be an understatement. John was president of the Lincoln Savings Bank and Trust Company, and vice president and director of the National Bank of Kentucky. He also served on the boards of the Louisville Realty Company, Louisville Gas and Electric, and the L&N Railroad. He served briefly in the state legislature. He was chairman of the Louisville City Government Committee, which studied municipal reform. He helped reorganize the Louisville public school system and that’s how Louisville’s Atherton High School came to be named in his honor. 

The younger Mr. Atherton also served in the state legislature. He became a real estate mogul. One of his companies owned Louisville’s historic Seelbach Hotel.

Such is the stigma of whiskey-making that you can find lengthy biographies of both men that don’t mention how their original fortunes were acquired.

During Prohibition, the whiskey in Athertonville’s warehouses was sent to Louisville for consolidation. Athertonville’s distilleries were closed and dismantled but not entirely forgotten. After Prohibition, whatever was left was acquired by the Cummins family. 

We'll cover the Cummins history and the site's current status in PART TWO.

My Mitch McConnell Story

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, mid-1980s.

I agree with most of the criticism of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. I fault him especially for blocking President Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, in his role as Senate Majority Leader, an unprecedented act of hyper-partisanship. 

So, it’s surprising that I recoil from many of the ghoulish memes and commentaries pertaining to the mystery of his current health status. I won’t go so far as to say they offend me, but I recoil from the dehumanization of it. 

Because I knew the man.

Not to make too much of it. I lived in Kentucky from 1978 to 1987. I live in Chicago now, but Louisville continued to be like a second home to me until a few years ago. Kentucky is a small state and over the years I had contact with many of its politicians, most of it casual or business related. That describes my contact with Senator McConnell.

He was judge-executive of Jefferson County when I moved there. It’s a peculiar title, but it just means he was the chief executive of county government. As Louisville is the seat of Jefferson County and Kentucky’s largest city, the judge-executive job was a good platform for pursuit of higher office, although Louisville politicians did not have a good track record running statewide. 

In 1980 I changed jobs, going to work for a marketing firm whose major client was Brown-Forman. I got to know many mid-level executives there but my only contact with senior executives came from non-business endeavors.

Having worked in broadcasting since high school, I volunteered at the local public television station, WKPC, then owned by the Board of Education. When the station transitioned to community ownership, I was named to its new board of directors. This put me into contact with some local heavy hitters. John Yarmuth, who later represented Louisville in Congress, was one of them. We were the two youngsters on the board and didn’t get along. I was much friendlier with two older men who just happened to be associated with Brown-Forman: Roger Coleman, recently retired as Brown-Forman’s president, and Robinson “Robby” Brown, then chairman of Brown-Forman’s board. 

In conversation, they both talked up Mitch McConnell, especially Robby, who invited me to a fundraiser for McConnell’s first Senate campaign, to be held at Robby’s home. I initially declined. “I won’t give him any money,” I said, not because I opposed him but because I didn’t have any. “That’s okay, come anyway. It’s a party,” was Robby’s reply, so I did.

I went and had a good time at the party. Robby’s house was beautiful. I probably was introduced to McConnell, but I don’t think we talked. I avoided the inevitable ask. McConnell’s campaign was successful and Brown-Forman executives, including Brown family members like Robby, were major supporters.

So associated was Mitch McConnell with Brown-Forman that, in later years, it was joked that he was the senator from Brown-Forman and Kentucky’s other senator, Jim Bunning (1999-2011), was the senator from Jim Beam. (Bunning and Rich Reese, who ran sales at Beam and succeeded Barry Berish as president, both played major league baseball.)

There is irony in how McConnell’s first Senate campaign was won. His Democratic opponent, Dee Huddleston, the incumbent, had missed a lot of votes. McConnell’s ads featured a pack of bloodhounds trying to track Huddleston down. The ads were the work of Roger Ailes, who later started Fox News. Although Kentucky was heavily Democratic in those days, the commonwealth had voted for Reagan in 1980 and would vote for him again in 1984, with Mitch McConnell riding his coattails. 

Now it’s Mitch who is missing in action. 

Fast forward a few years. I was self-employed by then and had moved to Chicago but still did a lot of business in Louisville. McConnell, well into his senate career, was setting up the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. My client was commissioned to make a promotional video for the Center. I would write the script and perform other duties related to the production. 

Our team had several meetings with McConnell at the producer’s offices in Louisville. I don’t recall him having anyone with him. If there was someone, that person didn’t participate. 

I was one of the presenters at the meetings. When you present, you carefully watch your audience, especially the primary decision-maker, to gauge how you’re doing. Often you make changes on the fly based on those often-subtle cues.

But not with Mitch McConnell. He gave me nothing. My main takeaway was that I would hate to play cards with him, because he has no tells. Complete poker face. Otherwise, he was easy to work with, low key and respectful. When he gave feedback, he was direct and unambiguous. In that, he was a pleasure to work with. He seemed satisfied with our efforts and the project came together without a hitch.

Other than being hard to read, he was a good client.

Mitch is an unusually small man physically. Many times, small men compensate by becoming aggressive, especially toward unusually large men like me. He is also soft-spoken while I am the opposite. I had learned to compensate by, for example, sitting down immediately after presenting so as not to seem intimidating. Nothing like that materialized with McConnell. If he reacted to our size difference, like everything else he kept it to himself.

That’s the end of my Mitch McConnell story but here’s a side-story from that same McConnell Center project.

Much of our work had to do with the first class of “McConnell Scholars,” graduating high school seniors who received scholarships from the McConnell Center. As part of their award, the dozen or so kids were given a trip to Washington D.C. with McConnell, where they would, among other things, meet then-President George H. W. Bush. The event would be videotaped and edited for inclusion in our production. My job was to view the raw tapes and prepare the “paper edit,” choosing clips the video editor would pull and edit together for the program.

I had to agree to return all tapes without making copies, which I did dutifully, but I often wished I had been a little less ethical. The tapes were remarkable. As it happened, the president’s meeting with the McConnell Scholars occurred on November 4, 1992, one day after the 1992 presidential election, which Bush lost to Bill Clinton. On the tapes, Bush is clearly exhausted, completely spent, a broken man. He said little and was borderline incoherent when he did. It was a tough edit. Luckily, the kids were supposed to be the focus. They were excited to talk to the president and had a lot of energy. There was just enough of Bush in the final edit for the viewer to remember he was there.

The McConnell Center still exists at UofL, but I had no further involvement with it or with the senator. I’ve had contact with other politicians over the years. Ohio former-Senator Sherrod Brown and I were friends in high school. Sherrod, like most politicians, inevitably calls attention to himself. He works the room. McConnell doesn’t. His way of exercising power is different; deliberate, strategic, and unemotional. It has served him well. I have no more idea than anyone else does about his current status, but I wouldn’t bet against him.

Oh, What Bourbon Can Do

 

As the 21st century bourbon boom has produced many new bourbons, it also has produced many bourbon books. I’ve read a few. My favorites have been personal stories about the author’s journey of bourbon discovery, such as Heather Greene’s Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life (Penguin, 2015) and Kate Hopkins' 99 Drams of Whiskey (St. Martins, 2009).

Fred Minnick has written nine books, and this is his fourth about bourbon. It is a memoir. Minnick is not yet 50, but memoir is a good form for this story. One advantage of a memoir is that the structure is chronological. We learn things as he learns them, like a good detective story. Nobody, of course, writes a memoir in real time. The writer always knows where the story goes and how it ends.

The memoir form also allows Minnick to drop bits and pieces of bourbon knowledge along the way. We get clear, succinct descriptions of the bourbon-making process, the three-tier system of beverage alcohol distribution, the history of Prohibition, bourbon’s steep decline in the late 1960s, the problem of advertising puffery tainting real history, and the income challenges of whiskey writing.

The title is perfect, Bottom Shelf, How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life (Sourcebooks, 2026).

The “one man” is Minnick. Most books that feature bourbon in a story of personal struggle involve the author consuming too much of it. That’s not the case here, but Fred’s passion for bourbon knowledge is a core part of his personal journey and ultimate salvation. 

The “forgotten brand” in question is Old Crow. I’ve gone down that rabbit hole a few times myself. I can relate to his passion for the subject and his frustration with the research. 

My story doesn’t compare to his, especially the lifesaving part, but we share the fact that bourbon got its hooks into us and never let go.

In Minnick’s case, lifesaving refers to his struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) caused by his time as an army photojournalist on the frontline in Iraq. Part of his PTSD therapy has him focus on touch, smell, or taste to cope with triggering events. The therapy involves experiencing those sensations deeply, mindfully, using them to stop time and focus the mind on that one thing. He starts with a BBQ-flavored potato chip and subsequently applies the technique to tasting wine and, later, bourbon.

Much of his therapy involves writing. As he thinks about how to record his tasting experiences he begins to connect tastes in bourbon with food tasting memories, such as “that wonderful slice of marzipan I devoured in a Saint Emilion café.” (His tasting group is called Club Marzipan.)

Minnick was no stranger to bourbon. The book begins with him smuggling Jim Beam into Iraq in a Listerine bottle. On their first date, the Louisville woman who would become his wife introduces him to Maker’s Mark. He is hooked. Although enjoying success as a wine writer, he longs to switch. “Wine had become a way to pay the bills,” he writes, “bourbon was the passion burning within.”

Like his mindful tasting technique, Minnick’s search for the real James C. Crow, namesake of Old Crow Bourbon, becomes another way to separate him from his trauma and replace a harmful obsession with one that is at least benign. “Little did I know that seeking information on Crow’s life was really a way of hiding from mine.”

Throughout the book, before things get too heavy, Minnick lightens them up. As he awaits his first therapy session, he fantasizes that he has stumbled into an outlaw clinic where unlicensed doctors harvest organs. 

As he describes his struggles, Minnick knows his story has a happy ending. His priorities today are his wife and their two sons. 

Minnick’s Bottom Shelf comes at the right time for the bourbon world. We need his personal, spiritual journey to remind us why we fell in love with bourbon in the first place.

Revisiting My Childhood Via "The Danny Thomas Show"

 

(From left to right) Rusty Hamer, Penny Parker,
Danny Thomas, Angela Cartwright, and Marjorie Lord.

Although it ran for eleven seasons (1953-1964) and ranked in the top ten in every season but one, “The Danny Thomas Show” seems less beloved today than contemporaries like “I Love Lucy,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” 

In it, Danny Thomas plays Danny Williams, a popular singer and comedian who works in a New York nightclub. He lives in a Manhattan apartment with his wife and two kids. It’s meant as a roman à clef except, ironically, during the show's 11-year run Danny Thomas was primarily a television performer living and working in Los Angeles, where the show was filmed, not a nightclub entertainer working and living in New York City.

Between broadcast TV, cable, and streaming, there’s a lot of bandwidth to fill these days so just about everything is available somewhere. Every program on television back then was either broadcast live or shot on film. Shows shot and finished on film in black-and-white digitize beautifully, so it looks great.  

I was a fan of the show, meaning my parents liked it. I was two years old when it debuted in 1953, on ABC as “Make Room for Daddy.” It became “The Danny Thomas Show” for the fourth season, then moved to CBS for year five. I could usually get a laugh from my parents by calling it "Make Room for Danny."

The original Mrs. Williams, played by Jean Hagen, was unhappy and decided to leave after year three. On the show, she died during the off-season and season four began with Danny as a single parent. The show didn’t change much, and the dead wife was rarely mentioned. By the end of season four, Danny was dating. His new wife was Kathy, played by Marjorie Lord, who brought with her a six-year-old daughter, Linda, played by Angela Cartwright, to begin season five. This corresponded with the move to CBS and the ratings soared.

Unlike many family shows of that era, such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Danny Thomas Show” was mostly about the adults, although the kids often got the best jokes. 

Sitcoms in those days were 33 episodes per season. That’s a lot of work, especially for kids. Rusty Hamer played son Rusty Williams for the show’s entire 11-year run. Sherry Jackson, who played Danny’s daughter, Terry, was ready to leave after season four. As her character was by then a teenager, it was natural for her to be around less often. She made occasional appearances through season six. After that she was replaced by Penny Parker. They did a seven-show arc leading to her marriage after which the character largely disappeared.

Angela Cartwright, who played Linda, was always of special interest to me because we're about the same age. After her seven seasons there, she played Brigitta von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," then did three seasons as Penny Robinson on "Lost in Space." After that she worked in TV and film only occasionally.

Unlike most of its contemporaries, “The Danny Thomas Show” featured musical numbers in virtually every episode, and sometimes two or three. Most were by Danny, but many guest stars sang a song or two. Some performances took place in the family's apartment, where he accompanied himself on piano, joined inevitably by a mysterious, unseen orchestra. The orchestra was visible in scenes at the Copa Club (loosely based on the actual Copacabana nightclub), where his act consisted of songs and funny stories.

The heavy use of musical and comedy performances, so far outside the normal sitcom model, may be what dates the show. 

Another regular feature that probably doesn’t play as well now as it did then is the frequent use of guest stars. Some played characters but many played themselves, as Danny’s show-biz friends. They included Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnez, Dinah Shore, and many others. Sheldon Leonard, who appeared occasionally as Danny’s manager, Phil, was also the show’s producer and director. 

Recurring characters included Danny’s Uncle Tonoose from Toledo, played by Hans Conried; an Italian foreign exchange student named Gina, played by Annette Funicello; and Kathy’s father, played by William Demarest, who is better known as Uncle Charley from “My Three Sons.” 

Although available to stream, I’m catching shows as they appear on the Catchy Comedy channel and MeTV+.

Bourbon in Washington, Oh My!

 

Kash Patel's personalized
bottle of Woodford Reserve.

The Atlantic isn’t letting up on Kash Patel. Today, Sarah Fitzpatrick, the reporter responsible for the magazine's April 17th exposé, dropped a new story headlined, “Kash Patel’s Personalized Bourbon Stash.” It seems the FBI Director is using personalized 750ml bottles of Woodford Reserve as a gift for folks he wants to impress, a sort of 90° proof calling card.

This is only a story because it’s Kash Patel, a relentless self-promotor who likes to spell it “KA$H,” including on his personalized bottles. A spokesperson for Brown-Forman confirmed that “consumers who purchase Woodford Reserve occasionally have images and messages engraved on the bottle,” adding the disclaimer that, “these engravings occur after the point of purchase.”

An FBI spokesperson confirmed what Patel is doing. “The bottles in question are part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago, long before Director Patel arrived. Senior Bureau officials have long exchanged commemorative items in formal gift settings consistent with ethics rules. Director Patel has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself.”

He did not say if those previous commemorative items contained whiskey.

The FBI, of course, was a product of Prohibition enforcement but, overall, the pearl clutching about this revelation is laughable. Although it’s not the way it used to be in Washington, alcohol has fueled politics since both were invented. Back when legislators remained in the capital for the entire legislative session and landlines were the only way to communicate “back home,” socializing with colleagues, lobbyists, and others from the government and its periphery was a way of life. Alcohol, mostly whiskey, was part of it. This certainly extended to gift-giving.

What was true in Washington was just as true in state capitals.

One bourbon brand still sold today was created by a politician as a gift for, as in Patel’s case, anyone he wanted to impress. His name was Charles Farnsley. He was a politician who served in the Kentucky House of Representatives (1936-1940), as mayor of Louisville (1948-1953), and in the U. S. House of Representatives (1965-66).

The Farnsleys were old Louisville money. Charles was the nephew of Alex Farnsley, an investor who backed “Pappy” Van Winkle and Arthur Stitzel in the formation of Stitzel-Weller during Prohibition. Between his stint in the state legislature and his election as mayor, Charles Farnsley was a lobbyist for local bourbon makers, including Uncle Alex’s Stitzel-Weller.

A statue of Mayor Farnsey on Main Street in Louisville

In 1936, while a member of the Kentucky House, Charles created a bourbon brand called Rebel Yell, a unabashed tribute to the Confederacy. Stitzel-Weller made it for him. Initially, he just gave bottles out as gifts, which he continued to do in his capacity as an industry lobbyist. The whiskey became so popular that Stitzel-Weller began to distribute it commercially, first locally, then throughout the South. 

Charles Farnsley was a contradiction. Although he pined for the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy, as mayor he desegregated Louisville’s libraries and public swimming pools. In Congress he enthusiastically supported the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other Great Society legislation.

Rebel Yell was briefly discontinued a couple times but has mostly been sold ever since. Over the years everything associated with the Confederacy has been removed, including half of the name. Today it’s just “Rebel,” an MGP/Luxco product. It never was a big brand and still isn’t. 

Suntory’s Booker’s Bourbon started in much the same way, as a gift that salespeople for what was then Jim Beam Brands gave to customers and other friends of the company. For many years Brown-Forman had a gift brand they called President’s Choice used for the same purpose. Virtually every liquor company has done something similar, and most have personalization options for consumers.

Bourbon Distilleries, Ranked by Capacity, 2026

 

One of six column stills at the Jack
Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, TN.

Blogger gives me a rudimentary idea of how many people look at this blog and what, specifically, they look at.

Typically, the two most popular posts are old ones. The most recent post is usually third.

The perennial winners? "Bourbon Distilleries, Ranked by Capacity" from September of 2017 and "The Truth About Tito's and All Vodka" from October of that same year.

I don't know why the vodka post is so popular. Maybe it's because the truth about vodka isn't widely reported. I'm glad people read it, but I don't have anything to add. I did update it, at the end of the post, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

I know why the other one, about distillery capacity, is so popular. Vendome has a link to it on their website. It deserves an update. Although not a lot has changed, what has changed is big. (It will be up to Vendome if they want to change the link.)

I should mention that the data I'm reporting is not "industry data," it's mine, based on a database I've maintained for years that tracks one simple metric, capacity as determined by the size of the distillery's beer still(s). It's an imperfect metric but it has the advantage of allowing apples-to-apples comparisons.

A distillery can produce less than its beer still's capacity, and everybody does, especially now, but it can't produce more.

You can go back to that 2017 post for more about the database and how I use it.

Brown-Forman's Jack Daniel's Distillery remains #1, although I don't believe it has gotten any bigger since 2017. That's one of Brown-Forman's problems right now. Jack Daniel's is huge but it's a mature brand here in its home market, without a lot of room to grow. It has huge potential outside the U.S., so the recent change in tariffs on whiskey is welcome. 

In addition to the Lynchburg distillery, which only makes Jack Daniel's products, Brown-Forman has three other U.S. whiskey distilleries, all in Kentucky.

Sazerac's Buffalo Trace Distillery has moved up two places into second, since bringing its second 84" beer still online. 

That moves Heaven Hill's Bernheim Distillery in Louisville to #3 and Suntory's Booker Noe Distillery in Boston, Kentucky to #4. Brown-Forman's second-largest distillery, in the Louisville suburb of Shively, remains at #5.

Number six is no longer a tie, since Suntory has taken the 72" column at Clermont out of the running. Sazerac's Barton 1792 in Bardstown has sole possession of #6.

This is a good place to mention that those four companies, Brown-Forman, Sazerac, Suntory, and Heaven Hill (the Big 4) continue to dominate the American whiskey space, as they have for decades. 

The next two are unchanged in terms of rank. Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, now owned by Gallo, is #7 and Suntory's Maker's Mark in Loretto is #8. Heaven Hill's new Bardstown distillery is the new #9, moving Campari's Wild Turkey in Lawrenceburg to #10 in a tie with Middle West Spirits in Columbus, Ohio. Bardstown Bourbon Company, now owned by Lofted Spirits, is #11. Jackson Purchase, in Hickman, is #12. The other Lofted Spirits distillery, Owensboro's Green River, is #13. The Lawrenceburg, Indiana distillery sometimes known as Ross & Squibb, owned by MGP, is tied at #14 with Whiskey House of Kentucky in Bowling Green. 

There is a tie at #15 between two Diageo distilleries, George Dickel in Tullahoma, Tennessee and Bulleit in Shelbyville, Kentucky. That would have been a three-way tie except Diageo's newest distillery, in Loretto, is currently off-line.

At #16 we have Campari's Wilderness Trail Distillery in Danville. Tennessee Distilling Group, in Columbia, Tennessee, is #17.

We'll end it there. As things change, I'll let you know.

It's interesting to note that Gallo, new to the bourbon game, comes in at #7 with the highest-ranking distillery not owned by one of the Big 4. Also now looking like players are Campari and Lofted Spirits, each with two listed distilleries. Lofted is now the biggest contract distiller, supplanting MGP.

I'll conclude with a reminder that this ranking is based on capacity, not production. In this new environment, that's going to vary widely. I've removed from the list distilleries that have announced they won't distill in 2026, but how much the remainder will distill in 2026 is up-for-grabs, since it seems like everybody has more than enough already in barrels.