More About the Old Crow Fire

 

Two of the 150-year-old warehouses destroyed in yesterday's fire. (Photo taken in 1991-92.)

Unlike distillery fires in the past, there was no bourbon involved in this one. The warehouses were empty. That made the fire relatively easy to contain. As Woodford County officials reported, "it was just a structure fire." They had it contained within a few hours and there was no concern about waterway contamination.

As you will notice if you watch the video linked above, although the site is southeast of Frankfort, and much nearer to Frankfort than Versailles, it is actually in Woodford County, not Franklin.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The destroyed warehouses were, essentially, abandoned. They were not maintained nor insured. Woodford County officials, in their report, mentioned that they were able to access a "private" fire hydrant, owned by Suntory (i.e., Jim Beam), and thanked the company for their cooperation. It is on property Suntory still owns, adjacent to where the destroyed buildings are, but the destroyed warehouses were owned by Glenns Creek Distilling.

Regardless of who owned them, the shame of it is that no one thought the warehouses were worth preserving for their historical significance. The photo above was taken 35 years ago. A neglected building can deteriorate a lot in 35 years. I thought they were beautiful; sturdy examples of red brick industrial architecture from the late 19th century. At about 150-years-old, they were the oldest extant maturation warehouses in the state. 

When Jim Beam Brands acquired the beverage alcohol assets of National Distillers in 1987, one of their first acts was to stop distilling at Old Crow and Old Grand-Dad (located northeast of Frankfort on Georgetown Road). National had stopped distilling at its third Frankfort-area distillery, Old Taylor, in 1972. Old Grand-Dad was the newest facility of the three and although it never distilled again, Beam used it for maturation, bottling and distribution. They still do. The bottling and distribution operation has been expanded several times.

Beam used the Old Crow and Old Taylor facilities exclusively for maturation. There was a lot of capacity, and they also rented space to Wild Turkey and others. Eventually, they and other distilleries that looked into the properties, primarily for the warehouses, decided aging conditions in that river valley were not ideal. Sites on high ground are preferred.

The former Old Taylor property, today's Castle and Key Distillery, adjacent to Old Crow, was an attractive restoration because of its unique architecture and historic gardens, and because some of the equipment, specifically mash cookers and fermenters, was still usable. It was viable as a distillery, tourist attraction, and events space. It is successful by all accounts.

Glenn's Creek Distilling occupies the Old Crow property. They too are a going concern. None of the property used for their operation was damaged.

When I made the documentary "Made and Bottled in Kentucky" in 1991-92, after Beam's acquisition, I was given access to Old Taylor, but not Old Crow, which was already looking very run down. We got a few shots of it from the other side of the fence. In the office building at Old Grand-Dad, there were a lot of photographs we used. I also met some of the guys who worked there, who were mostly former National employees, including one who identified himself as the last master distiller at Old Crow. 

His theory about Crow's rapid and sharp decline in the late 60s and early 70s had to do with product quality. He said National had expanded the facility in the early 1960s and recklessly changed some things, including the amount of setback in the mash, an essential part of the sour mash process pioneered by James Crow. The whiskey didn't taste right after that. He and his entire tasting panel agreed, and they were receiving negative feedback from consumers too, but all upper management cared about was volume, pushing as much liquid through the pipeline as possible.

Either he or one of the other guys told me that the doublers at Old Crow were actually the pot stills from the original Old Crow Distillery, at what is now Woodford Reserve. At the original distillery, it was all pot stills, no columns. Columns came in with the new distillery, and the old pots were converted to doublers. 

I have no idea what happened to them or, for that matter, if any of those stories are true.