The 2025 Kentucky Bourbon Fest, held earlier this September in Bardstown, painted a picture of an industry humming with consumer energy, despite numerous reports of slowdown.
Perhaps most noticeable was the scope of the event. Since I last attended several years ago, the festival has nearly doubled in size. An event that previously capped out at 4,000 attendees saw its 7,000 tickets sell out quickly in 2025. All 50 states were represented, with 85% of ticket sales coming from outside of Kentucky.
The festival grounds have expanded. Now they sprawl across the massive parking lot of the church next door. Consequently, the number of distilleries pouring was enormous, requiring several days to taste them all. In total, 65 distilleries participated, sampling newer products, industry staples and unicorn bottles.
My colleague and I cruised through the booths. Listing all the brands we tried would require too much space. Rather, I’ll mention two standouts from the Craft Distillers section.
Old Louisville Whiskey Company poured two of my favorite whiskeys in the entire show. A 10-year MGP and an 8-year Bardstown both stood out, perfectly balanced and easy drinking. Keep an eye on this brand as they expand into additional markets.
Perhaps the most hype at the 2025 KBF was for Dark Arts. Another sourced brand, this reminded me of Rare Character, with ornate branding and bold whiskeys that match the marketing. Everything I tried from Dark Arts was enjoyably big in flavor, a lineup of heavy hitters. Hard to go wrong here. And yes, this is one of those brands that boasts BuffTurkey bottles, for anyone chasing that trend.
Distilleries could sell products directly from their festival booths. Lines of folks waiting to buy rare products stretched long across the fields. When the festival gates opened each morning, VIP ticketholders flooded the grounds, racing for front spots in line. Whiskey social media was abuzz with people showing off the unicorns they had rounded up. Again, Dark Arts and BuffTurkey were among the trendiest terms.
We interviewed numerous attendees. Folks enjoyed the size of the fest and the sheer number of booths and activities to explore. Some people were disappointed with the long, chaotic lines to buy bottles, but appreciated that the lines to sample whiskeys were relatively short. Complaints about flippers were common, as the industry’s bogeymen prowled the parking lots. Due to a spike in riders, Ubers became erratic and expensive. Leaving the premises to visit nearby distilleries was a risky idea. My writer friend and I got marooned at Bardstown Bourbon Co. ourselves, and eventually bummed a ride back to the fest from two friendly retirees.
Praise for the fest outweighed the criticism. The industry may not sell as many bottles now as during the Covid craze, when folks stuck at home filled up their basement bunkers, but the energy for American whiskey remains the same among its biggest fans.
Whiskey House of Kentucky
The U.S. distilling industry has shifted, and at the forefront is the Whiskey House of Kentucky. Founded in 2022 by ex-Bardstown Bourbon executives, this 178-acre contract whiskey distillery in Elizabethtown, KY, (50 minutes south of Louisville, 30 minutes west of Bardstown) opened last year. Already, its presence in the market is noticeable.
In the past decade, “sourced” went from a four-letter word to an everyday term for good juice. Consumers now know which distilleries produce the best liquids for sourced brands, and specifically hunt down those bottles. For bourbon veterans, it’s interesting witnessing this 180-degree turn in consumer sentiment.
For businessmen, it’s opportunity. Particularly after MGP’s questionable (and perhaps recently reversed) decision to scale back its contract distilling program a few years ago. Competitors gobbled up the available contracts. Bardstown Bourbon, designed and run as well as any distillery in history, emerged as a big winner. Expansion there continues, especially after Pritzker Private Capital acquired the thriving company in 2022.
Looking to expand on what worked at Bardstown Bourbon — and possessing capital thanks to the Pritzker buyout — several executives left to create Whiskey House. The result is likely the most efficient, streamlined distillery ever constructed.
Whiskey House welcomed media for a tour during the festival.
“In this environment, major contract producers are focused on their own brands,” said David Mandell, co-founder, during the introductory presentation. “Bardstown Bourbon has Green River. MGP has Luxco. Campari has Wilderness Trail. But we are nothing but custom distillation. We do not own our own brands and never will. We focus all our energy on our customers.”
“We are the first distillery custom-built for custom whiskey production,” he added. “We have the most flexible facility.”
This includes many possible mash bills that can run through the system without losing efficiency, Mandell explained. Such as vintage mash bills, if desired. Since opening last year, Whiskey House has produced 58 mash bills for 35 contract distillers across 100,000 barrels.
Contract distillers receive QR codes that let them track all the data about their barrels as they’re filled and stored. Customers can make decisions offsite throughout the production process and visit their barrels via a virtual rickhouse. This is part of an initial, $10-million investment in the facility’s state-of-the-art digital infrastructure.
An onsite bottling center is scheduled for 2027. Three rickhouses are already up, with plans for 18 total onsite. Currently the facility can fill 112,000 barrels annually, with plans in place to double, if necessary.
But what about the industry downturn?
“We all know Covid caused disruptions in the market, with an artificial 40% growth,” Mandell said. “We all put too much product into the market, into retail and distro.”
“Now the market is resetting to the growth period pre-Covid,” he added. “It’s a challenging time. The economy now is tricky. Gen Z is not drinking as much but they’re drinking better. What is the impact of that? What is the impact of cannabis? What is the impact of GLP-1 drugs? We don’t know yet. But what we do know is that 100 years of drinking culture in this country is not going away in two years.”
“We’re building for the future,” he continued. “We’ve just got to get through this period.”•
Among larger distilleries launched this century, there is no bigger success than Bardstown Bourbon Company. Founded in 2014 and producing commercially since 2016, Bardstown has revolutionized contract distilling while simultaneously creating and growing their own popular brands of whiskey.
Investors noticed. Constellation Brands acquired a minority stake in 2016, before Pritzker Private Capital bought the entirety of Bardstown in 2022. Today, the distillery operates under its parent company, Lofted Spirits, an umbrella establishment that also incorporates Green River Distilling Co., which Bardstown purchased in 2022.
Sales continue to climb, despite current industry headwinds. We recently caught up with Lofted Spirits CEO Mark Erwin to talk about the growth of the company, the state of American whiskey in 2025, and what’s next for the market.
Beverage Dynamics: How has Bardstown performed during this difficult economic moment?
Mark Erwin: Like many, we’ve had to moderate production. But we’re also seeing our investments pay off, because we have two of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the U.S. [Bardstown Bourbon and Green River]. We’re going to have success.
Bardstown Bourbon is up 70% right now, while the market is down a couple percentage points. Green River is still a young brand, three years behind Bardstown, so growing more slowly but still far outpacing the category.
BD: Speaking of your brands, Bardstown must balance its house portfolio with the many brands that contract with you. How do you balance that?
ME: The name we’ve made for ourselves is the quality of the products that we produce. It’s cool for us to see not just our own brands winning awards but also the brands that source from us. These brands brag about how they make whiskey at Bardstown Bourbon Company. That’s because of the incredible work and skill of our whole distilling team.
BD: Bardstown was already a massive facility before you expanded in 2024. Tell us about that project.
ME: That was part of our presentation when we went out to market [before the Pritzker purchase]. We had a ready-made plan for our next investment. We basically created a whole new distillery onsite. The only shared aspect is the grains. We also increased our capacity by 50%. That gave us the capacity to meet the customer demand that we saw at that time.
A week after the Pritzker deal, we went into the Green River purchase. Between the distilleries now, we have gone from being able to produce 115,000 barrels per year to 290,000. That was to meet the massive customer demand at the time. Now we have had to adjust and slow down a little bit.
We had been outsourcing our bottling. Now, we’ve started our own bottling program and it’s been a homerun for us and the industry. There is a need in the market and other companies are coming to us for their bottling and it’s turned into a nice win for us. It also makes us the only truly grain to glass distillery in the market. It’s been great for our business.
BD: You recently ramped up your single barrel program.
ME: We’ve been ramping that up for us and for our clients as well. We’re helping out a lot of folks with that. It’s what customers want now. We’re developing internally a new piece of equipment, a kit, so that we can increase our capacity to sample single barrels fivefold.
BD: During a recent tour at Bardstown, I heard that you just implemented a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for your digital systems.
ME: That came online in September. We had too many systems pieced together from different entities. It had been a slog.
Putting in the new ERP was a lot of work. And it’s always a tough transition in terms of people changing their habits and learning a new system. But now our new ERP helps clients see their products in a timely fashion. They can see exactly where and when their products are in the system.
The new system, made for distilleries and perfected at Lofted Spirits, will be available for others in our industry. We hope to see this level of collaboration and transparency grow across the industry.
BD: Tell us a little bit more about the Green River acquisition.
ME: We’ve always talked about Bardstown Bourbon bringing innovation to the industry while also adhering to its history and tradition. Steve Nally, our master distiller, is an old-school talent, while we brought in a lot of high-tech practices when we opened. Along those lines, Green River is a historical brand. [The brand originated in 1885.]
Sometimes when we’re pouring at an event, we bring the two brands together, Bardstown and Green River. Other times we have them separate. We want the Green River brand to grow on its own, the same way that Bardstown Bourbon is growing on its own. That’s also why we started Lofted Spirits, our parent company. We hated telling people that Green River was owned by Bardstown Bourbon. We want Green River to be its own brand. We’re much more excited to be seen as a house of brands.
BD: How does Bardstown Bourbon — with its tours, kitchen and bars — handle the boom in bourbon tourism?
ME: We want to provide visitors with creative experiences. That’s what people think about when they think about bourbon. They think about how they experienced it. That’s why we have the outdoor bar, the glass warehouse. We’ve tried to come up with new, creative experiences. We have a vintage whiskey library, such a unique space on the bourbon trail. We’ve opened up two new tasting rooms in downtown Louisville, for Bardstown Bourbon and Green River.
BD: As the whiskey industry goes through a corrective phase, what do you see in the years ahead?
ME: Everyone is talking about what’s cyclical versus what’s structural. The data shows that we’re going right back to moderate growth. We had that big ramp up during Covid and now we’ve come back down. Moderate growth is more realistic.
On the custom-distilling side, there’s more capacity than demand, so it needs some sorting out. We’re confident that we’ll be here when it sorts. On the branded side, if it slows down, we’ll keep investing. One thing is for sure: the tourism is not slowing down. There’s been no slowdown in excitement for Kentucky’s native spirit. •