Hello to old friends and new, We hope that the year 2015 is treating you well! We have lots to tell you about in this update, busy and exciting times at the Trace including:
– The completion and opening of Warehouse X – our new experimental warehouse
– Latest awards – Upcoming events at the Distillery – Our Visitor Center expansion
– Our ever expanding distillery
– Our first coffee table book
– Employee anniversary celebrations
Warehouse X We completed construction of our experimental warehouse at the beginning of last year and rolled in the first set of barrels this past summer, beginning the first batch of experiments. The warehouse is comprised of four independently operating chambers that will allow specific variables to be tested, in order to determine their effect on aging barrels, along with a barrel breezeway with an open air rick that will allow a small number of barrels to age while being exposed to the natural elements. The very first experiment that just began this past summer is focusing on the effect of natural light over the next few years. Now that we’re more than six months in, we’ve pulled some samples and have some interesting results so far. These next couple of years will be very enlightening! If you would like more information about Warehouse X you can find it at www.experimentalwarehouse.com.
Latest Awards We have continued to be honored with awards for our whiskeys. Some recent highlights: The Distillery was named “Distiller of the Year” at the International Wine and Spirits Competition, “Brand Innovator of the Year” by Whisky Magazine at its Icons of Whisky America Awards, and our William Larue Weller Bourbon and Sazerac Rye 18 Year Old Whiskey won second and third finest whiskies in the world, respectively, by the esteemed Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible. To see all of the awards the Distillery has won, click here.
Community events We’ve recently wrapped up some exciting dinner events at the Trace including our Legendary Craftsmen Dinner Series and our Buffalo Love dinner. Later this month, on March 28, we will have our most favorite community event – the annual Easter Egg Hunt which sees almost 1,500 happy, smiling faces looking for Easter eggs and on May 1 will be our Oaks Day Festival. We host several community events at the Distillery throughout the year. To learn more about upcoming events, check out our 2015 Events Stampede on our website at http://buffalotracedistillery.com/events.
Visitor Center One of the most enjoyable aspects of our work at the distillery is the number of folks coming to visit us, especially since we love showing visitors around the Trace. Last year we entertained over 100,000 guests! Unfortunately, our visitor center started to get a little overcrowded so we are expanding upstairs! Our visitor center is housed in a beautiful building constructed in 1881 and it has a lovely second floor still in its original condition, so we are adding 5,500 square feet of visitor center space right above the current footprint to include an additional tasting area and meeting and event space. The expansion is expected to be complete by June 2015.
Expansion! In response to the growing demand for fine Kentucky bourbon whiskey the distillery continues to expand. We have been very fortunate to acquire an additional 233 acres of land adjacent to the distillery on which we will be able to accommodate new barrel storage warehouses as needed. We are also using the land to plant corn and other grains as we are planning to have our own “farm to table” bourbon in just a few years’ time! Even more significantly, we have been able to buy back warehouses R, S, T and U which had been sold off and converted into office buildings during the great industry crash in the 1970s and 80s. We have converted them back into barrel warehouses and are already filling them with barrels!! In total, the distillery now covers 376 acres and has 125 buildings, spanning four centuries of construction – 1700s, 1800s, 1900s and 2000s. Also, rest assured, we are making lots more whiskey as we try to catch up to the demand but aging cannot be rushed, so thank you for your patience during this period of shortages on our brands.
Coffee Table Book For the past few years, we have been working with the very talented photographer David Toczko of Lone Dakota Photography on a coffee table book featuring more than 200 color photos of Buffalo Trace Distillery. This beautiful book is now on sale in our Visitor Center as well as online at http://buffalotracegiftshop.com/. David did a spectacular job of capturing the distillery in all its glory and we are very appreciative of the work and effort that he put forth on the project.
Anniversaries Long service, tenure and experience are critical to a distillery’s success. We recently celebrated two of our finest team members for their contributions to the Trace. We recognized our Jimmy Hall, process technician, who monitors our stills and has now worked at the Trace for 51 years, and our Warehouse Operations Manager, Leonard Riddle who has worked here 50 years! We appreciate all of their hard work!
Future Updates Hopefully, the updates are helpful and not too intrusive, we are certainly glad to be able to be back in touch on a regular basis now! Look for upcoming updates about our botanical gardens, Visitor Center expansion, tours, whiskey experiments underway as well as the conclusion of the Single Oak Project. If we can be of any help at all with questions, needs, wants please just reply to this e-mail and it will be personally answered. If there are topics you would like to hear about from us, please do let us know that too. In closing, and on behalf of all the 425 folks at the Trace, thank you for your support of our whiskeys, it is very much appreciated. Cheers, Mark and Kristie, Mark Brown The Buffalo Trace Distillery Direct: (502) 696-5978 E-Mail: MBrown@BuffaloTrace.com www.buffalotracedistillery.com www.greatbourbon.com Kristie Wooldridge The Buffalo Trace Distillery Direct: (502) 783-5652 E-Mail: kwooldridge@buffalotrace.com
