A Visit to Bardstown Bourbon Co.

Today’s whiskey world is stuffed with heritage brands — some real, some revived, some wholly invented. The labels use old-timey fonts, feature pictures of old men with beards, and tell stories of the rare, unique recipes used to craft the liquid inside.

At Bardstown Bourbon Company, you’ll get none of that. The brand involved not a relaunch of a long-shuttered distillery but rather building one from scratch in 2014, situated on a former 100-acre farm in, where else, Bardstown, Kentucky. Founder Peter Loftin didn’t come up in spirits but rather in telecommunications. Bardstown Bourbon Co. (BBCo in Drinkhacker parlance, or just Bardstown if you work there) was something of a retirement project for Loftin, and he remained involved with the distillery and its parent company, Lofted Spirits, until his sudden and unexpected death in 2019.

The font on the newly redesigned label may as well be Helvetica.

Today, BBCo is majority owned by Pritzker Private Capital, though operations seem largely unaffected by the influx of private equity money. More than anything, it’s allowed the operation to expand, adding another 300 acres to its footprint, where you’ll now find 750 thousand whiskey barrels aging across 23 rickhouses.

The centerpiece of the campus is of course its distillery, a gleaming, glass-fronted operation that houses BBCo’s distillery operations, offices, and tourism operations, which include a massive restaurant that is possibly the largest in and around the city of Bardstown.

BBCo was gracious to invite Drinkhacker to tour its campus — I’d never visited — over a few days in October 2026. First order of business? What else, tasting samples with Dan Callaway, the company’s Master Blender and VP of Product Development.

A Blending Madman

Callaway is a former professional French horn player, sommelier, and hospitality maven who ascended to his current role in 2020. One of the most tireless tinkerers in the business, he oversees an aggressive release schedule for BBCo that sees roughly six special bottlings each year, most revolving around some unusual finishing treatment.

Callaway’s office (“cleaned up”) is stacked to the ceiling with his own experiments, mingling with representative samples of spirits from all over the world to serve as foils for whatever strikes his fancy. After a behind-the-scenes tour, we retired to BBCo’s downstairs snug, where a collection of some of the most prized whiskeys in the world line the walls and sleep in cabinets. Interested in still-sealed pre-Prohibition bourbon? Why, BBCo’s got at least a dozen pints, just waiting for the right moment to crack into them. (A visit from a spirits writer is not that moment, it turns out.)

We turned our attention to a half-dozen samples that Callaway had culled from his shelves, each more interesting than the last. The third edition of BBCo’s Laubade finish, this one three years in brandy casks and showing an ultra-floral character. A grassy rye finishing in Rum Clement agricole cask. The second edition of Bardstown’s Cathedral release, and the second version of its masterful Victoria Pineapple bottling — this one made with far more fresh pineapple in the cask, rendering “L’il Vicky” a sticky sweet sugar bomb. At the end of the line: An upcoming Green River bottling infused with real cold brew coffee; nutty, perfectly sweetened, and quite delicious.

My favorite whiskey in the lineup also belonged, like the cold brew expression, to BBCo’s sister distillery Green River (acquired by BBCo in 2022), and it was the most straightforward of the bunch: Green River Bourbon 10 Years Old, coming out next summer. Beautifully chocolatey and perfectly integrated with the barrel, it is the best taste of Green River I’ve had to date.

Drill, Baby, Drill

After a tour of the distillery (not running today — and you can thank the dramatic pullback of contract distillation in the industry for that), Callaway led us to the rickhouses, armed with a drill, a hammer, and a collection of sample flasks to pull tastes for his own review.

What a delight it was to drill a cask of whiskey finished in Champagne casks (weirdly dry) and another pulled from a Ratafia de Champagne (a sweet wine-like product similar to Pineau de Charentes). The Ratafia-finished whiskey was one of my top tastes from the experience and one that I predict will sell out quickly when it is bottled… someday.

Now I’m sad to say that you, dear reader, will not be invited into the rickhouses to drill out your own samples, but the distillery offers at least nine different tour and tasting options — as well as one that includes time with Callaway himself. Knowing Dan, I can’t imagine he would show up to an event like this without something special in hand.

Can’t get out to Bardstown? Bardstown Bourbon Co. and Green River both operate slick tasting rooms in Louisville right on Whiskey Row, just steps from each other. You can drop in for samples or book a more in-depth educational tasting at either or both; both include tiny food pairings (think bites of candy and the like) and last about an hour. It’s easy to hit both in one afternoon. (I know because I did!)

Thanks to the folks at Lofted Spirits for spending time with us on a fun and truly educational few days in Kentucky. We shall return!

If you visit:

Bardstown Bourbon Co. is open for tours Wednesday through Sunday each week. The Louisville tasting room is open every day except Sunday. Green River’s tasting room is closed Sunday and Monday.

Distillery: 1500 Parkway Dr, Bardstown, KY 40004
bardstownbourbon.com

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