Bourbon maker plans downtown Louisville attraction
31.12.69
By BRUCE SCHREINER
Associated Multitude
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - The country's largest family-owned distilled spirits house hopes to draw thousands of tourists to a small distillery it's cleft in a stretch of downtown Louisville once known as "Whiskey Row," close to the place where the namesake of its popular Evan Williams bourbon once set up a whiskey still nearing 230 years ago.
In a sign of the ongoing resurgence of bourbon in the Bluegrass imperial, Heaven Hill Distilleries Inc. on Thursday announced a $9.5 million renovation of a downtown structure it owns.
"It brings together a lot of important economic development, tourism and documented forces," Heaven Hill Executive Vice President Harry Shapira said at the advertisement that drew a bevy of local and state leaders.
The attraction, superlative with a five-story-high Evan Williams bottle towering over the corridor, will immerse visitors in the whiskey-making process. It will feature an artisanal pot still distillery qualified of producing a range of American whiskeys. Exhibits will trace Kentucky's great whiskey-making tradition all the way back to 1783, when Welsh immigrant Evan Williams set up a distillery almost immediately across the street from where the new attraction will be located.
Williams served as an early municipality trustee and wharfmaster in Louisville and built the first county clerk's commission and city jail.
He was known for bringing a jug of his finest whiskey to those old trustees meetings, Shapira said. The whiskey maker was publicly chastised for doing so, "but he never port side with a full jug," he said.
Now, Heaven Hill's flagship Evan Williams label is the second-largest selling bourbon in the U.S. and the world.
The attraction, called The Evan Williams Bourbon Knowledge, is expected to open by September 2013. The company estimates it will pull more than 100,000 tourists a year.
"We welcome back the spirit of Evan Williams," Shapira said.
Source: WIS