Big bourbon-making town puts the brakes on new whiskey warehouses close to residential areas

Warehouse at Barton 1792 Distillery
(Photo from KentuckyTourism.com)

A Kentucky town whose name has been almost synonymous with whiskey making has had about enough of the bourbon boom, or at least a piece of it.

"The Bardstown City Council has voted down the Planning Commission’s recommendation to allow distilled spirits warehouses on agricultural tracts of 20-100 acres as a conditional use," Randy Patrick reports for The Kentucky Standard. "Recently, the Nelson County Fiscal Court tabled an identical proposal for rural and suburban areas outside Bardstown so that the magistrates could have more time to consider the regulation change and possible ramifications."

"Councilman Bill Buckman said the council’s no vote . . . lets the county know it doesn’t want craft bourbon distilleries and rickhouses too close to the city," Patrick writes. "Those distilleries and warehouses, he said, bring with them problems such as whiskey mold, which gets on people’s houses and cars and is hard to remove. He said that pending on the outcome of Louisville court cases about the mold, more whiskey makers are looking south toward Bardstown to build their warehouses."