At the historic intersection of 17th Street and Breckenridge Street in downtown Louisville sits Heaven Hill’s Bernheim Distillery: the world’s largest independent, family-owned Bourbon distillery, producing 1,300 barrels a day.
The traditional methods used here are the same as those of the company’s first plant, the Heaven Hill Springs Distillery in Bardstown, KY, roughly 45 minutes away. The Shapira brothers, who cofounded the distillery in 1935, could not have imagined owning a distillery like Bernheim. And given the unfortunate circumstances leading to its purchase in 1999, none of them would have wanted to.
But as fortune favors the bold, so does the art and business of making whiskey, and a curious order of events eventually led to Heaven Hill creating the single most productive Bourbon distilling operation and second largest inventory of aging whiskey in the world.
