The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Barrell Craft Spirits opens its new facility
Blending, bottling plant located in Jeffersontown
A blended spirits business that started a decade ago with bottle filling and labeling in Joe Beatrice’s living room has grown into a nationally recognized brand now celebrating a new 31,000square-foot facility.
Barrell Craft Spirits has officially opened its new $15-million blending and bottling facility, 2100 Watterson Trail, in Jeffersontown.
Founder Beatrice started his company with a single 1,000-gallon tank used to produce cask-strength small-batch and single-barrel releases.
Now, in the new “purpose-built” facility, eight tanks hold 64,000 gallons of spirits, allowing the Louisville-based company to increase its blending capacity by more than 500%. The facility’s bottling lines can produce 1 million cases each year on a single shift.
“It was really amazing to see it all actually come together finally,” Beatrice told the Courier Journal, adding that what was a one-year project ended up taking two. “It’s been a long time in the making. Taking a step back and looking at it was pretty impressive.”
But as the business has grown to a presence in 49 states, increased its contract bottling and expanded its blended whiskey and rum offerings, the space didn’t match the company’s trajectory. The energy that should have gone toward the product was spent on logistics and figuring out how to navigate tight quarters.
“We just outgrew it,” Beatrice said. “It became a Tetris problem of moving things around.”
The company started looking for a bigger space about three years ago, and after a year of searching, landed on the Jeffersontown property, which it bought for just shy of $1.93 million in late 2021.
“We wanted to make an investment that will hold us,” he said, estimating the company will be comfortable there for about five to six years.
The space includes meeting rooms built for the age of hybrid workplaces, collaboration-focused work spaces and a production studio for photoshoots and social media.
A blending lab features dry-erase tables and boards to brainstorm ideas and take notes. Off the lab is a dimly lit speakeasy-style room to host distributors and customers.
About five or six years ago, the company started leasing space at 3311 Gilmore Industrial Blvd., off Poplar Level Road, for its operations.
Nic Christiansen, blender and manager of blending operations, said she’s excited to get to work in and be inspired by the new facility.
“We get a lot of new toys to play with,” she said. “I feel like it’s going to open the doors to more experimental products and new flavors, new ways of doing things.”
While the facility is currently not open to the public, Beatrice said there’ll be a few opportunities for the public to interact with the new space.
A small showroom of sorts at the front entrance will welcome the public for bottle sales of limited releases.
Beatrice said there will also likely be a limited offering of tours and workshops.
“This is specific to all of the learning over the last 10 years about how to do things right and make it efficient,” he said of his company’s new home. “It’s a fine articulation of the work that we do, from testing blends to validating blends to blending to bottling. There’s an efficiency and a perfectionist aspect to this that really reflects the brand.”
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