A nearly $2 million expansion at Casey Jones Distillery is making progress with the start of a rickhouse that will store up to 3,000 barrels of bourbon and other spirits. Construction of the building comes as the Christian County distillery brings two new stills into operation.
“This rickhouse is a much-needed building to store all of our barrels that we can produce with the new distillery that we’re putting in,” master distiller Arlon “A.J.” Jones said Thursday afternoon at a groundbreaking ceremony. “That distillery will allow us to produce three barrels a day. It takes months to do some of that stuff now.”
Jones co-founded the distillery with his wife, Peg Hays, on their Witty Lane farm a few miles west of Hopkinsville in 2014.
Hays said the rickhouse should be completed in about six weeks. They will be able to stack barrels seven stories high, she said. The rickhouse is a tall rectangular structure used in the bourbon industry because it allows air to circulate around barrels, which is needed to age the spirit.
Several dozen people came out for the groundbreaking. Jones and Hays used the occasion to announce that they have a new partner in the business — Cody Turner, a 41-year-old former marketing and communications instructor for Western Kentucky University who helped establish a popular bourbon and beer festival in Bowling Green several years ago.
“We came to the conclusion we either need to grow or go,” Jones said. “We were at that point that we needed to invest in this business a lot more.”
And since they are technically retirement age but still working full-time, Jones said a younger partner made sense. Jones is 67 and Hays is 65.
“It’s ironic, you know. We’re in kind of a challenging business environment right now,” Turner said, referring to inflation. “But here we are making this sizable investment into the future.”
Hays, who previously worked in the furniture business that her late parents established in Hopkinsville, said the distillery wasn’t a “life plan.”
“It just kind of all unfolds every day and we try to capture the experience and make the best of the opportunities,” she said.
The distillery expects it will have seen 18,000 tourists by the end of this year. That’s good for the local economy, said Hays.
“I guarantee you they’re eating here, they’re sleeping here, they’re shopping here,” she said.
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Bourbon tourism is experiencing a big rebound in the state following coronavirus pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021, according to the Kentucky Distillers Association. So much so that KDA is recommending visitors book their distillery tours in advance with a campaign dubbed “Book Now, Bourbon Later.”
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Bourbon Craft Trail had a combined 1.7 million visitors in 2019. The association predicts that record will be broken this year.
Casey Jones is one of 23 small distilleries in the craft tour — and it is one of two in Christian County, along with MB Roland outside of Pembroke, that is part of the Western Kentucky tour.
At Thursday’s ceremony, Hopkinsville Mayor Wendell Lynch, Christian County Judge-Executive Steve Tribble, Christian County Chamber of Commerce president Taylor Hayes and Carter Hendricks, executive director of the South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council, all spoke and congratulated the distillery owners on the expansion.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
