30 May Spirits Growth in Indiana Gets a Boost: Buffalo Trace Owner to Bottle in New Albany
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
It’s a little known fact that one of the largest distilleries in the country is located in Lawrenceburg, IN. MGP Ingredients makes a ton of bourbon whiskey in a campus of buildings near the Ohio River, just downstream from Cincinnati. It used to be Seagrams, and they made mostly Seagram’s Seven Crowns. But with the merger of Seagrams with Vivendi (of France) in 2000, the entire beverage arm was sold off piece by piece.
After a couple of owners came and went, Lawrenceburg Distillers Inc., a local owner tried to barrel and sell their own boutique bourbons. It worked, and it brought MGP Ingredients of Atchison, KS to their door as a potential new owner in 2011. The laws about craft distilling were changing to allow for many more producers, but the problem was time – everyone needs time to make a bourbon whiskey. Well, Lawrenceburg had good corn and rye whiskeys in barrels and ready to blend.
Small distillers from around the country began to crop up, selling bourbons and ryes that were made and then custom blended in Lawrenceburg. And it took off. Nowadays, many of the private labels that bring top dollar are made in the Lawrenceburg plant. Some Bulleitt, George Dickel, Templeton Rye, and Angel’s Envy brands start out and perhaps finish at MGPI, although many make subtle moves to call the products their own, like Angel’s Envy that then finishes the 95% rye mash whiskey in port casks before bottling.
One Sazerac owned product, 1792 Full Proof, was named the best whiskey at the 2018 World Whiskies Awards. image credit: Barton 1792 Distillery
The 30 craft distillers in Indiana, when added to MGP Ingredients, makes Indiana a large player in the growing distilling industry. Kentucky has about 50 craft distillers by comparison, although at least of three of those are owned by Sazerac (Buffalo Trace, Barton 1792, and Glenmore Distillery). And is with Sazerac that we have Indiana’s newest presence in distilling.
Sazerac is an old, family-owned distilling company from New Orleans, that now owns many large and small craft distillers, such as those mentioned above. In the past few years and extending into the next decade, Sazerac is making considerable investments at its distilleries in Kentucky – to the tune of $1.2 billion in Frankfort’s Buffalo Trace, $45 million in Glenmore Distillery in Owensboro, and $15 million in Bardstown’s Barton 1792. These improvements and expansion pair well with the need for a new production and bottling plant, and that’s where the old Pillsbury manufacturing facility of General Mills in New Albany enters the picture.
The planned purchase of the plant is pending approval of the final incentives to be provided by the city of New Albany to Sazerac. The state of Indiana has already agreed to $900,000 in tax credits and $150,000 in training grants. The $66 million purchase by Sazerac will go along to replacing the lost jobs when Pillsbury closed in 2016. At the start of production, which could be as early as November, 2018 will employ 50 workers, with full production and 110 workers by 2021 (based on article on The Lane Report, May 30, 2018). The exact products to be bottled and perhaps other activities to be carried out at the New Albany plant have not yet been finalized.
Look for MGP Ingredients and Sazerac clients to be represented at the Midwest Distillers Fest, organized and hosted by Hard Truth Distilling in Nashville, IN on October 10th. The finishing touches that distilleries put on the products made in Lawrenceburg and bottled in New Albany (to come) give them craft identity, and will be up for comparison to one another and to those products made by small distilleries from around the state of Indiana and across the Midwest. Click here for tickets to Midwest Distillers Fest.
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