Heaven Hill
Heaven Hill is a whiskey distillery based in Bardstown , Kentucky and Louisville , Kentucky. The family-owned company primarily produces bourbon whiskey . The best-known international brands are Elijah Craig and Evan Williams . Heaven Hill is the only remaining major producer of corn whiskey in the United States, and produces whiskey on behalf of several companies that do not have their own distillery.
history
The first Heaven Hill Distillery in Kentucky was founded in 1890. However, the current company was founded in 1935, right after the end of Prohibition in the United States. The founders were five brothers from the Shapira family, whose descendants still own the company today. The Shapira brothers had no experience in the liquor business, but they owned a successful chain of Kentucky department stores. The first master distiller and thus responsible for the content of the whiskey was Harry Beam from the Jim Beam family, who was succeeded by his son Joe Beam. So far, all of Heaven Hill's Master Distillers have been members of the Jim Beam Clan.
Heaven Hill started with two of its own brands, Heaven Hill and Bourbon Falls , but also sold whiskey to other manufacturers and resellers who could bottle and sell it under their own name. At the same time, Heaven Hill bought up various whiskey brands over the decades, the operators of which went out of business and thus saved a number of traditional brands from disappearing.
On November 7, 1996, the manufacturing facilities and seven of Heaven Hill's 44 warehouses at the time burned down. The fire, which encompassed production facilities and warehouses, also destroyed 340,000 liters of whiskey that was stored there. Only the yeast strain that Heaven Hill has been using since 1935 could be saved.
The whiskey burned at that time comprised around 2% of the bourbon available worldwide at the time. The distillery was considered to be one of the ones that were particularly well armed against a fire, as the warehouses at Heaven Hill are particularly far apart. Strong winds that day, however, ensured that the flames could jump from one warehouse to the next. As in many other distilleries, the warehouses themselves consisted of a wooden frame that was covered by thin metal plates. Since the warehouses are also on a small hill and the fire broke out in a warehouse at the top of the hill, burning whiskey ran down the hill towards other warehouses. The burning whiskey leaked and nearly a square mile of land was inaccessible because rivers of burning whiskey blocked access. The cause of the fire could not be clarified, especially since the very hot burning whiskey destroyed all traces.
After the fire, Heaven Hill was able to use the production facilities of the neighboring Jim Beam and Brown-Forman distilleries . In 2000, instead of rebuilding the facilities, Heaven Hill bought Diageo's new Bernheim Distillery in Louisville , Kentucky, which was built in 1992 .
Old Bernheim was a traditional Louisville whiskey maker whose distillery was owned by United Destillers. United Destillers built a new distillery on the same site in 1992. After the merger of United Distillers and Grand Metropolitan to Diageo, Diageo's business concept changed and it no longer needed its own whiskey distillery .
Heaven Hill ferments and burns in Louisville while storage and packaging continues in Bardstown. Bardstown is home to the Bourbon Heritage Center, a visitor center, as well as the Heaven Hill warehouses, which has 900,000 barrels of the world's second largest stock of bourbon.
Products
Heaven Hill produces from two different basic mashes - both contain corn and malted barley, one is supplemented with rye, the other with wheat. A typical rye distilled bourbon is Evan Williams, named after one of Kentucky's oldest distillers, and a typical wheat distilled bourbon is Old Fitzgerald. Heaven Hill is best known internationally for the premium whiskeys Elijah Craig and Evan Williams. Other bourbons from Lexington / Bardstown are the Very Special Old Fitzgerald, Fighting Cock, Cabin Still, Henry McKenna Single Barrel and Heaven Hill Old Style. When it comes to corn whiskeys, Heaven Hill produces both whiskeys that have been stored for a long time - like Mellow Corn - and those that can hardly see a barrel from the inside - like Georgia Moon. With Bernheim Original Straight, Heaven Hill produces the only wheat whiskey of a larger distillery and also has various rye whiskeys on offer: Rittenhouse Rye and Pikesville Supreme Straight. The distillery also produces other spirits such as rum, gin, liqueur and tequila.
Remarks
- ↑ a b c d e f Whiskey Nations, Dorling Kindersley Ltd, 2008 ISBN 1405336242 , p. 192
- ↑ a b Michael R. Veach: Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage. University Press of Kentucky, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8131-4165-7
- ↑ a b Whiskey River scorching Heaven Hill , Industrial Fire World
- ^ A b C. K. Cowdery: Bourbon, Straight - The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey. Made and Bottled in Kentucky, Chicago, Illinois 2004, ISBN 0-9758703-0-0 , p. 87
- ^ A b C. K. Cowdery: Bourbon, Straight - The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey. Made and Bottled in Kentucky, Chicago, Illinois 2004, ISBN 0-9758703-0-0 , p. 68
- ↑ Heaven Hill: Key Facts , accessed December 7, 2014
- ^ Gilbert Delos: Les Whiskeys du Monde. Translation from French: Karin-Jutta Hofmann: Whiskey from all over the world. Karl Müller, Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-86070-442-7 , p. 145.