Overview
- Distillation will stop at the James B. Beam campus on Jan. 1, with bottling, warehousing, the visitor center and The Kitchen Table restaurant staying open.
- Production will continue at the Fred B. Noe craft distillery in Clermont and the larger Booker Noe facility in Boston, Kentucky.
- A union representative said distillery employees are being reassigned within the company and reported no layoffs at this time.
- Kentucky warehouses hold about 16.1 million aging barrels, and distillers paid roughly $75 million in barrel taxes this year, intensifying pressure to curb output.
- Industry groups link steep export declines—particularly an 85% drop to Canada during the second quarter—to trade tensions, as U.S. whiskey output fell about 28% through August.