Kentucky Commits To Alltech’s Pikeville Moonshine Distillery
By Richard Thomas
Close followers of The Whiskey Reviewer first learned of the plans of Kentucky-based animal feed giant Alltech to build a moonshine distillery in Pikeville in April, when it was reported as a bulletin for our Facebook group. Now those plans have become much more concrete, with Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear promising to spend over $13 million on road improvements and a new bridge into the Pikeville area.
That investment is justified by more than just Alltech’s distillery plans. The company also intends to invest heavily in aquaculture and poultry farms in the area. The distillery project, named Dueling Barrels, will be located in downtown Pikeville, and joins Alltech’s Town Branch Distillery in Lexington, Kentucky and its Irish distilling project, currently in transit between County Carlow and Dublin.
A small city of approximately 6,000, Pikeville is located deep in Eastern Kentucky, abutting the state line with West Virginia. Long dependent on what is now a declining coal industry, the Alltech projects join other Pikeville developments, such as the expanding medical programs at the University of Pikeville that will include central Appalachia’s first school of optometry by 2016.
