Louisville’s Stitzel-Weller Visitors Center Open

By Richard Thomas

As part of their effort to expand their presence in the American whiskey market, British drinks giant Diageo announced in February that they would renovate the defunct Stitzel-Weller Distillery in Louisville into a Visitors Center, both to showcase the company’s American whiskey and to carve a niche in Kentucky Bourbon Trail tourism. That visitors center was opened to the public at a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday, revealing that the tourist attraction is named the Bulleit Frontier Whiskey Experience and is more narrowly focused than was first supposed, although the tour will include historic Stitzel-Weller features such as the cooperage and the warehouse where rickhouse-style storage was invented.

At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Diageo also announced a new round of additions and renovations to Stitzel-Weller. These are to include a small still, a new bottling plant, and a finishing center. The latter refers to a shop for customizing on-site purchases, and not to the practice of secondary aging of whiskey in used barrels, such as is done by Angel’s Envy and Big Bottom.

The modern, post-Prohibition distillery was opened in 1935. The name stems from a 1910 consolidation of the old Stitzel distillery with their principal customer, the wholesaling and bottling firm W.L. Weller. The distillery is usually known as the birthplace of the popular Van Winkle brand, which has been made by Buffalo Trace for the Van Winkles since 2002. The distillery was closed in 1991.