Wilderness Trail Distillery Plans $9.9m Expansion

By Richard Thomas

Wilderness Trail’s old Vendome still has been up and running for only a year.
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Kentucky’s Wilderness Trail Distillery has only been in their new facility, located just outside the quaint college town of Danville, for only a year, but they already have big expansion plans. The distillery intends to invest $9.91m in an expansion project that should increase production by a factor of six and add ten jobs. The project is slated for completion by January.

At the heart of the expansion is more and bigger new equipment, such as going from their current 18-inch column still to a 36-inch model and adding six 20,000-gallon fermentation tanks. The new production target after the expansion is 36,000 full-size, 53-gallon barrels of whiskey annually. The Danville-Boyle County Planning and Zoning Commission approved the project plan last week, and the project has received approval for $350,000 in tax credits from the state of Kentucky.