Jim Beam takes shot at boosting tourism

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Brian Meade, engineering manager for the state Highway Department’s Louisville office, said the widening plan has been well received since a July public meeting where the state showed three possible routes.

Beam’s investment

If all goes as planned, next fall visitors will be able to smell the fermenting grains in the mashhouse as they enter through a new road that winds its way to the American Stillhouse, where they will learn more about the history of Jim Beam and how it produces bourbon.

The American Stillhouse also will include a 40-foot-tall distillation column that “houses a number of surprises” as visitors ascend to the top, Noe said, declining to give details.

Beam’s 560-acre Clermont site, which now has about 900 workers involved in distilling, warehousing, processing, bottling and shipping products worldwide, draws roughly 80,000 tourists each year and expects to more than double that number with its new visitors center.

In comparison, Bernheim, which built a $1.8 million visitors center eight years ago, attracts more than 200,000 people a year. Wourms said many of these visitors initially came to Bullitt County to visit Beam, the Four Roses bourbon warehouses or one of the county’s four wineries: Forest Edge, Brooks Hill, MillaNova and Wight-Meyer.

Beam’s current visitors tour takes about an hour and has left many people wanting to see more, Noe said.

“I came here in 1995, the year we hosted people from all over the world in celebration of 200 years of making bourbon. We wished at that time we could have done more for them,” Noe said.

Currently, visitors can watch a short film about the seven generations of the whiskey-making Beam family and taste any two types of Beam bourbon in the American Outpost. They also can take a walking tour of the grounds that includes an exhibit of a period small-batch whiskey still, the historic T. Jeremiah Beam House and Warehouse D, the oldest warehouse, which stores 20,000 charred, white oak barrels of bourbon.

When the new center is built, visitors will be able to board a tour bus to see more of the vast bourbon-making facilities.