Heaven Hill and the Fire of Ninety-Six
Near Bardstown, Kentucky
Among the distilleries that earned Bardstown the title Bourbon Capital of the World, Heaven Hill stands out for both its longevity and a catastrophic chapter in its history. The company was founded in nineteen thirty five, just two years after Prohibition ended, by a group of investors that included the Shapira family and Joseph Lloyd Beam, of the celebrated distilling family that had been making Kentucky bourbon for generations, to produce their whiskey. Heaven Hill grew steadily over the following decades into one of the largest independent bourbon producers in the United States, with millions of barrels aging in rickhouses on the hills outside Bardstown.
On November seventh, nineteen ninety six, fire broke out in one of those rickhouses. Burning whiskey is extraordinarily difficult to contain, and the blaze spread rapidly from building to building. A river of flaming bourbon ran down the hillside.
By the time the fire was out, seven warehouses had been destroyed and approximately ninety thousand barrels of bourbon, representing millions of gallons of aging whiskey, were lost. It remains one of the most destructive distillery fires in American history. Heaven Hill moved its distilling operations temporarily to a facility in Louisville while the Bardstown campus was rebuilt over many years.
After nearly three decades producing whiskey elsewhere, the company finally restarted distilling on its original grounds in twenty twenty five.
