The whiskey and bourbon makers of Tennessee and Kentucky have long been beloved in their communities, where they provide jobs and the pride of a successful homegrown industry
For decades, the whiskey and bourbon makers of Tennessee and Kentucky have been beloved in their communities. The distilleries where the liquor is manufactured and barrelhouses where it is aged have complemented the rural character of their neighborhoods, while providing jobs and the pride of a successful homegrown industry.
Now, the growing popularity of the industry around the world is fueling conflicts at home.
In Kentucky, where 95% of the world’s bourbon is manufactured, counties are revolting after the legislature voted to phase out a barrel tax they have depended on to fund schools, roads and utilities. Local officials who donated land and spent millions on infrastructure to help bourbon makers now say those investments may never be recouped.
Neighbors in both states have been fighting industry expansion, even suing distillers. Complaints include a destructive black “whiskey fungus,” the loss of prime farmland and liquor-themed tourist developments that are more Disneyland than distillery tour.
The love affair, it seems, is over.
“We’ve been their biggest advocates and they threw us under the bus,” said Jerry Summers, a former executive with Jim Beam and the judge-executive for Bullitt County, essentially the county mayor.
Bullitt County has long depended on an annual barrel tax on aging whiskey, which brought in $3.8 million in 2021, Summers said. The majority goes to schools but the money also is used for services that support the county’s Jim Beam and Four Roses plants, including a full-time fire department.
Many of the new barrelhouses are being built with industrial revenue bonds exempting them from property taxes for years or decades. The counties supported the property tax breaks because they expected to continue collecting the barrel tax. When the state legislature voted to phase it out earlier this year, after intense lobbying by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, county officials felt betrayed.
“Our industry was always a handshake agreement,” Summers said. Now, those agreements are being broken.
Once the barrel tax sunsets in 2043, the distillers will pay no taxes at all to Bullitt on some warehouses. The county will still have to provide them with services, protect them and protect the surrounding community from them if anything goes wrong, Summers said.
“Where you have an alcohol-based plant that produces a hazardous material, you need emergency management, EMS, a sheriff’s department,” he said.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who signed the bill after passage by Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature, said several industry compromises were vital to his support, while the bill will encourage investment.
