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Wild Turkey Distillery

Site ID: AN-212

Commercial
Industrial
Anderson
Palmer Engineering
Unless specified, we cannot provide site location information.

Summary

​​Consultants working with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet worked to survey the Wild Turkey Distillery in 2022. These investigations documented the bourbon distillery at 1417 Versailles Road in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.  With a history going back to the latter part of the nineteenth century, the distillery was continuously owned by members of the Ripy family, who owned and operated multiple distilleries across Anderson County, until the 1940s.  Since then, ownership of the distillery has changed several times.  Gruppo Campari has owned the Wild Turkey Distillery since 2009.  The oldest warehouses for storing bourbon, Warehouses A and B, were built in 1894 and 1902 respectively and can be seen below.  The warehouses have stone foundations, wooden frames and are clad in metal siding.  An additional five warehouses were built at the site in the 1940s by the Ripy brothers.  Gruppo Campari has added a new distilling plant, a visitor's center and nine new warehouses to the complex of structures.​

Interior of Warehouse A.

Findings

This undated photo of the Ripy Brothers Distillery shows Warehouse A at upper left.

​Consultation with Kentucky Heritage Council staff determined that the oldest portion of the Wild Turkey Distillery on the south side of US 62 is Eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A.  Under this criterion, the distillery with its long history of bourbon production at the current site was found to have both local and state significance within the bourbon industry.  The original distilling plant was demolished in 2010-11, but the parcel retains the original layout, configuration and road network that has existed since before World War II.  The warehouses of historic age here also retain a high level of material integrity.  As such, the Wild Turkey Distillery is one of the most significant bourbon distilleries since Prohibition (if not before) in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.


What's Cool?

​The Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky is in a very real sense a living history museum of bourbon production in the Commonwealth of Kentucky retaining many of its early twentieth century structures and processes.  Given the ever-changing distilling landscape, distilleries like this one along the Kentucky River in Anderson County help to document the evolution of that landscape from its earliest beginnings to the present day.  Bourbon tourism has generated great interest in bourbon and its production.  Undoubtedly, this distillery will continue to draw interest from those seeking to learn more about both of those things.

Warehouse C built in 1940.

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