Heaven Hill Distillery

It was named Old Heavenhill Springs for the limestone spring of William Heavenhill, who once owned the land, and the brothers later bought out the other investors.^1,2,3 Joe Beam and his son Harry, of the Jim Beam family, oversaw the distilling, and the first barrels were filled on 13 December 1935.^2,5,10 The wood-frame plant burned coal to heat its boiler, which cooked the mash and sent steam through an all-copper column still.^2,5,10 Operations paused in 1942 to support the Second World War effort.^1,11 In 1946 Ed Shapira hired Earl Beam as master distiller, and capacity grew, with more rickhouses built to hold the whiskey.^2,11 Heaven Hill finished its Bardstown bottling plant in 1967, and it still does the company's bottling.^1,6 In 1975 Earl Beam retired after 29 years in the job and handed it to his son, Parker Beam.^2,11

On 7 November 1996 a fire began in a rickhouse during a storm and spread, destroying the distillery, seven rickhouses and some 90,000 barrels of whiskey.^2,5,12 The distillery was never rebuilt, and its footprint became an area for receiving and storing grain.^2,5,12 The cause was never determined; the two possible causes were a lightning strike and a metal façade touching a downed power line.^13,14 Afterwards, sprinklers, lightning arrestors, underground wiring and berms, or earth banks, were mandated for bourbon rickhouses generally, some by insurance companies.^13,14 For several years after the fire, Brown-Forman and Jim Beam made spirit for Heaven Hill.²

On 15 October 2004 Heaven Hill opened the Bourbon Heritage Center on the old distillery grounds, and in 2021 it was expanded and renamed.^5,7,9 In 2019 its 22 rickhouses, built from the mid-1930s through 2012, could hold 18,000 to 22,000 barrels each; Heaven Hill had 57 at six sites.⁶ Heaven Hill broke ground in June 2022 on a separate new plant, Heaven Hill Springs Distillery, a couple of miles away, and filled its first barrel on 7 April 2025.^2,8,9