Buffalo Trace Distilleries completes $1.3B expansion ahead of looming tariffs

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Earlier this year, Buffalo Trace Distilleries completed a 10-year $1.3 billion expansion plan as the company expects a fifth-consecutive year of record production numbers.

Buffalo Trace, located on the Kentucky River in Frankfort, is predicting 2026's production will beat 2025's numbers before leveling off in 2027, as reported from our partners at Louisville Business First.

Part of the company's expansion plan was to build more warehouse to accommodate the growing inventory. Louisville Business First reports Buffalo Trace estimates they will fill its nine millionth barrel this May.

“The expansion forces us to continue to invest in warehousing, because we’re still making much more than we’re dumping,” Buffalo Trace Master Distiller Harlan Wheatley told Louisville Business First.

Since the expansion plan started, the company has built 19 new warehouses near the Frankfort campus, each holding 58,800 full barrels. Sazerac, parent company of Buffalo Trace, is building a warehouse every two months.

More production means building more warehouses and that brings more jobs for Franklin County. Louisville Business First reported in April Buffalo Trace employed 762 people, and now that is up to at least 800.

However, all this growth is coming at a time when tariffs are looming over the industry. It started back in 2018 when the European Union imposed a 25% tax on American whiskeys in response to U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

While those 2018 tariffs have been stopped, there are more to come. WDRB reported in January that on March 31, the E.U.'s 50% tariff is set to go in effect if no agreement is reached regarding the steel and aluminum imports.

"We're watching that closely," Wheatley told WDRB last month. "We haven't seen anything yet to be concerned with but we're watching that. We don't really have any way to project on what we're going to end up with. Again, for us, we are just expanding into export market and all that. So it just depends on how that shapes up (and) how it affects us."

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