LEXINGTON, Ky. — A new distillery announced it is coming to Kentucky, adding to the state’s booming bourbon business.
Bespoken Spirits will move its headquarters and manufacturing operations to Lexington’s Greyline Station by 2024. CEO Peter Iglesias said the award-winning California-based distillery is not your average whiskey maker.
“We have a lot of respect for the way things have been done in the past and the history behind aging spirits. What we bring is we finish things a little differently,” Iglesias said.
Rather than aging their whiskeys in a barrel, Bespoken matures its product for 3-5 days in a metal keg. It gets its flavor from oak staves, which rest in the keg with the spirit. Iglesias said this uses less wood, energy and water.
According to Iglesias, they don’t lose any product because of evaporation because of their tailored wood finishing combining natural wood and technology.
“In essence, we can take something that is two years old and we can make it taste like it’s 10 years with our technology,” Iglesias said. “We control the heat, we control movement, we control the surroundings and it’s very measured and calculated.”
The distillery founded in San Francisco in 2019 is moving 2,400 miles, and will take over the former AppHarvest office at Lexington’s Greyline Station for its headquarters and production.
“We obviously needed a large amount of space, at least 10,000 square feet for production but we were also looking for a place where we could do retail and on-premise sales that would include an area with good foot traffic in a dynamic area of the city that we can be a contributor to,” said Vice President of research and development, Scott Savage.
Savage is a native Lexingtonian, and he said moving to the heart of bourbon country will cut down shipping costs by being more centrally located.
“We expect to save $1 million annually just simply by being here and that translates into about a 10% profit margin for us, which is huge,” Savage said.
Savage, a University of Kentucky graduate and engineer, said the move to Kentucky makes sense. He added that Lexington and state leaders are supportive of a new name in Kentucky’s largest industry.
“Very supportive from day one, whereas in California I can only describe it as business hostile. Kentucky has been a breath of fresh air,” Savage said.
The distillery itself will be in the former Lextran bus terminal, where all aging and distilling will occur on-site. Savage hopes it will be operational by the end of the year.
Savage hopes to produce around 80,000 gallons of whiskey annually at its distillery. The move will bring 16 jobs to Lexington paying an average wage of $70 bucks an hour.