3 days ago
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Kentucky distillery beats the likelihood for the Derby
Frankfort, Kentucky — For much than 2 centuries, the Buffalo Trace Distillery successful Frankfurt, Kentucky, has bottled up scores of spirits connected its 400-acre campus.
But America's oldest-running distillery crushed to a halt past period amid historical and deadly flooding, erstwhile Buffalo Trace maestro distiller Harlen Wheatley says the adjacent Kentucky River rose to implicit 48 feet.
"Every gathering that you spot had 4 oregon 5 feet of h2o successful it, each over…the site," Wheatley told CBS News.
Tyler Adams, the distillery's wide manager, says Buffalo Trace has weathered storms before, including a campus-wide flood successful 1978 and tornado velocity winds damaging aggregate buildings successful 2006.
"We've been done prohibition, different floods, tornadoes that took disconnected portion of a warehouse," Adams said.
The bourbon crafters said determination are no plans to determination to higher ground.
"We person nary plans of slowing down," Wheatley said. "…That water's conscionable a velocity bump."
Crews hurried to reconstruct tanks up of the distillery's busiest days, dubbed "Derby Week" by locals up of Saturday's Kentucky Derby.
"You request bourbon, you request mint juleps, and you request horses," section Colleen Calvy said. "Otherwise, it's not derby."
And visitors flocking to the Run for the Roses besides raced to Buffalo Trace's acquisition store this week, arsenic the distillery reopened for constricted tours and tastings.
Layne Wilkerson, Frankfort's mayor, says the brushed reopening marks a measurement successful the close absorption for a assemblage inactive reeling from disaster.
"It's an iconic portion of our individuality present successful Frankfort," Wilkerson said. "Bourbon, of course, is 1 of our large industries."
Wheatley says seeing the distillery backmost up and moving "means thing to america too."
"We person 770 employees," Wheatley said. "We person a batch of families that beryllium connected the job...and we privation to beryllium up and running."
Nicole Sganga is CBS News' homeland information and justness correspondent. She is based successful Washington, D.C. and reports for each shows and platforms.
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