Q&A: Bardstown Bourbon CEO Mark Erwin on Whiskey in 2025

Among larger distilleries launched this century, there is no bigger success than Bardstown Bourbon Company. Founded in 2014 and producing commercially since 2016, Bardstown has revolutionized contract distilling while simultaneously creating and growing their own popular brands of whiskey.

Investors noticed. Constellation Brands acquired a minority stake in 2016, before Pritzker Private Capital bought the entirety of Bardstown in 2022. Today, the distillery operates under its parent company, Lofted Spirits, an umbrella establishment that also incorporates Green River Spirits Company, which Bardstown purchased in 2022.

Sales continue to climb, despite current industry headwinds. We recently caught up with Bardstown Bourbon Company CEO Mark Erwin to talk about the growth of the company, the state of American whiskey in 2025, and what’s next for the market.

Beverage Dynamics: How has Bardstown performed during this difficult economic moment?

Mark Erwin: Unfortunately, we’ve had to moderate production. But we’re also seeing our investments pay off because we have two of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the U.S. [Bardstown Bourbon and Green River]. We’re going to have success.

Bardstown Bourbon is up 70% right now, while the market is down a couple percentage points. Green River is three years behind Bardstown right now, growing slow but reasonable.

BD: Speaking of your brands, Bardstown must balance its house portfolio with the many brands that contract with you. How do you balance that?

ME: The name we’ve made for ourselves is the quality of the products that we produce. It’s cool for us to see not just our own brands winning awards but also the brands that source from us. These brands brag about how they make whiskey at Bardstown Bourbon Company. That’s because of the incredible work and skill of our whole distilling team.

BD: Bardstown was already a massive facility before you expanded in 2024. Tell us about that project.

ME: That was part of our presentation when we went out to market [before the Pritzker purchase]. We had a ready-made plan for our next investment. We basically created a whole new distillery onsite. The only shared aspect is the grains. We also increased our capacity by 50%. That gave us the capacity to meet the customer demand that we saw at that time.

A week after the Pritzker deal, we went into the Green River purchase. Between the distilleries now, we have gone from being able to produce 115,000 barrels per year to 290,000. That was to meet the massive customer demand at the time. Now we have had to adjust and slow down a little bit.

We had been outsourcing our bottling. Now, we’ve started our own bottling program and it’s been a homerun for us and the industry. There is a need in the market and other companies are coming to us for their bottling and it’s turned into a nice win for us. It also makes us the only truly grain to glass distillery in the market. It’s been great for our business.

BD: You recently ramped up your single barrel program.

ME: We’ve been ramping that up for us and for our clients as well. We’re helping out a lot of folks with that. It’s what customers want now. We’re developing internally a new piece of equipment, a kit, so that we can increase our capacity to sample single barrels fivefold.

BD: During a recent tour at Bardstown, I heard that you just implemented a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for your digital systems.

ME: That came online in September. We had too many systems pieced together from different entities. It had been a slog.

Putting in the new ERP was a lot of work. And it’s always a tough transition in terms of people changing their habits and learning a new system. But now our new EPR helps clients see their products in a timely fashion. They can see exactly where and when their products are in the system.

BD: Tell us a little bit more about the Green River acquisition.

ME: We’ve always talked about Bardstown Bourbon bringing innovation to the industry while also adhering to its history and tradition. Steve Nally, our master distiller, is an old-school talent, while we brought in a lot of high-tech practices when we opened. Along those lines, Green River is a historical brand. [The brand originated in 1885.]

Sometimes when we’re pouring at an event, we bring the two brands together, Bardstown and Green River. Other times we have them separate. We want the Green River brand to grow on its own, the same way that Bardstown Bourbon is growing on its own. That’s also why we started Lofted Spirits, our parent company. We hated telling people that Green River was owned by Bardstown Bourbon. We want Green River to be its own brand. We’re much more excited to be seen as a house of brands.

BD: How does Bardstown Bourbon — with its tours, kitchen and bars — handle the boom in bourbon tourism?

ME: We want to provide visitors with creative experiences. That’s what people think about when they think about bourbon. They think about how they experienced it. That’s why we have the outdoor bar, the glass warehouse. We’ve tried to come up with new, creative experiences. We have a vintage whiskey library, such a unique space on the bourbon trail. We’ve opened up two new tasting rooms in downtown Louisville, for Bardstown Bourbon and Green River.

The bar at Bardstown Bourbon Company in Bardstown, KY.

BD: As the whiskey industry goes through a corrective phase, what do you see in the years ahead?

ME: Everyone is talking about what’s cyclical versus what’s structural. The data shows that we’re going right back to moderate growth. We had that big ramp up during Covid and now we’ve come back down. Moderate growth is more realistic.

On the custom-distilling side, there’s more capacity than demand, so it needs some sorting out. We’re confident that we’ll be here when it sorts. On the branded side, if it slows down, we’ll keep investing. One thing is for sure: the tourism is not slowing down. There’s been no slowdown in excitement for Kentucky’s native spirit.

This interview was edited and condensed for publication.

Kyle Swartz is editor of Beverage Dynamics. Reach him at kswartz@epgacceleration.com. Read his recent piece, The State of U.S. Whiskey at Kentucky Bourbon Fest 2025.

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