- Kentucky is the birthplace of Bourbon, crafting 95 percent of the world’s supply. Only the Bluegrass State has the perfect natural mix of climate, conditions and pure limestone water necessary for producing the world’s greatest Bourbon.
- Bourbon is America’s only native spirit, as declared by Congress in 1964. It must be made with a minimum of 51 percent corn, aged in charred new oak barrels, stored at no more than 125 proof and bottled no less than 80 proof.
Bourbon is an $8.5 billion signature industry in Kentucky, generating 17,500 jobs with an annual payroll of $800 million. Spirits production and consumption pours more than $825 million in federal, state and local tax coffers every year. - More than $1.1 billion in capital projects has been completed or is planned and underway in the past five years and the next five years, including new distilleries and aging warehouses to bottling facilities and tourism centers.
- Kentucky’s iconic Bourbon distilleries filled a whopping 1,886,821 barrels of amber nectar last year, breaking production records all the way back to 1967.
- The previous all-time high was 1,922,009 barrels filled in 1967. Since the turn of the century, Kentucky Bourbon production has skyrocketed more than 315 percent (455,078 barrels were filled in 1999).
- That gives the Commonwealth a total inventory of 6,657,063 barrels of Bourbon, the most since 1974 when 6,683,654 new charred oak casks were gently aging in Bluegrass warehouses.
- There are now 1.5 barrels for every person living in Kentucky (census population 4,425,092).
- The 2016 tax-assessed value of all barrels aging in Kentucky is $2.4 billion – an increase of $299 million from 2015 and a 135 percent increase over the last 10 years.
- Nearly 60 percent of every bottle of spirits in Kentucky goes to taxes or fees, with seven different taxes on Bourbon – including an ad valorem tax on barrels each and every year it ages. Distillers also are paying $17,814,134 in ad valorem barrel taxes this year, another all-time high. Revenue from this tax funds education, public safety, public health and other needs in local communities where barrels are stored.
- U.S. distilled spirits exports topped $1.5 billion in 2013. Kentucky Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey made up more than $1 billion of that amount, making it the largest export category among all U.S. distilled spirits.
- The KDA, a non-profit trade group founded in 1880, represents 33 member companies for the first time since Prohibition as its ranks have swelled with new distilleries, strengthening Kentucky’s rightful place as the one, true, authentic home for Bourbon and spirits.
