Eastern Light Distilling breaks ground in Kentucky – The Spirits Business

Located in Morehead, Kentucky, the new distillery is expected to open in late 2025.

The Kentucky Bourbon scene grows ever larger with the addition of Eastern Light Distilling, which began construction of its new distillery on 2 July with a groundbreaking ceremony.

Eastern Light comes from master distiller Caleb Kilburn and and CEO Cordell Lawrence, who previously worked together at Kentucky Peerless Distilling.

“We are thrilled to celebrate this important moment as we bring Eastern Light Distilling to life,” Kilburn said. “Being from Eastern Kentucky, I’m grateful for the opportunity to grow the industry I’m so passionate about in the region I call home.”

Eastern Light will contract distill, working with craft producers from product inception to branding.

The 230-acre campus will feature a 50,000-square-foot distillery, nine rickhouses with an average capacity of 33,000 barrels each, a full bottling facility, and a visitor experience. Once up and running, the distillery will employ more than 50 full-time staff and produce upwards of 97,000 barrels per year.

“Eastern Light will fill a tremendous need in the Bourbon industry, operating with a fully customisable solutions-based model that will help craft distillers and Bourbon brands to not only reach their goals and bring their products to market, but to flourish,” Lawrence said.

“We believe in removing barriers to entry in the spirits space so that we can share our passion with like-minded creators while prioritising quality, inspiring creativity, and investing in the state’s signature Bourbon industry and the health of the region.”

Eastern Light joins a crop of new distillery projects that are either focused on contract distilling or plan on making it a core business component. The past decade saw a rise in non-distillery producers as entrepreneurs and upstart craft brands sought a piece of the Bourbon market without the high costs of building a distillery or the long wait times for whiskey to mature.

In October 2023, the team behind Bardstown Bourbon Company pledged more than US$350 million over the next 10 years to build a new distillery for contract whiskey production in the US. Located in Kentucky, Whiskey House will be the ‘first’ distillery designed from scratch to focus entirely on large-scale, flexible, contract whiskey production.

In January 2024, Garrard County began production as the largest independently owned distillery in Kentucky, with contract distilling as a part of its model.