Inside, master distiller Harlan Wheatley is excited to show off his favorite “bells and whistles,” including remote sensors installed throughout the warehouse that continually monitor temperature and humidity, fingerprinting conditions over time to individual sections of the warehouse. This is important because different locations in the rickhouse experience different conditions, resulting in different flavor profiles in whiskeys matured there.
But that doesn’t mean Buffalo Trace is content to simply measure and track the whims of Kentucky’s famously changeable weather. Warehouse AA is lined with insulation and equipped with a powerful HVAC system that will enable workers to control its internal temperature, marking a major departure from the traditional uninsulated Kentucky rickhouse that generally lives at ambient temperature.
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Harlan explains that the company is planning on heat cycling the interior of Warehouse AA, especially during the winter. And if the heating system goes down, the system automatically notifies Harlan with a text, day or night—a feature Harlan says with a wry smile his wife “doesn’t love.”
The freight elevator—or rather, lack thereof—is another improvement. Instead of a standard elevator to carry barrels up in the rickhouse, Warehouse AA has a device that looks a bit like a narrow, extremely elongated water wheel. Barrels are rolled in, raised to the correct floor, and then neatly deposited at the end of the appropriate aisle, ready to be racked. Mark says the new lift reduces the amount of time it takes for each barrel to be placed by a factor of four.
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That’s a good thing, because Warehouse AA is filling fast. A truck carrying 63 full barrels arrives about every 20 minutes, and the warehouse will ultimately hold about 58,800 barrels across seven floors. When we visited, it was about half full, and in two months time it will be packed to the gills.
But perhaps the most exiting thing about Warehouse AA for Buffalo Trace fans hasn’t been finished yet: a top-floor observation deck. From here, you’ll be able to see Buffalo Trace’s entire 443-acre campus, which was added to the registry of National Historic Landmarks in 2013—perhaps someday, while enjoying a bourbon aged right under your feet.
