That’s down from the nearly 300,000 people who visited the Frankfort, Ky., distillery in 2019, and is the first time since 2010 that the distillery hasn’t seen a record number of visitor.
As soon as the pandemic erupted, the visitor center closed for four months. The company used the time for a massive expansion of its visitor center which is now three times the size and features enhanced safety and sanitation protocols.
The expanded Visitor Center conveniently allows for easier social distancing, and provides ample space and comfort for guests exploring the Gift Shop or tasting in the new expansive tasting rooms. With the reopening, Buffalo Trace kept its complimentary tours, but began limiting tour group sizes, accepting visitors by registration only, and implementing increased sanitation, mask-wearing and social distancing campus wide.
In May, Buffalo Trace began hosting live stream segments on social media each week, called Whiskey Wednesday. From May 13 through December, these episodes were viewed by more than 3.6 million people around the world. The Distillery is continuing its Whiskey Wednesday episodes in 2021, continuing to feature a variety of topics including more bourbon tastings, behind-the scenes tours, trivia, history and special guests.
“With the many challenges 2020 brought to all of us, we are thankful to have seen such robust visitation, and even year-over-year growth around the holidays,” Homeplace Development Director Meredith Moody said. “We are encouraged by the visitation we have experienced since reopening and look forward to welcoming more visitors to the Distillery in 2021.”
The Distillery, which has remained operational as an essential business, also undertook hand sanitizer production at the onset of the pandemic, having now created about 1.1 million gallons on an industrial scale for some of the world’s largest organizations in healthcare, government, military, retail, distribution, airline, pharmacy, and banking industries. This is in addition to its never-ceasing bourbon production, and its ongoing $1.2 billion infrastructure improvement and distillery expansion to increase production for future bourbon demand.