Glenns Creek Distilling, LLC

Glenns Creek Distilling is the Frankfort, Kentucky operation that does something almost no one else in Kentucky bourbon does: produces fewer than 300 barrels per year on the literal physical site of one of the most historically significant distilleries in American whiskey history. The Glenns Creek property at 3501 McCracken Pike in Frankfort was originally the site of the Old Crow Distillery — named for Dr. James Crow, the Scottish chemist who, working for Oscar Pepper at what is now the Woodford Reserve site in the mid-19th century, is widely credited with perfecting the sour mash fermentation process that became the foundation of modern Kentucky bourbon.

Dave Meier, the founder and head distiller, did not come up through the bourbon industry. He spent 10 years at Toyota in industrial engineering, then left to work as an independent manufacturing consultant before stumbling onto the abandoned Old Crow site in 2013. The historic buildings — many dating to the 19th century — had been abandoned for roughly 30 years when Meier purchased them, and the restoration combined preservation of original architecture with the construction of a modern small-batch distilling operation in the old bottling building. Bourbon production resumed on-site in 2015, the first new distillation at the Old Crow site in over four decades.

The technical setup at Glenns Creek is deliberately small. Meier and his team designed their own hand-built pot stills in-house, and the distillery uses a proprietary yeast strain salvaged directly from Old Crow's historic fermenter #5 — a genuine biological link to the pre-Prohibition production heritage that almost no other Kentucky distillery can claim. The fewer-than-300-barrels-per-year production volume makes Glenns Creek one of the smallest licensed bourbon producers in the state, and the result is that most of the brand's output is sold on-site or through limited regional distribution.

The Frankfort visitor experience emphasizes the historical-preservation angle: tours move through the restored 19th-century Old Crow buildings before reaching the modern stillhouse and on-site rickhouse, and Meier himself often leads tours and tastings personally. The McCracken Pike location sits 10 minutes from downtown Frankfort and is a natural pairing with Buffalo Trace and Castle & Key on a Frankfort-area distillery day, particularly for visitors who want to see the contrast between massive industrial-scale operations (Buffalo Trace) and the deliberately tiny end of the modern Kentucky distillery spectrum (Glenns Creek).