Hartfield & Co.

Hartfield & Co. is the Paris, Kentucky distillery that holds an unusual claim: the first new distillery to open in Bourbon County since the end of Prohibition in 1933 — a remarkable gap considering that Bourbon County is the geographic source of the bourbon name itself. Founded in 2014 by Andrew Buchanan, a Bourbon County native who left a career in marketing to build a distillery on his hometown's main street, Hartfield & Co. occupies a small storefront at 718 Main Street in downtown Paris, roughly 20 minutes northeast of Lexington. The operation is intentionally tiny. Hartfield & Co. is widely cited as the smallest licensed bourbon distillery in Kentucky by production volume, with all distillation handled on a single small pot still in the back room of the Main Street storefront. Production runs at a few hundred barrels per year — a fraction of what a single Heaven Hill rickhouse holds — and the distillery's bottling, labeling, and on-site sales are all handled by Buchanan and a small team. The visitor experience and the production are essentially the same room, separated by a half-wall, which makes the Paris stop one of the most accessible "watch the distiller work" experiences in any state. The product range covers Hartfield & Co. Kentucky Straight Bourbon (the flagship, aged in 25-gallon barrels for accelerated wood interaction at small scale), Hartfield & Co. Single Barrel releases, Bourbon County Bourbon (a Bourbon-County-only sourced expression), and a rotating rang…