Heaven Hill: ‘No other Bourbons will lose age’

Max L Shapira, president of Heaven Hill Brands, is “not sure” whether his firm’s Bourbon stocks are sufficient to meet demand, but he “does not believe” any further expressions will lose their age statements.

Max L Shapira “does not believe” any other Heaven Hill Bourbons will lose their age statements

In January 2016, Heaven Hill lowered the age statement of its 12-year-old Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon to eight- to 12-years-old. Stocks of the whiskey, first launched in 1986, had become strained and the firm took action to “make the brand available to more, not less, consumers”.

According to Shapira, Heaven Hill has 1.2m barrels of maturing Bourbon, the second largest inventory of the spirit in the world, which represents about 25% of the globe’s total supply.

“And we are frankly not quite sure if it’s enough,” he told The Spirits Business in a recent interview. “I wish we would have known seven or eight years ago that this Bourbon renaissance was going to be coming to the market. We, like a lot of others in the industry, our watching our inventories extremely closely.”

Shapira added that such limited supplies means Heaven Hill is currently unable to bring new products to market.

“[We] are very cautious with our branding, the introduction of new products in the American whiskey space, because we don’t want to exacerbate a situation that we know is already a bit tight,” he said.

“So I guess I would call this a good problem to have, but it is a bit frustrating from the angle that we would like to have additional, interesting concepts in the market but we simply just don’t have the liquid to be able to support additional products at this point.”

However, the executive “does not believe” any other Heaven Hill Bourbons will lose their age statements in the near future. “We think at this point, we have our stocks and programme set,” he said.

In 2016, Heaven Hill revealed plans to embark on a US$15.5m expansion of its Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. The site, which has undergone two previous expansions since 1999, will increase capacity by a third and will be able to produce between 1,200 and 1,300 barrels of whiskey a day.

The expansion is due to be “on stream” by July this year, Shapira confirmed. He added: “In response to the growth that we have seen in Bourbon, we have had a substantial capital infrastructure in place over the last couple of years and continuing into the next few years.”

In tandem with the distillery expansion, Heaven Hill is increasing its maturation facilities and recently constructed two 55,000-barrel warehouses, with a third on the way. “We are likely to need additional warehouses every year for the next several years down the road,” said Shapira.