Abandoned Old Taylor Distillery

Located just South of Frankfort, Kentucky, the Old Taylor Distillery was constructed by E.H. Taylor, Jr. in 1887. The Old Taylor Distillery was the first to produce over 1 million cases of straight bourbon.

Since being purchased for $950,000 in 2014, the company now has a very strict "No Trespassing" rule, that is enforced by the company and the surrounding community.  With that being said, our interior photographs were limited due to us respecting the rules posted.

At over 127 years old, the historic front to the main building still stands proudly.

Even though its doors officially closed in the early 1970's, the distillery continued to use their warehouses for the storage of bourbon until 1994. Bourbon would have to test at 100-proof, otherwise known as 50% alcohol. This is what we today consider "True Kentucky Bourbon."

Sadly, we were not able to photograph some of the truly historic areas of the distillery, such as the Spring House or the brewing room.  As of 2014, the company, Buffalo Trace Distillery (Frankfort, Kentucky) purchased the property and is said to be producing bourbon under the Old Taylor name.

However, from our outside perspective, we saw very little activity at all from within the walls.

We were granted access to one small building, just across the street from the main entrance to the distillery.  The rear of the building was being used for timber storage, but the front had been abandoned and was simply letting nature take over.






















Here's what our crew captured from the outside:




To think that this road was once so busy that the company had to build overpasses from the parking lot to the distillery itself.  The parking lot is a small forest today. 


That fire extinguisher has to be at least 40 years old! 





What appears to be the outside of a prison is actually where row after row, after row, of barrels of bourbon once stood tall.