Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated periodically with new information. If you have tips about what’s going on at The Sazerac Company, please get in touch by emailing me ([email protected]) or texting me on Signal (dinfontay.11). Anonymity available.—Dave.
Months of trade rumors and courthouse paper trails have led to this: The Sazerac Company today confirmed its acquisition of Garrard County Distilling Company’s brand-spanking new plant in Kentucky for just $20 million.
The facility, opened in Lancaster in January 2024 by now-defunct Atlanta firm Staghorn, ran a cool $250 million to build. Press releases from the period touted GCDC’s 50,000 square-foot distillery and pair of 20,000 square-foot rickhouses as the largest independent whiskey operation in the Bluegrass State. But the state-of-the-art facility quickly became a millstone around the firm’s neck. Its main lender, Truist Bank, successfully filed for a federal receivership on GCDC in April 2025. A year and a half later, Buffalo Trace’s parent company has officially scooped it up for a song.
In an internal memo Friday morning to Sazerac staff shared with Fingers by a current employee, chief executive officer and president Jake Wenz touted GCDC’s topline stats:
The facility opened in 2024 and sits on approximately 210 acres. It includes two column stills and two 20,000-square-foot barrel warehouses. It is an impressive facility, and we will use its existing infrastructure and capabilities to support Sazerac’s broader production needs.
Fingers has granted the Sazerac employee anonymity to share company documents without fear of reprisal. (If you have tips about this deal, or anything else, please get in touch. Anonymity available.) Paying subscribers can read Wenz’s memo in full below.
While the formal acquisition announcement is new, the deal has been taking shape for much of 2026. As The Spirits Business reported in March of this year:
[A] company called Tom Collins Distilling enter[ed] into an agreement to purchase all of Truist Bank’s loan to Garrard County Distilling on 6 March 2026. The court motion did not disclose the total of the debt purchased by Tom Collins Distilling.
Tom Collins Distilling is listed at the same address as Sazerac’s corporate headquarters, located in Linn Station Road, Louisville.
Sazerac made its bid on GCDC’s Lancaster facility at a court-ordered auction in June, as Louisville’s Courier-Journal reported. Now, it’s a done deal.
“This is another example of how we are executing the Sazerac strategic plan,” Wenz told employees in his note on the deal, pointing to recent investments in Buffalo Trace, Barton 1792, and Glenmore distilleries. “We are also continuing to invest in additional barrel aging capacity. But we need to make more!”
Upgrade to read Wenz’s full memo to Sazerac employees.
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