Corsair Distillery’s Bowling Green location closes down

Bowling Green’s one and only distillery and pit stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, has closed its doors for good.

Sitting right on the corner of Fountain Square Park in Bowling Green, Corsair Distillery has welcomed visitors from all over since being founded in the city one decade ago.

Today, employees held their last public tour.

“We are doing some expansion down in Nashville and working towards a new facility that we’ll be opening next year on the west side of Nashville in The Nations neighborhood and working with some of these developments down here. We’ve just decided to consolidate production down to Nashville,” said Tyler Crowell, the chief operating officer for Corsair Distillery’s Nashville headquarters.

With two Nashville locations and a third on the horizon, Crowell says out of three full-time employees and a couple part-time, all but one was told weeks ago to put the caps on the bottles and on their job in the city for good.

“We do book events there, so we do have some events on the books, and we’re finishing our production. There will be some things that we’re transitioning from up there to do here and that will leave us one staff member to help us do those,” Crowell says.

Vicki Fitch, executive director of the Bowling Green Area Convention & Visitors Bureau stressed the importance of having a distillery in Bowling Green. Being the third largest city in the state and being without, leaves the city at a tourism disadvantage, she said.

“We will miss them. We’ve enjoyed partnering with them on different projects and because of their presence here, it’s helped get us a lot of media that we might otherwise have not of gotten. The state Department of Tourism, they do a lot with bourbon in their marketing initiatives and we may not have a presence in those marketing initiatives without a distillery here.”

Fitch believes Corsair Distillery leaving the Bowling Green area will hurt the city economically.

If you are interested in opening a distillery in Bowling Green, you can contact Fitch at 270.782.0800.