VIDEO: Fire prevention has been top of mind for Jack Daniel’s Master Distiller Jeff Arnett after a blaze at a Jim Beam warehouse destroyed 45,000 bourbon barrels and littered a nearby river with fish killed by the resulting alcohol runoff.
Destructive fires, explosions and warehouse collapses threaten large distilleries across the country, where highly flammable hard liquor is aged and stored in massive quantities before it’s bottled and shipped around the world.
The Jim Beam fire, just one of a handful of distillery disasters in Kentucky in recent decades, has left the entire U.S. spirits industry on edge.
“Every drop (of Jack Daniel’s) is made here,” Arnett said. “We wouldn’t have an opportunity to source product from another place. So literally, if this place burned down, it would be kind of done. That’s a lot to risk.”