Finchville
Finchville, KY · Events
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The Courier Journal
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The Courier Journal
Laura Lee Brown, Kentucky philanthropist, bourbon heiress, dies
Laura Lee Brown, an heiress to spirits giant Brown-Forman and a renowned philanthropist who for decades poured into the Kentucky arts and conservation scene, died Nov. 10 at Woodland Farm in Goshen. She was 85 years old. The great granddaughter of George Garvin Brown, the founder of Brown-Forman , Brown built her legacy around an impassioned love for the arts and the environment. Brown was able to blend her love for these into two entrepreneurial ventures with her husband Steve Wilson – the 21c Museum Hotel chain and Hermitage Farm – which have had transformational impact on the Louisville metro area and beyond. In 2023, Brown was awarded the Distinguished Alumna Award from her alma mater Sweet Briar College in Virginia for her "outstanding accomplishments in a professional or volunteer capacity." At the time of receiving the award, Brown credited the college, which she graduated from in 1963, as a molding force behind learning how to courageously speak up to defend the causes she believes in. Brown is remembered as a bold person who dared to champion the underappreciated beauties in life. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said in a Nov. 11 post on X that for the past 25 years,
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Lexington Herald-Leader
Will Jim Beam distill next year in Clermont? The latest on Kentucky's bourbon giant
Major Kentucky distillery Jim Beam, which stunned the world in December 2025 b y closing its Clermont distillery for a year , plans to keep it offline at least through 2027. “We’re going to continue to have distillation paused at our Clermont distillery,” said Suntory president and CEO Greg Hughes in an interview with the Herald-Leader. “But Clermont remains a very active part of our Kentucky operations.” The campus, which has been the bourbon brand’s home just outside of Bardstown for 90 years, continues to operate tours and visitor experiences as well as bottling, aging, warehousing and other daily activities. But the bulk of distilling shifted to the larger industrial Booker Noe distillery in Boston. Hughes said that after a $400 million expansion there a few years ago that increased distilling capacity by 50%, Beam was able to meet current distilling demands there while making improvements at the Clermont site. They’d originally planned to reopen sooner and still will someday. “We’ll move back at some point to distilling at Clermont,” he said. “If demand accelerates dramatically, we have the flexibility to go back into production at Clermont. Obviously, we need to get the infrastructure improvements made, which will take us