You can’t tour Barton 1792 Distillery. Bardstown’s oldest fully operating distillery ended its public tours and closed its gift shop on June 30, 2022, to concentrate on making whiskey, and it has stayed closed to visitors since. The 1792 bourbon made here is still easy to find in town, the warehouses are visible from the road, and the free Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History a few minutes away tells the story of the man who gave Barton its name. If an older guide promises free Barton tours, it’s out of date; this page covers what to do instead.
What happened to the Barton tours
Barton announced on April 7, 2022, that its visitor center tours would end, and the last ones ran on June 30, 2022. Distillery Trail’s report framed it as a decision to focus on production. The visitor center had opened with a ribbon cutting in May 2011, and for 11 years its free tours were one of the easiest bourbon visits in town, including a walk into Warehouse H, a classic 1940s rickhouse holding about 20,000 barrels. Private barrel selections for trade accounts, such as liquor stores and bars picking their own barrels, continued after the public program ended.
Some websites still haven’t caught up. You may see “free tours and tastings” on older blog posts, and one 2026 planning site lists gift shop hours, even though the 2022 closure reports say the shop closed with the tours. Treat all visitor access as closed unless the company itself announces a change. Barton is also not a stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail: it joined in 2008, but owner Sazerac withdrew it in early 2010, according to Wikipedia’s trail history.
Why Barton still matters
Barton traces its founding to 1879, which makes it the senior working distillery in town. The campus covers 196 acres with 29 aging warehouses, and a $25 million expansion added Warehouses 33, 34 and 35, the first new warehouses built there since 1963. Warehouse 33 holds 33,500 barrels, and 34 and 35 hold 58,000 each, against about 19,600 in the older houses, raising capacity by a quarter.
The name comes from Oscar Getz, a Chicago spirits executive who bought the old Tom Moore Distillery here in 1944 and renamed it Barton. His decades of collecting whiskey memorabilia became the Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History, which opened in Spalding Hall in 1984. Later owners were Canandaigua (later Constellation Brands) from 1993 and Sazerac since 2009.
The flagship today is 1792 Bourbon, named for the year Kentucky became a state, in expressions that include Small Batch, Full Proof, Aged Twelve Years, Bottled in Bond and Sweet Wheat. Very Old Barton and Kentucky Tavern come from here too.
One less happy chapter: in 2018 a Barton rickhouse collapsed in two stages, on June 22 and July 4. The first collapse involved about 9,000 barrels in a warehouse holding around 20,000, and runoff into nearby waterways killed an estimated 800 to 1,000 fish, leading to a state citation. It’s a reminder that those tall timber warehouses carry enormous weight.
Barton at a glance: a short timeline
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1879 | The distillery is established in Bardstown |
| 1944 | Oscar Getz buys the Tom Moore Distillery and renames it Barton |
| 1963 | The last new warehouse is built until the recent expansion |
| 1993 | Canandaigua (later Constellation Brands) takes over |
| 2008 | Barton 1792 joins the Kentucky Bourbon Trail |
| 2009 | Sazerac buys the distillery |
| 2010 | Sazerac withdraws Barton 1792 from the trail |
| 2011 | A visitor center opens with free tours |
| 2018 | A rickhouse collapses in two stages, June 22 and July 4 |
| 2022 | Public tours and the gift shop end on June 30 |
The pattern is a production-first distillery that opened its doors for about a decade and then closed them again. That’s not unusual in Kentucky, where the biggest plants often care more about barrels than visitors.
What you can still see
You can drive past. The warehouses stand on the southwest edge of downtown, about five minutes from Court Square, and the dark-sided rickhouses are visible from public roads. Stay on the road and off the property; it’s a working industrial plant with no visitor parking. Early morning in fall, with fog in the low ground, is the prettiest time to look.
Where to go instead
If Barton was on your list, these stops fill the gap, and several of them fill it better than the old free tour did.
| If you wanted… | Go here instead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something free | Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History | Free admission, 5,000+ artifacts, and the Barton founder’s own collection |
| A classic rickhouse walk | Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience | Bottled-in-Bond warehouse tour on a historic campus five minutes away |
| A cheap, full distillery tour | Bardstown Bourbon Company | $24 Core Four with a rickhouse barrel tasting |
| Old family history | Willett Distillery | Family estate founded 1936, a walking tour with tastings |
| A pour of 1792 | A downtown bourbon bar | Large bourbon lists within a few blocks of Court Square |
The Getz Museum is the most fitting substitute. It sits in Spalding Hall at 114 N. Fifth St., admission is free (donations welcome), and its visitor page lists year-round hours of Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Allow 45 to 75 minutes. Look for Abraham Lincoln’s liquor license and the Prohibition-era prescriptions for medicinal whiskey.
For the whiskey itself, order a 1792 flight at a downtown bar; our guide to bourbon bars and tasting rooms lists the best places to sit down with one. For a bottle to take home, see buying bourbon in Bardstown. If price matters, our list of budget bourbon experiences rounds up the other free and cheap options in town.
Build a Barton-themed afternoon
You can still make a small pilgrimage out of it. Start at the Getz Museum for the story of Oscar Getz and the whiskey business he built. Walk over to Court Square and ask for a 1792 pour at the bar of the Old Talbott Tavern, which lists more than 200 bourbons. Then take a short drive past the Barton warehouses in the late-afternoon light before heading to dinner. Add a real tour elsewhere earlier in the day, and nobody will miss the old visitor center. For the full sweep of the county’s bourbon story, read our history of bourbon in Nelson County.
A note for collectors
Barton’s closure didn’t end its connection with the trade. Private barrel selections for stores and bars continued after 2022, which means you’ll sometimes find a store-picked 1792 single barrel in Kentucky shops. Those picks are chosen by the retailer, not sold at the distillery, so ask at the counter when you’re shopping for bottles to take home.
Will Barton tours come back?
No reopening has been announced. If that changes, it will come from the company, not a third-party listing, so trust an announcement on 1792bourbon.com or from Sazerac over any planning site. Until then, plan your Bardstown bourbon days around the distilleries that do welcome visitors, compared side by side in our distillery tours guide.
