Shauna Steigerwald

ssteigerwald@enquirer.com

If you've traveled the 11th Street bridge between West Newport and Covington this week, you've likely noticed large, precast wall panels going in down below, adjacent to the flood wall on the bridge's north side.

Those walls are the beginning of New Riff Distilling's new 300-foot-long by 65-foot-high rickhouse, part of its west Newport campus. The rickhouse, behind a historic building at 1050 Lowell St., will store up to 18,000 barrels of the distillery's bourbon and rye whiskey.

Vice president of operations Hannah Lowen describes the space as having large windows that will let visitors see into the barrel storage and bottling area from a tasting room and private event space. The tasting room, she said, will be "Napa style" and serve whiskey samples, flights and cocktails.

With the focus on the barrels and being housed in a 1904 building with 30-foot vaulted ceilings and a clerestory to let in light, "it's a little bit of the romantic side of whiskey," she said.

That's a contrast to the modern look of the distillery at 24 Distillery Way in Newport, next to the Party Source about two and a quarter miles away. Lowen expects the two locations to complement each other, with tours timed so that they can be done back-to-back.

With space for 100 people, the private event space at the new campus falls between the two private event spaces at the distillery, one of which has space for 50-75 people and the other, space for 150-200.

In addition to barrel storage and bottling, the west Newport campus will house New Riff's offices, shipping and receiving. There's also a room for small private tastings for up to 15 people.

Lowen hopes the second campus will open by spring or summer of 2018. The distillery will need the bottling space by then: Its first bourbon release is scheduled for summer or fall of next year, when the whiskey will have aged four years.

At $11 million, Lowen said the new campus is almost the same size investment as the distillery, which opened in May of 2014 and is a stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour. New Riff currently produces approximately 7,500 barrels of bourbon, rye, gin and bourbon barrel-aged gin per year.

Last year, more than 30,000 people visited the distillery for tours and public and private events. Lowen expects the barrel campus to be as popular as or more popular than the distillery itself.





