One of America’s most recognizable alcohol brands is pressing pause.
According to the BBC, Jim Beam confirmed it will temporarily halt production at its primary Kentucky distillery for all of 2026, marking a rare full-year shutdown at the flagship site.
The company said the closure is planned and strategic, framing it as a window to carry out upgrades and improvements at the facility while adjusting output to better align with market conditions.
“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand,” the company said in a statement, noting that internal discussions around volumes for 2026 helped inform the decision.
Jim Beam is owned by Suntory Global Spirits, which employs more than 1,000 workers across multiple operations in Kentucky. While the main distillery will go quiet, the company emphasized that other sites in the state—including a secondary distillery, bottling facilities, and warehousing operations—will continue to operate normally. The brand’s Kentucky visitor center is also expected to remain open throughout the pause.
The company added that it is actively evaluating how to deploy its workforce during the shutdown and is in ongoing conversations with the employees’ union regarding staffing plans during the production hiatus.
The move comes as Kentucky’s bourbon industry grapples with a significant inventory buildup. According to the Kentucky Distillers' Association, bourbon stockpiled in warehouses across the state recently hit a record high, exceeding 16 million barrels. Those barrels are subject to state taxation, which has added tens of millions of dollars in annual costs for distillers statewide.
Industry leaders have also pointed to the impact of current U.S. trade and tariff policies, which have complicated exports and slowed international demand for American spirits. Much of the bourbon sector’s expansion over the past decade was built around global growth, and shifting trade dynamics have made that growth harder to sustain in the short term.
Additional pressure has come from strained cross-border trade relationships, which earlier this year led to reduced sales in key international markets after some regions moved away from American-made spirits.