In 1891, Thomas Ripy built the Old Hickory Distillery in Tyrone, Kentucky, near Lawrenceburg, on the former site of the Old Moore Distillery.  After Prohibition, the Ripy family (Thomas had died in 1902) repaired the distillery and began to again produce bourbon.  The Ripys sold the bourbon produced at this distillery to various wholesalers who bottled bourbon under their own brands. Austin Nichols was one of these wholesalers.

The “Wild Turkey” brand is said to have arisen after an Austin Nichols executive, Thomas McCarthy, took some warehouse samples on a wild turkey hunting trip in 1940. The bourbon proved so popular among his friends they continued to ask him for “that wild turkey bourbon.”  Austin Nichols began to bottle Wild Turkey in 1942.

The Ripys were bought out in 1949 by Robert and Alvin Gould.

For the next three decades, Austin Nichols remained a non-distiller producer—bottling bourbon purchased on the open market under the Wild Turkey brand.  Much of this whiskey was purchased from the Ripys/Gould distillery in Tyrone. In 1971, Austin Nichols purchased the facility, then known as the Boulevard Distillery, and changed the name to the Wild Turkey Distillery.

In 1980, the distillery and the Wild Turkey brand were purchased by Pernod Ricard.

On May 9, 2000, a fire destroyed a seven-story aging warehouse at the company in Anderson County, Kentucky. It contained more than 17,000 wooden barrels of whiskey.

In 2009, the Campari Group acquired the distillery and the Wild Turkey brand from Pernod Ricard.

In 2013, Campari opened a new bottling facility at the Wild Turkey Distillery. For the previous 13 years, Wild Turkey had been bottled offsite in Indiana and later in Arkansas.  In addition to the Wild Turkey products, Campari’s SKYY vodka is also bottled there after being shipped from the Illinois distillery.

Calhoun Construction served as a General Contractor self-performing  nine (9) landing gear pads for tractor-trailer storage lots and loading docks.  Calhoun also constructed a 14,000 sqft warehouse parking lot expansion including site grading, aggregate profile, asphalt profile, and striping.