Brown-Forman: How a Sealed Bottle of Old Forester Built a Louisville Spirits Company

Brown-Forman is usually described by its biggest brand, Jack Daniel's, which is made in Tennessee. This story is about the Louisville side of the company: the bottle that started it, the Main Street building it came back to, the distillery and bottling lines on the west side of town, and the barrel shop that made casks here for eight decades before it closed in 2025.

A Drug Salesman and a Sealed Bottle

George Garvin Brown was born in Munfordville, Kentucky, on September 2, 1846, and moved to Louisville in 1862, where he attended Male High School, according to the Kentucky Historical Society. He went to work as a wholesale drug salesman.

In the 1870s whiskey was still widely sold as medicine, and it was usually shipped and sold by the barrel, which left room for anyone along the way to water it down or doctor it. Brown's answer was to sell it sealed. In 1870 he and his half-brother, J.T.S. Brown Jr., started a firm called J.T.S. Brown and Bro. with $5,500 in saved and borrowed money, according to an Old Forester history fact sheet. The company describes Old Forester as the first bourbon sold exclusively in sealed glass bottles, and its corporate timeline calls Brown-Forman the first company to sell whiskey in a sealed glass bottle "to consistently ensure quality." Those are the company's own claims, and the "first bottled bourbon" line is also a trademark, so treat it as marketing history rather than settled fact.

The brand name came from a doctor. The fact sheet says Old Forester honors Dr. William Forrester, a Louisville physician who endorsed medicinal whisky sold only in sealed bottles. The second "r" was dropped after he retired.

From J.T.S. Brown and Bro. to Brown-Forman

The firm went through several partnerships in its first twenty years. In 1890 Brown made George Forman, the company's bookkeeper, a partner, which gave the business the Brown-Forman name, according to the company timeline and the Kentucky Historical Society. Forman died in 1901, the same year the company was formally incorporated in Kentucky. The Brown-Forman Corporation that trades today is a later entity: its fiscal 2026 annual report says it was incorporated in Delaware in 1933 as the successor to a business founded in 1870 and incorporated in Kentucky in 1901.

For its first decades the company worked from Louisville's Main Street, then the center of the city's whiskey trade. The Old Forester fact sheet says 89 distilling companies once had offices on Main Street and that only one of them, Brown-Forman, is still operating. The fact sheet also says the company moved its headquarters to Howard Street and Dixie Highway in 1924. The current address, 850 Dixie Highway, is on the same west-side site.

George Garvin Brown died in 1917 and is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, per the state historical society. His son Owsley Brown, who had joined the company in 1904, became president, according to Wikipedia's company history.

Making Medicine Through Prohibition

National Prohibition took effect in 1920, three years after Owsley Brown took over. Brown-Forman kept producing because whiskey could still be sold by prescription. The Old Forester fact sheet says the company held license No. 3 of only six federal licenses issued in Kentucky to make and sell medicinal whisky, and Wikipedia's Old Forester article also cites the six-license figure.

That license is the basis for the brand's most repeated claim: the company says Old Forester is the only bourbon sold continuously by the same company before, during and after Prohibition. The claim is about the brand, not about Brown-Forman being the only spirits company to survive. Other distillers also held medicinal licenses.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Brown-Forman sold stock to the public for the first time, per the company timeline, and reorganized as the Delaware corporation described above.

Barrels, Jack Daniel's and a National Company

Bourbon has to be aged in new charred oak containers, so a distiller's biggest physical input after grain is barrels. Brown-Forman started making its own. The company timeline dates its Louisville cooperage to 1945, and for decades the barrel shop on the west side of town supplied the company's whiskeys.

In 1956 Brown-Forman bought the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, the timeline says. Jack Daniel's became the company's largest brand family and turned a Louisville bourbon maker into a global spirits company. The whiskey is made in Tennessee, but the brand is run from Dixie Highway.

Later additions widened the portfolio:

The company has also sold brands to focus on premium spirits. Finlandia vodka went to Coca-Cola HBC in a sale that closed in November 2023, and Sonoma-Cutrer wines went to Duckhorn in a sale that closed in April 2024. Early Times and Canadian Mist, two older whiskeys, were sold to Sazerac in 2020, per Wikipedia. The fiscal 2026 annual report says the company sells its products in more than 170 countries.

What Brown-Forman Still Makes in Louisville

Woodford Reserve is distilled in Woodford County, and Jack Daniel's in Lynchburg. Louisville's role is listed in the properties section of the fiscal 2026 annual report: corporate offices plus distilling, bottling and warehousing, and the home of Old Forester. Most commercial Old Forester is distilled at the Brown-Forman distillery in Shively, the small city that borders Louisville on Dixie Highway, according to Wikipedia's Old Forester article.

The most visible site is downtown. In June 2018 the company opened the Old Forester Distillery at 117–119 West Main Street on Whiskey Row, a $45 million, 70,000-square-foot project, according to Distillery Trail. The fact sheet says the brand used the same building from 1882 to 1919, and that it is the only downtown distillery with an active cooperage, where visitors can watch barrels being raised and charred. It is one of the few places in the city where you can see bourbon go from grain to barrel to bottle in one building.

Why the Cooperage Closed

For a site about things made in Louisville, the company's biggest recent change is the end of its barrel making. On January 14, 2025, Brown-Forman announced it would cut about 12% of its roughly 5,400-person workforce and close its Louisville cooperage on April 25, affecting about 210 workers, Spectrum News reported. The fiscal 2026 annual report says the cooperage was sold for $33 million in cash in May 2025, and that the company now sources its oak barrels from an external supplier.

The timing reflected an industry that had made more whiskey than it could sell. The Kentucky Distillers' Association counted a record 16.1 million barrels of bourbon aging in the state as of January 1, 2025, and warned that taxes on that aging inventory were rising fast.

The cooperage closing does not mean barrels stopped being made in the region. Louisville still has independent cooperages and the copper-still and bottling suppliers listed in our bourbon and spirits directory.

Who Runs It: Five Generations of Browns

Brown-Forman has two classes of stock. Class A shares vote and Class B shares do not, and the annual report says the Brown family owns more than 50% of the voting stock. The company has stayed independent and Louisville-based through more than a century of industry consolidation.

The family has supplied most of the company's chairs:

• George Garvin Brown, founder, led the company until his death in 1917.
• Owsley Brown, his son, became president in 1917 and later chairman, per Wikipedia.
• W.L. Lyons Brown Jr. was CEO from 1975 to 1993 and chairman until 1995, the company said when he died.
• Owsley Brown II was CEO from 1993 to 2005 and chairman until 2007, Louisville Public Media reported.
• George Garvin Brown IV chaired the board from 2007 to 2021, per Wikipedia.
• Campbell P. Brown chaired it from 2021 until July 2025, when Marshall B. Farrer, a fifth-generation family member, took over as the 11th family member to chair the company, according to the company's announcement.

Day-to-day management is no longer always a family job. The current CEO, Lawson Whiting, is not a family member. On July 13, 2026, the company announced his planned retirement, effective when a successor is named.

Brown-Forman in 2026

Brown-Forman has had a turbulent year. Talks about a combination with Pernod Ricard ended without a deal in April 2026. Sazerac, the privately held New Orleans company that owns Buffalo Trace, then offered $32 a share in cash, about $15 billion. The board rejected the offer in May, and on July 26 it called a renewed approach "not actionable," WDRB reported. A Brown family holding company, Wolf Pen Branch LP, opposed the bid.

The numbers explain why it has been a target. For the fiscal year that ended April 30, 2026, Brown-Forman reported net sales of $3.93 billion, down 1% from $3.98 billion the year before, and operating income of about $1.0 billion. The annual report counts about 4,900 employees worldwide, about 1,900 in the United States and about 700 in Louisville, a smaller hometown workforce than the company had before the 2025 cuts and the cooperage closing.

Visiting, and Working With the Industry

The easiest way to see Brown-Forman's Louisville production is the Old Forester Distillery on West Main Street, which runs tours that pass the still, the cooperage and the bottling line. Its neighbors on Whiskey Row include the cast-iron storefronts that once held dozens of distillers' offices.

For people building their own spirits business, Brown-Forman is less a model than a landmark. Its scale and its century-old brands are out of reach for any new distiller, but the problems it solved in 1870, consistency and trust in what was in the bottle, are the same ones a small producer faces today. Our guide to starting a craft distillery in Kentucky covers the permits, taxes and equipment, our bourbon and spirits directory lists who is distilling locally, and our guide to Louisville co-packers and contract manufacturers covers bottling and production partners. For the software and service businesses forming around the bourbon industry, see Startup Louisville's bourbon economy overview.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Brown-Forman founded and by whom?

Brown-Forman traces its start to 1870, when George Garvin Brown, a Louisville wholesale drug salesman, and his half-brother J.T.S. Brown Jr. began selling Old Forester bourbon in sealed glass bottles with 5,500 dollars in saved and borrowed money. The Brown-Forman name dates to 1890, when bookkeeper George Forman became a partner.

How did Brown-Forman survive Prohibition?

Brown-Forman held one of only six federal licenses issued in Kentucky to make and sell whisky for medicinal use, so it kept producing and selling Old Forester by prescription from 1920 to 1933. The company says Old Forester is the only bourbon sold continuously by the same company before, during and after Prohibition.

Is Brown-Forman still headquartered in Louisville?

Yes. Brown-Forman's headquarters is at 850 Dixie Highway in Louisville, on a site the company has used since 1924. Louisville also hosts its Old Forester distilling, bottling and warehousing and the Old Forester Distillery on West Main Street. About 700 of its roughly 4,900 employees work in Louisville.

Does Brown-Forman still make its own barrels?

No. Brown-Forman closed its Louisville cooperage on April 25, 2025, as part of a cost-cutting plan that cut about 12 percent of its workforce, and sold the cooperage in May 2025. The company now buys its oak barrels from an outside supplier. The Old Forester Distillery on Main Street still has a small working cooperage for visitors.

Who owns Brown-Forman?

Brown-Forman is a public company with two classes of shares, and the Brown family owns more than half of the voting Class A stock. Marshall Farrer, a fifth-generation family member, has chaired the board since July 2025. In 2026 the board turned down a roughly 15 billion dollar cash offer from Sazerac.