The distillery was founded in 1847 and purchased by Seagram in 1933. While under their ownership, the distillery was called the Jos. E. Seagram Lawrenceburg Plant. When Seagram's assets were acquired by other companies, the Lawrenceburg distillery became the property ofPernod Ricard. On April 19, 2006, Pernod Ricard announced plans to close the distillery, but instead sold it in 2007 to CL Financial, a holding company based in Trinidad and Tobago, which renamed it "Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana". CL Financial later collapsed and required government intervention, although the facility continued to operate through the company crisis. In October 2011, MGP Ingredients announced that it had reached an agreement to purchase the distillery, giving it its present name. As of 2012, Diageo is the distillery's biggest customer.
Products
MGP of Indiana has one whiskey brand of its own at present, George Remus bourbon, but primarily sells its output to various bottlers. One primary product of MGP Indiana is a straightrye whiskey with a 95% rye mash bill, which is bottled under various brand names, including Angel's Envy, Bulleit Rye, Filibuster, George Dickel Rye, High West, James E. Pepper, Redemption, Smooth Ambler, and Templeton Rye. It also produces straight Bourbon whiskey, which is sold under various brand names, such as the Cougar Bourbon brand sold in Australia. These straight whiskeys are also used as the straight whiskey components in Seagram's Seven Crown, a blended whiskey now produced by Diageo. The distillery also produces neutral spirits used in the production of Seagram-branded gin and vodka, now owned by Pernod Ricard. In April 2013, MGP announced the introduction of six additional mash bills for rye, malt, wheat and bourbon whiskey to expand the range of product offerings for the Indiana facility. Altogether, MGP is the source of beverage spirits sold under about 50 different brand names, although these are often sold misleadingly by their bottlers as distinctive products with minimal disclosure of the actual source of the spirits. Some industry experts have commented negatively about the practice, such as the whiskey writer Charles Cowdery who has decried such bottlers as "Potemkin distilleries". As one example, in a class action settlement announced in 2015 about the marketing of the Templeton Rye brand which was actually produced using MGP spirits, Templeton was required to add the words "distilled in Indiana" to its label and remove claims of using a "Prohibition Era Recipe" and "small batch" production. The settlement also offered refunds to customers who had bought Templeton Rye since 2006. Some brands modify the facility's products somewhat before bottling and selling them. George Dickel Rye, introduced in 2012, is mashed, distilled and aged in Indiana at MGP, and then trucked to the Diageo bottling plant in Plainfield, Illinois for filtering and bottling. Angel's Envy finishes its spirits in old port winecasks before bottling.
