Governor Branstad labels the one millionth Templeton Rye bottle back in 2013.
A whiskey bottler in west-central Iowa’s Carroll County is breaking ground today on a $20-million production facility.
The expanded home of Templeton Rye will include a 34,000 square foot distillery, a barrel-aging warehouse and a museum at the 20-acre facility in the town of Templeton.
The project should be complete in about 18 months and will create some two-dozen jobs.
Launched in 2006, Templeton Rye faced heavy criticism in recent years — and multiple lawsuits — over its recipe and claims the “small batch” rye was made in Iowa.
It’s actually a stock whiskey which is — for now — distilled and aged in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and is only bottled in Iowa.