Three Women Have Sued Bardstown Bourbon Co. Business as Usual Is No Longer an Option.

Written By Chris Blatner

Pritzker Private Capital should place Mark Erwin on leave, order a truly independent investigation, and decide whether he is still fit to lead.

I like Bardstown Bourbon Company.

That probably is not the opening some people expect from an essay calling for the CEO of its parent company to step down.

I know people who work there. Some of them are friends. I have attended events the company paid for, received bottles from them, worked with them on events and spent plenty of time around people who have helped make Bardstown Bourbon Company one of the most recognizable names in modern American whiskey.

I think highly of a lot of those people.

That is part of why I am writing this.

When a company has talented people doing good work, protecting the company cannot simply mean protecting the person at the top. Sometimes protecting the company means asking whether its leadership is still worthy of the people they are leading.

Three former employees, all women, have now sued Bardstown Bourbon Company alleging gender and /or age discrimination. Two of those lawsuits contain serious allegations directly involving Mark Erwin. The latest was filed July 30, 2026 by former marketing director Laurel Altman-Dixon. Her lawsuit follows cases brought earlier this year by former Vice President of Human Resources Sylvia Sanders and former employee Sandra Stone.

At this point, I do not think business as usual is an acceptable response.

Mark Erwin should ultimately step down as chief executive of Lofted Spirits, which owns Bardstown Bourbon Company.

Before anything else, Pritzker Private Capital, which owns Lofted Spirits, should place Erwin on administrative leave and bring in a genuinely independent outside workplace investigator. That person should have the freedom to talk to current and former employees, examine relevant records and communications, follow the evidence beyond the three women who have sued, and report findings and recommendations directly to PPC without Erwin or Bardstown Bourbon management controlling the process.

Calling for Erwin to be placed on leave and independently investigated is not the same as saying a court has found him legally responsible. It is saying PPC has a duty to respond seriously to the allegations now, rather than waiting years for the lawsuits to end.

And I did not arrive at that conclusion because one former employee made an accusation.

I arrived there because of what has happened since.

It started with the head of HR

The first lawsuit came from Sylvia Sanders, Bardstown Bourbon’s former vice president of human resources.

That is worth sitting with for a moment.

An HR executive occupies a unique position inside a company. She is involved in the things most employees never see: complaints, discipline, hiring, firing, workplace investigations and the conversations that happen when something has gone wrong.

Sanders alleges that during her time at Bardstown Bourbon she repeatedly raised concerns about discrimination, retaliation and other workplace and compliance problems. She claims that Erwin rejected a qualified candidate because the person was “too old.” She alleges that he passed over what she described as the best-qualified and more cost-effective African American candidate for a general counsel position and chose a less-qualified white man instead. She also alleges that he made a derogatory remark about a transgender member of the Pritzker family.

Much of Sanders’s case, though, centers on what she says happened to women.

Her complaint describes women in leadership being characterized as “pushy” or “emotional,” and alleges a pattern of women being threatened with termination, fired or pushed out. Sanders says she repeatedly raised concerns about Erwin’s treatment of women and what she believed was gender bias.

Eventually she stopped raising those concerns only in conversation.

In March 2024, she put them in writing.

According to Sanders, that formal report accused Erwin directly of discrimination and retaliation. What followed, she alleges, was a plan to end her employment.

So Sanders went above him.

She contacted Christian Brickman at Pritzker Private Capital and put her concerns in writing again. According to her lawsuit, PPC representatives arrived at Bardstown Bourbon two days later, spent most of the day meeting with Erwin, and Sanders was then escorted from the property.

The company has disputed Sanders’s allegations. Bardstown Bourbon has said the claims are without merit, and Erwin has said the allegations against him and his team are false and that he has evidence to support his position. Those denials matter, and they belong in any fair account of this controversy.

But they did not end the story.

A second woman sued.

Sandra Stone, who was approximately 67 at the time of the events described in her complaint, alleges that Bardstown Bourbon discriminated against her because of her age and gender. Stone had worked for the company since 2017 and previously spent nearly six years as a bottling supervisor at Barton Distillery.

When Bardstown Bourbon was staffing its new bottling operation, Stone says she had previously been told she would move there as a supervisor. Instead, the company selected a person whom her complaint describes as a substantially younger male employee. Stone alleges the male employee had not signed the job bid that the company told her was required “to be fair” and he had not expressed interest in the position until BBC solicited him. She also says she had trained this male employee at Barton Distillery when she was a supervisor there.

When Stone asked why she had been passed over, she says company leaders offered inconsistent explanations. The alternative she was eventually given was to move to bottling as a clerk, a demotion that would have required a substantial pay cut. She resigned in December 2022.

Stone does not name Erwin as a defendant or accuse him personally of making the promotion decision. Her lawsuit is against Bardstown Bourbon Company. She also says that she did not originally believe the decision was based on her gender or age. According to her complaint, it was only after Sanders filed her lawsuit in February 2026 that Stone learned information that caused her to believe what happened to her may have been part of a broader pattern of discrimination at the company.

Different woman. Different job. Different set of circumstances.

Then came Laurel Altman-Dixon.

And this is where the idea that the Sanders case can simply be written off as one former executive’s dispute with her employer becomes much harder for me to accept.

Altman-Dixon was Bardstown Bourbon’s marketing director. Her complaint alleges that in 2021 Erwin demanded that she be terminated because she was a “pushy bitch,” then corrected himself and called her a “pushy woman.” She further alleges, on information and belief, that Erwin orchestrated her firing at least partly because of her gender.

Her complaint says Bardstown Bourbon presented her departure as a neutral layoff. Altman-Dixon now claims that was false or incomplete and is challenging the separation agreement she signed, arguing that the company concealed the real circumstances behind her termination.

She also alleges something broader.

According to Altman-Dixon, women who spoke firmly, challenged leadership or acted assertively were described as “pushy” or “emotional,” while comparable conduct by men was treated differently. Her complaint further alleges, on information and belief, that at least six other women in senior leadership were terminated or driven to resign between 2021 and 2024 by Erwin because of their gender.

Read that again.

Not because it has been proven. It has not.

Read it because it is an extraordinary allegation to have sitting in a verified court complaint about the chief executive of a major whiskey company while the public response around that company remains largely: wait and see.

At some point, accumulation matters.

Three lawsuits do not magically transform allegations into established facts. The women still have to prove their cases.

But three women bringing separate employment-discrimination cases against the same company, two of them making serious allegations directly involving its chief executive, should at least be enough to make the owner determined to find out what happened.

If three is not enough, what is?

I’ve heard the pushback. Here’s where I keep getting stuck.

Since I started talking about these lawsuits, I have heard many of the same responses.

• There are two sides to every story.

• Anyone can file a lawsuit.

• Nothing has been proven.

• This is why we have courts.

• Let the legal process play out.

Some of those statements begin from instincts I share. I do not think an allegation should be treated as a finding of legal responsibility . Plaintiffs should have to support what they allege. Defendants deserve an opportunity to challenge those allegations and present evidence of their own.

What I do not understand is how those principles keep getting turned into reasons for everyone else to do nothing.

Take the phrase “he said, she said.”

It gets thrown around as though these cases amount to women describing private conversations that happened behind closed doors, with nobody else present and nothing available to verify or contradict either version.

That is not what these cases look like.

Sanders says she put her concerns about Erwin and the company in writing before she was fired. Her complaint includes the March 2024 written report she says she sent to Erwin and describes her later written escalation to PPC. Her allegations identify other people who were allegedly present during important conversations and employment decisions. They point toward personnel records, internal communications, safety reporting, HR records and other company documents that can be examined.

Altman-Dixon’s complaint identifies the specific words she says Erwin used about her. It names a male executive whose assertive behavior she claims was treated differently. It makes claims about the treatment of other women whose employment histories can be examined against company records.

Stone’s allegations can be tested in much the same way. Her complaint identifies the people involved in the promotion process, the younger male employee who received the position, the experience and qualifications she says each of them had, and the job-bid process she alleges was applied differently to them. The relevant personnel, compensation and promotion records are exactly the kinds of records that can be examined rather than speculated about.

None of that proves the women are right.

But it does mean there are things to check and to investigate.

Did an email exist? Read it. Was someone else in the room? Talk to that person. If women and men were treated differently, compare the records. If the company had a legitimate, documented reason for an employment decision, examine what was written at the time. If witnesses remember things differently, hear them out.

Calling all of this “he said, she said” skips the very evidence that could help us decide whose account is more credible.

It takes what is a complicated factual dispute involving documents, witnesses and employment records and shrinks it into a phrase that makes an investigation sound pointless.

Calling all of this “he said, she said” gives the appearance of fairness while conveniently avoiding the evidence that could tell us whose account is more credible.

Then there is “Anyone can file a lawsuit.”

Yes. Anyone can.

And that fact tells us almost nothing about whether these lawsuits have merit.

There are bad lawsuits. There are exaggerated lawsuits. There are plaintiffs who lose.

None of that provides a shortcut for evaluating the cases sitting in front of us.

We have actual complaints. We can look at how specific they are. We can see whether they identify names, dates, employment decisions, alleged statements and potential evidence. We can compare overlapping allegations without pretending one complaint proves another. We can listen to the defendants and watch what happens when documents and testimony are tested.

The fact that somewhere, sometime, someone filed a meritless lawsuit is not a meaningful answer to three women bringing detailed cases against the same company.

It is a reason not to blindly assume they are telling the truth.

It is also not a reason to blindly assume they are lying.

The same problem exists with “There are two sides to every story.”

Of course there are competing accounts.

I want the company’s account examined every bit as seriously as the plaintiffs’, and where Erwin is personally accused, I want his account examined too.

If Erwin or the company has emails that contradict them, I want those emails examined. If people who were present remember events differently, interview them. If employment data shows women were treated consistently with men, look at it. If there were legitimate reasons for decisions the plaintiffs now call discriminatory, those explanations matter.

But think about what “there are two sides” is so often being used to justify.

We are told there is another side, therefore we should wait.

I reach the opposite conclusion.

If there are two sides, let’s find out what they are.

The existence of another side is an argument for scrutiny. It is not an argument for inaction.

Which brings us to the phrase I probably hear most: “That is why we have courts. Let this play out.”

The courts absolutely should do their job.

But the courts and Pritzker Private Capital have different jobs.

A court will decide legal claims. It may eventually determine whether employment laws were violated, whether a release is enforceable, whether a plaintiff proved discrimination and whether damages should be awarded.

PPC has to decide who should run its company.

Those questions do not operate on the same timetable.

Civil litigation can last years. Cases settle. Appeals happen. Disputes can end on procedural grounds. Settlements may include confidentiality. Some cases never produce the definitive public verdict people imagine when they say “let the courts decide.”

PPC cannot outsource its responsibility for corporate governance to the Nelson County Circuit Court.

PPC does not need a jury to tell it whether three lawsuits alleging gender and /or age discrimination at the same company, two of them directly accusing its chief executive of discriminatory conduct, are serious enough to warrant an independent investigation.

And placing Erwin on administrative leave during that process should not be confused with deciding that the allegations against him have been proven.

Administrative leave is one way an organization can create distance while serious allegations are examined before the facts are settled. It creates distance between the person whose conduct is being investigated and a workplace where potential witnesses may still report to them, interact with them or worry about what speaking candidly could mean for their careers.

Leaving Erwin in full authority is not somehow the neutral choice.

If an independent investigation ultimately concludes that the central allegations are unsupported, that would matter enormously. Erwin would have something far more meaningful than a corporate denial: a credible outside examination of the allegations.

Another response I’ve heard is that these women are suing because they want money.

They are bringing civil lawsuits. Financial damages are one of the main remedies civil courts have.

If someone claims discrimination cost her a job, wages, advancement or professional standing, the court cannot turn back time and recreate the career she says she would have had. It can award money.

So the fact that these women are seeking financial damages tells us very little about whether their allegations are true or false. That question still has to be answered by the evidence.

If asking for money automatically made a plaintiff untrustworthy, we could dismiss nearly every employment case, injury case, fraud case and contract dispute in America without ever examining the facts.

The money argument supplies an easy motive: they just want a payday.

Fine. Suppose money is one reason someone decided to sue.

We still have to answer the question the argument avoids:

Did the conduct happen?

Success and service do not settle this question

I expect Erwin’s record outside the allegations made against him to become part of his defense too.

There is no question that Bardstown Bourbon Company has accomplished a great deal. It has grown into a major player in American whiskey, and Erwin has led the company through a period of significant expansion.

That success matters.

But it doesn’t answer an allegation of discrimination.

A CEO can make excellent strategic decisions and bad personnel decisions. Someone can grow a company and still treat particular employees badly. A person can be visionary in one part of the job and fail in another.

Financial performance is not a moral waiver.

In some ways, success makes independent oversight more important because successful executives accumulate defenders. Organizations become reluctant to scrutinize the person they credit with producing the results. Questioning the leader begins to feel like questioning everything the company has accomplished.

That is how powerful people become insulated.

That is also why ownership exists.

Erwin’s military record may carry even more emotional weight for some people.

He spent over 25 years in the U.S. Army, rose to colonel and finished his career as Chief of Staff of U.S. Army Special Operations Command. He has spoken publicly about carrying lessons from Special Operations leadership into his business career.

That is a significant record of service, and I have no interest in diminishing it.

There are qualities developed in military leadership that can translate extremely well into business: discipline, accountability, decisiveness, the ability to lead complicated organizations and bring people together around a mission.

But military command and private-sector leadership are not the same thing.

A healthy corporate workplace depends on people being able to challenge the person at the top. Employees have to be able to disagree, raise legal or ethical concerns, push back on a decision and tell leadership something it does not want to hear without fearing that dissent will end their careers.

Whatever Erwin accomplished in uniform should stand on its own merits.

What happened at Bardstown Bourbon Company should stand on its own evidence.

One career cannot serve as a permanent character reference for the next career.

“That’s not the Mark I know”

This is probably the most personal response for me because I have heard it from friends who actually work at Bardstown Bourbon Company and others that have worked with him.

Some of them have had good experiences with Mark Erwin.

They have told me that the Mark Erwin described in the allegations does not resemble the person they know.

I believe them about their experiences.

Maybe he has been supportive of them. Maybe he advocated for them. Maybe he has treated them fairly for years. Maybe they have never seen anything remotely resembling what Sanders and Altman-Dixon allege about him.

That is absolutely valid.

But I cannot make the leap from “he treated me well” to “therefore he could not have treated someone else badly.”

None of us actually believes people behave exactly the same way with everyone they encounter. Because power, conflict, and being challenged changes the nature of relationships.

A manager can champion one woman and clash with another. He can have a great relationship with employees who agree with him and react very differently to someone who regularly questions his judgment. He can be supportive in one situation and destructive in another.

And discrimination does not require someone to mistreat every woman he ever encounters.

A person could promote several women and still discriminate against another one. Treating some people well does not create credits that can be cashed in against allegations involving someone else.

So when someone tells me, “That has not been my experience,” I believe them.

But that sentence means exactly what it says.

That has not been their experience.

Their experience cannot tell us whether the allegations against Erwin are true. Evidence has to do that.

And I want to be particularly careful with current Bardstown Bourbon Company employees. I do not expect people whose paychecks, health insurance, families, and careers that depend on the company to publicly condemn Erwin. I do not want them cornered at a whiskey event and asked to declare which side they are on.

They deserve to tell their own stories, including the positive ones.

They also should not have those positive experiences turned into weapons against women who say theirs were very different.

When I strip all of this pushback down, I keep arriving at the same place.

“Anyone can sue” does not answer the allegations.

“There are two sides” does not answer them.

“Let the courts decide” does not answer them.

“He was good to me” does not answer them.

“He built a successful company” does not answer them.

“He served his country” does not answer them.

“They want money” does not answer them.

Some of those points are reasons to be careful. Some are reasons to not rush to a final judgment. Some are reasons to make certain Erwin has every opportunity to defend himself.

None of them is a serious reason for PPC to avoid independently finding out what happened.

That is the part I cannot get past.

Pritzker Private Capital is not watching this from the sidelines

PPC owns the company. That makes this its responsibility.

Ownership cannot only mean participating when the news is about growth, profitability, expansion and equity value. PPC also owns the leadership risks that come with the companies it controls.

PPC’s own Responsible Investment Report (2024) identifies talent, employee development, diversity and inclusion, regulatory compliance, reputation management and business resiliency among its areas of focus. The same report says PPC does not take a “board-meeting-to-board-meeting” approach and that its functional leaders constantly engage with company leaders. (PPC Partners)

That makes the response here even more important.

Sanders alleges that she went directly to PPC with her concerns. According to her complaint, Pritzker representatives then came to Bardstown Bourbon, met with Erwin for most of the day and then she was escorted out.

That makes PPC’s responsibility to independently determine what happened even more important.

However, a review controlled by the same leadership structure being accused will not be enough to restore trust.

The investigator should be completely independent with no allegiance to Erwin, Bardstown Bourbon management or the PPC executives whose own conduct may need to be examined. Current and former employees need somewhere safe to speak. The investigator needs access to the records that can show whether the patterns alleged in these lawsuits existed: communications, personnel decisions, internal complaints, promotion and termination records, separation agreements and other relevant materials.

And the inquiry cannot stop with the three women who filed lawsuits if the evidence points elsewhere. Both Sanders’s and Altman-Dixon’s complaints describe alleged conduct involving additional women.

Follow the information where it takes you.

If there is nothing there, say so.

If there is, then deal with it appropriately.

PPC should eventually provide employees and the public with a meaningful summary of what the investigation found while protecting legitimate employee privacy.

I am not looking for a predetermined result. I am looking for a credible process.

Maybe that process clears Erwin of the most serious allegations. Maybe it finds that some claims have merit and others do not. Maybe it discovers problems nobody has sued over yet.

That’s the issue … we do not know.

And that is precisely the point.

What I cannot understand is why continuing not to know is being treated as the responsible option.

And then there is the whiskey world

This is the part where I have to include myself.

Whiskey people love talking about community, friendship and hospitality.

I do too.

Whiskey has brought people into my life that I never would have met otherwise. Some of those relationships have become real friendships, not just industry acquaintances.

But if you create whiskey content long enough, you also learn how access works without anyone sitting you down and explaining it.

At first a bottle may show up at your door. Then you get invited to a tasting. Maybe later you are at dinner with the people behind the brand. Eventually you may find yourself in Kentucky walking through a warehouse most consumers will never enter, tasting whiskey from a barrel and hearing stories directly from the people who made it.

The brand shares your work. You get invited back. More opportunities appear.

You start feeling less like someone standing outside the industry talking about whiskey and more like someone who belongs in the room.

That can be wonderful.

I have had experiences because of whiskey that I genuinely treasure.

Those experiences and access also create pressure.

A brand doesn’t need to tell a creator, “Criticize us and you will never get another bottle.”

The ecosystem teaches you the lesson more quietly.

People notice who gets invited. They notice who receives samples.

They notice who is at the party during Kentucky Bourbon Festival.

And they notice when someone suddenly is not.

I am no longer on Bardstown Bourbon Company’s media sample list. I don’t know why, and I cannot attribute that decision to my criticism of the company. What I do know is that losing access is always a possibility when creators criticize brands they cover, and that possibility can create pressure all by itself.

I can live with that uncertainty. But I would rather buy my own whiskey than rent out my opinions in exchange for access. A free bottle becomes awfully expensive when the price is your willingness to say what you think.

That is why the whiskey community’s response to these cases bothers me.

I have heard versions of, “I do not get involved with those things on my page.” Or, “This is my creative outlet.” Or, “This is not my fight.” Or, “Stop telling me what I should be posting.”

I understand some of that too.

I am not demanding that every whiskey creator turn an Instagram account into an investigative newsroom. Nobody can be expected to speak about every injustice or controversy or even be able to keep up with them. People have careers, families and lives outside social media, and many are already exhausted by fights closer to home.

I especially do not want marginalized creators told that they have some special obligation to carry this fight because other people have decided they should. Minority creators do not owe the rest of us additional emotional labor. I am using my platform because I believe I should.

But we need to be honest about the difference between choosing not to speak and continuing to actively promote.

If you decide these lawsuits are not something you want to discuss, that is your choice.

If at the same time you keep accepting free bottles, attending brand-funded events, publishing glowing content and giving the company your credibility and audience, that is a choice too.

You may have perfectly sincere reasons for making it.

Own them.

What I struggle with is pretending that continued promotion is somehow neutral because you never made a post about the controversy in the first place.

It is easy to tell yourself, “I just talk about whiskey.”

But whiskey does not materialize by itself inside a glass bottle.

There are people behind it. Their careers, workplaces and lives are part of the industry too.

We just love telling those human stories when they make a bottle more compelling. We profile the distiller, celebrate the blender, photograph the warehouse team and talk about the “family” behind a brand.

Those people do not suddenly become irrelevant when their workplace becomes uncomfortable to talk about.

Nobody is being forced to speak. People can decide for themselves what they want to address on their platforms.

You are free not to post and to stay silent.

Other people are free to notice what you continue to promote while you do remain silent.

I want this to be CRYSTAL CLEAR. This is not an attack on the people at Bardstown Bourbon Company

I keep coming back to the employees because they are the people who will still be living with this after the internet moves on to the next controversy.

I know some of them.

I know how much pride they take in what they have helped build.

When a consumer pours a Bardstown Bourbon product, what is in that glass represents years of work by people whose names will never appear in a headline about Mark Erwin. A company of this size is the accumulated work of many people, not the achievement of one CEO.

That is why I reject the idea that questioning Erwin means rooting against Bardstown Bourbon Company.

I am separating the company from the person currently leading its parent organization because the employees deserve that distinction.

They should not be harassed and they should not be expected to answer for executives.

They also should not be used as human shields whenever someone asks difficult questions about their leadership.

If “good people work there” were a reason not to scrutinize management, accountability would be impossible at almost every large company in America.

Good employees are not the reason to avoid this conversation. They are actually one of the strongest reasons to have it.

What can actually be done?

A vague demand for everyone to “do better” will accomplish almost nothing.

But there are concrete ways to apply pressure without turning employees into collateral damage.

For creators, the most direct step is to pause promotional work with Bardstown Bourbon Company and Lofted Spirits unless and until PPC announces a credible independent investigation. That can mean declining a bottle, an invitation or a paid campaign and explaining privately why. It does not require a public spectacle. A simple message that you are pausing promotional activity because you want PPC to independently examine the discrimination allegations makes the point.

Whiskey media should cover the cases. That does not require declaring the allegations true. Report what has been filed, report the denials, follow the cases and ask PPC what it is doing. If every new limited-edition whiskey deserves coverage but three discrimination lawsuits involving the same company do not, we need to be honest about whether we are practicing journalism or providing publicity. Maybe I’ve missed some coverage, but outside of Janet Patton’s reporting at the Lexington Herald-Leader, I have seen remarkably little sustained attention to these lawsuits from whiskey-specific media or podcasts.

Consumers have a voice too. Bardstown Bourbon has a public contact page, and the company lists its Bardstown headquarters at 1500 Parkway Drive in Bardstown and its main number as 502-233-4769. PPC can be contacted directly at info@ppcpartners.com, through its official contact page, by phone at 312-447-6050, or by mail at 110 N. Wacker Drive, Suite 4400, Chicago, IL 60606.

The message can be simple: place Erwin on administrative leave, hire an independent workplace investigator, give employees a safe way to participate in the investigation and release a meaningful summary of the findings.

I am not calling for an immediate consumer boycott. At least not now.

Too many people at Bardstown Bourbon Company had nothing to do with the conduct alleged in these lawsuits, and I would rather direct pressure first toward the people with the power to address it.

PPC has that power.

But that does not mean PPC gets unlimited time.

If ownership decides that three lawsuits containing allegations this serious require nothing beyond lawyers, denials and business as usual, consumers will be justified in deciding they would rather spend their money elsewhere.

I would rather PPC make that decision unnecessary.

Read the reporting

The Lexington Herald-Leader has reported extensively on these cases. I think people should read the reporting themselves, share it, and read the court complaints rather than relying on social-media summaries.

Share the reporting, share the complaints, not rumors.

There is more than enough in the public record to have this conversation without inventing anything.

Bardstown Bourbon Company is bigger than Mark Erwin

Maybe that is ultimately why I care enough to write all of this.

I know what this company is capable of. I know people there who care deeply about their work. And I think they deserve an ownership group willing to look directly at serious allegations involving the person leading them and say: we need to know what happened.

The facts are straightforward: three women have now gone to court alleging gender and /or age discrimination at Bardstown Bourbon Company. None of those claims has been proven. Erwin has denied the allegations made against him.

All of that matters.

But it does not bring us to the end of the conversation. Instead, those facts bring us to the beginning of a conversation Pritzker Private Capital should already be having.

Put Erwin on leave. Bring in someone truly independent. Give employees somewhere safe to talk. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. Tell people what you find. And then act on it.

If an independent investigation substantiates the culture and conduct described in these complaints, I do not see how Mark Erwin can remain in charge.

Ultimately, I believe he should step down.

Bardstown Bourbon Company has too many talented people doing amazing work for its future to become a referendum on whether one executive is too successful, too powerful or too well-connected to scrutinize.

Those employees deserve leadership worthy of what they have built.

Pritzker Private Capital now has to decide whether it agrees.

Chris Blatner
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