A whiskey bottler in west-central Iowa’s Carroll County is breaking ground today (Wednesday) on a 20-million dollar production facility. The expanded home of Templeton Rye will include a 34-thousand 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 2003, Templeton Rye faced heavy criticism in recent years — and multiple lawsuits — over its 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.

(Radio Iowa)