Cliff Buzick

“Builder of an Empire”

Clifford Hawke “Cliff” Buzick was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 19, 1895. Cliff married Olive Miller in 1924, and they had two children, Donald L. Buzick and Shirley Buzick. During this time, Cliff worked in Ohio as a distillery equipment salesman. One day in the early 1930s, he visited Bardstown on a sales call and quickly realized that many distilleries lacked skilled installers for the machinery he sold. This realization would go on to ignite a multi-generational building legacy in the heart of bourbon country.

Excitedly returning home on a hunch, Cliff quickly relocated his family to Bardstown and opened Buzick Construction Company in 1937. His initial focus was simply on installing distillery equipment. But by 1941, the company had started to delve into simple rickhouse construction, and Cliff completed his first barrel storage warehouse for the Fairfield Distillery a few months later. This modest but well-built rickhouse served as the beginning of a trusted reputation in bourbon storage construction. Taken by his own success, Cliff quickly launched Buzick Lumber Yard in 1944, adding building-supply operations to his portfolio. His entrepreneurial drive and vision were beginning to become evident. Cliff had built a business by recognizing unmet needs; in this case, the combination of equipment installation and building materials supply. He oversaw both construction and lumber aspects, laying the groundwork for a vertically integrated family company.

Under Cliff’s leadership, Buzick Construction steadily expanded beyond simple warehouses. Cliff’s company became known for reliable, quality work in Bardstown and Nelson County. Buzick Construction Company’s philosophy: ”quality work on time,” reflected Cliff’s unwavering approach to meeting clients’ needs with integrity and punctuality. Soon, his work began to have a profound local impact. Bardstown was becoming known as “Bourbon Capital of the World” in part because of the warehouse facilities that helped distillers store and move barrels safely and reliably from filling all the way through maturation and bottling.

When Cliff passed the business leadership to his son Donald L. “Don” Buzick in the early 1960s, Don expanded the construction business to other large commercial enterprises such as automotive dealerships, manufacturing plants, churches, and banks. After Cliff died in 1963 at the age of 67, Don’s son (also named Cliff, after his grandfather) became Vice President and eventual successor; other family members also held key positions across the various Buzick enterprises.

In 1975, Don welcomed Tom Blincoe, his son‑in‑law, into the company. Blincoe had supervised a gargantuan rickhouse program for Jack Daniel's in Lynchburg, Tennessee, of 39 warehouses built in the five years between 1977 and 1982. In 1991, Blincoe introduced a patented system that mechanized heavy hoisting during construction, making the process faster and safer, a legacy of innovation that built upon Cliff Buzick’s foundation.

Today, Buzick Construction is known nationwide for its brainchild rickhouse designs. Since 2000, the company has built over 255 rack-supported warehouses holding more than 11 million barrels, and eight full distillery projects, along with numerous visitor centers tied to Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail.