News | 3 min read
River City Whiskey moves its barrels from Kentucky to Richmond
August 10, 2026
By way of Kentucky, a whiskey maker of a different sort is preparing to make its entrance into the Scott’s Addition beverage scene.
River City Whiskey has signed on to move to 1600 Belleville St.
The company’s plan is to initially use the space as storage for its barrels, with plans to later add a public-facing tasting room.
River City Whiskey’s origins trace back to a line outside a local ABC store in 2020, when Da’mon Brown and Ricky Rice were waiting to get a limited release of whiskey. The two struck up a conversation, became friends, and before long were taking regular road trips to Kentucky to go on “barrel picks,” where whiskey enthusiasts can sample the contents of and purchase whole, excess barrels from distilleries.
In 2024, the duo turned their shared interest into a business, launching River City Whiskey as a “non-distilling producer,” meaning they age and bottle the whiskey they’d acquired at barrel picks, but don’t distill or produce the spirits from scratch.
River City Whiskey’s bottles start at $75.
“It’s kind of a niche pocket in bourbon. … It’s a wild goose chase, almost,” Brown said of barrel picking.
For the last few years, Brown said River City Whiskey has been based out of a few locations in Kentucky, but they’re now are bringing the business to Scott’s Addition.
“We realized that we were spending thousands of dollars going out to Kentucky all the time, hunting bourbon and going out to the distilleries because there’s no real place in Richmond or even in Virginia, really, to give us what we’re looking for, which is cask-strength pours, mash bills, proofs and the stories behind the barrels…”
Da’mon Brown
Co-Founder – River City Whiskey
“We just decided to try to jump all in and make this a thing for the city of Richmond. There’s a lot of bourbon enthusiasts out here in Richmond that we go to bottle shares with. We want to be a watering hole for bourbon enthusiasts like us.”
The distillery is taking about 5,000 square feet in an existing 15,000-square-foot building next to the 1510 Belleville apartments. Brown said they’ll continue to operate River City Whiskey as a non-distilling producer, but that they’ll eventually do tastings and appointment-only tours.
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