The blaze was expected to last until Thursday at least. ``There's a lot of lumber in there,'' said Fire Chief Anthony Mattingly.
Mattingly said he wasn't sure what started Monday's fire at the seven-story, metal-and-wood structure. Deerfield, Ill.-based Jim Beam Brands Worldwide blamed lightning.
Flames jumped more than 100 feet high, and burning alcohol flowed into a creek, which firefighters dammed so the blaze couldn't spread. Mattingly said the whiskey did not reach city water facilities.
Three nearby warehouses were spared, and no injuries were reported.
The warehouse _ 40 miles south of Louisville, in the heart of Kentucky bourbon country _ held less than 2 percent of Jim Beam's bourbon inventory.
Firefighters were helped when the structure collapsed after about an hour, preventing wind from spreading the flames, firefighter David Dadisman said.
``More or less everything went our way,'' he said.
More than 95 percent of the world's bourbon is produced in Kentucky, where it has been made since the 1780s. More than a half-dozen distilleries are in the region, including Jim Beam, Maker's Mark and Wild Turkey.
The last such fire occurred in 2000 when a blaze at a Wild Turkey distillery in Lawrenceburg destroyed a seven-story warehouse that held nearly 1 million gallons of aging bourbon.
A fire at Heaven Hill Distilleries' Bardstown production facility in 1996 destroyed a distilling building and an estimated 2 percent of the world's stored bourbon.
