Mixed Results on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour

One of the things I like to do in Kentucky is visit distilleries. To this end, when I heard a couple years ago that the Kentucky Bourbon Trail was organizing an offshoot passport program for craft distillers, I was not only intrigued, but excited. I owe my entire love of whiskey to one of the founding members of this tour (MB Roland) and so the very first opportunity I had to pick up a passport, I did. The reward is a julep cup. I really love free stuff.

My first stop was the Willett Distillery in Bardstown, KY. The Kulsveen family has been selling amazing bourbon out of this facility for many years. The current craft distillery is relatively new though. So new that they only recently released the first product distilled there, a two year old rye. This is a beautiful place. I highly recommend stopping in for a tour. (I did a review of my first visit back in 2012, though I know some things have changed in intervening time).

The second stop on my Craft Tour experience was at Old Pogue. Old Pogue was as much of a history tour as it was a distillery tour. And I loved that about it. Good history, good bourbon, a pretty drive. It hit all the right notes for me. (I did a separate review for this one as well.)

Barrel House Distilling was kind of an impromptu stop for me. I was trying to get over the disappointment that was Town Branch and found I had just a little time to kill before my planned drive to the Party Source to do some shopping. They were literally minutes away from where I was. Barrel House Distilling is located in the barrel house of the old James E. Pepper distillery on Manchester Street in Lexington. I was a bit unsure what to expect as I drove up to what looked like an abandoned building. But, ever the adventurer, I parked the car and made my way to the door. 

Upon entering I was greeted by Noah Brown, Operations Manager for the company. There was no one else there so even though we didn't have enough time for a full tour, we chatted a bit about what they were working on. I saw the still, some of the experiments they were conducting and did a tasting. Along the way, I decided I needed to do a little shopping before heading out of town and bought a bottle of rum. All in all, I found the place fascinating and need to get back to do the full tour.

Fast forward almost a year between stops in my journey to complete the passport and you'll find me driving southwest from Elizabethtown toward Bowling Green in search of a visit to Corsair Artisan. Corsair is one of those places that I've admired for a while. They literally wrote the book on experimental whiskey recipes. And while I've never had the opportunity to buy one of their liquid products, I do own the book. And have enjoyed it the numerous times I've read it. 

Corsair is located just off of a lovely little park/commercial area in Bowling Green. The space they are in is beautiful and spaceous in a manner that suggests that it had a previous life, maybe light industrial or retail. (A little searching of the internet suggests that my theory on the retail is correct.) Exposed brick and polished wood floors abound in the gift shop and tasting area. I have a feeling I may be stopping here again.

Paul and Merry Beth Tomaszewski at MB Roland Distillery are two very fine folks that I consider friends. I try to either stop in for a visit or meet up with them every time I pass near their place. The distillery is on the grounds of an old Amish farm just a mile or two north of I-24 in Southwestern Kentucky. Tours are available (and I would encourage you to take one), there is a gift shop and tasting room and several times throughout the summer they host a concert series named Pickin' On The Porch at the distillery. If you visit, you will not be disappointed. Great people that make great products.

I will admit to bias, but I love the stuff they make. I currently have bottles of their bourbon, white dog, Kentucky Black Dog, Pink Lemonade and St. Elmo's Fire on my shelf (or in my fridge). 

I just posted a review of Limestone Branch Distillery last week. But I will give you the 30 second synopsis. Great people making tasty products. Visit them next time you are near Lebanon. You can team it up with a visit to Independent Stave's Kentucky Cooperage and Maker's Mark if you wish.

And since that was my last stop, I got my julep cup. It was smaller than I expected. And had some rust/discoloration on it. Disappointing, but I’m not one to complain to loudly about how my free thing isn’t perfect.

Because I picked my passport up fairly early in the life of this endeavor, my passport only had seven distilleries on it. There are currently two more and someday soon I hope to visit those as well. But wait, you might be saying, you've only listed six above? You are correct. I couldn't bring myself make this next one look nice.

You see, I find people that use women as accessories to be offensive and I go out of my way to not give them money. This is the only weapon I have in the fight to get companies to treat women as if they are equal human beings worthy of equal respect. In this case, in order to get my stamp, I had pay up. You see, the only way to get a stamp is to go to the distillery. The only way to go to the distillery is to buy a $7 ticket. You are free to make your own choices, but I won't be visiting here again. 

I'm going to be a little judgmental here. Silver Trail is reason that I can't recommend participating in the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour passport program. I think that every other one of the distilleries that I visited are worth visiting in their own right. They make great products and you absolutely should visit them all. But Hardin is very far out of the way, the company at least presents itself as misogynistic, and it will cost you $7 per person to get your stamp. I recommend saving that money. Maybe spend it at one of the other distilleries to buy…oh, I don't know...a non-rusty julep cup?

Maker's Mark: Beyond the Mark Tour and Cask Strength Review

While in Kentucky, I took the opportunity to take a more in-depth tour of the Maker's Mark Distillery. It's called the Beyond the Mark tour and it costs $35 per person. There is a maximum of 12 people per session. My wife and I purchased out tickets ahead of time and didn't hear them offer it to anyone while we were waiting so it probably wouldn't hurt to do the same if you choose to do this.

The tour starts the same way they all do. You cross the bridge and walk down the path, pausing along the way to hear a little bit of the history of the distillery from the time the land was cleared until today. We stopped off to peek inside the Quart House, the first liquor store in the state of Kentucky.

Then we enter the distillery proper. Up to this point, the tour isn't that much different from the nine dollar tour. Smaller, more intimate, the tour guide seems more knowledgable (even acknowledging the gentleman who called her on the myth of the recipe origin with a sidelong, "hush, we'll discuss that amongst ourselves"). All in all, Aggie was the best part of the tour up until this point and the one thing that made it different. Everyone gets to see the stills and the tanks as they are beautiful.

Not every tour gets to drink the white dog dipped out of that tank. I don't care for white dog, but this was too cool to pass up.

Of course we saw the fermenters. Lovely old wood. (We even got to see Bill Samuels, Jr. getting interviewed by a tv crew of some sort. He stopped over to say hi and thanked us for touring so that was nice.)

But after that, we got to see the "real" fermenters. Not that the others are fake, but these are the 34 stainless steel ones that make the bulk of the mash.

After the fermenters, it was up the stairs to have a very nice shift supervisor tell us about their yeast. It's hopped to keep the bacteria from taking it over. We got to taste it...tasted like a flat Belgian beer.

Every tour gets to see the printing presses and die cut press that makes the labels.

​But this was the first time I got to enter the Quality Control Building. This was one of the samples. I didn't get to taste it and make notes, though come to think of it, I didn't ask either. The tickets in the background are prizes to incentivize the employees to participate. I guess when you are around bourbon all day, tasting it might be just...work. 

Gotta go through the warehouse. No distillery tour would be complete without that awesome smell.

Watching the folks on the bottling line is always impressive. 

But going through the room where they dip all the specialty items and different wax colors was really cool. It was nice to see the "not-so-polished" side of Maker's. I've worked in factories and always knew it had to be there. I liked seeing it.

No tour would be compete without a tasting. We got the standard four (Under-aged, normal, over aged and 46) plus a sample of the Cask Strength.

The Cask Strength which we toasted to one another under the light of the Dale Chihuly art installation on our way to the Gift Shop.

Maker's Mark Cask Strength

Purchase Info: $39.99 for a 375 mL at the Distillery Gift Shop

Details: 56.6% ABV

Nose: fresh cut apple, spearmint, honey and oak

Mouth: very sweet, cinnamon and clove with distinct floral notes

Finish: good, long warmth that sits in the chest and a sweetness that hangs around, but then transitions to sharpness.

Thoughts: This is Maker's just stronger and more concentrated. It's fabulous and well worth the equivalent of $80 for a 750 mL when compared to other cask strength offerings. It's very drinkable and I like it more than either regular Maker's or Maker's 46. 

This whiskey was money well spent and the tour even more so. I gathered a lot of knowledge from a very good tour guide. I got to see places and have experiences that I didn't normally get to have and got to geek out just a little bit. I'd recommend both.

A visit to Smooth Ambler and a review of their Yearling Bourbon

In November of 2013 I was traveling through West Virginia. It was Black Friday and I was in the mood to follow that great American tradition of spending money. As it was my first time through West Virginia, I only knew of one place to stop. Smooth Ambler, in Maxwelton, WV is a fairly short detour off of Interstate 64 at the Lewisburg exit.

I stopped in fairly late in the afternoon, not really expecting to get on a tour, but hoping to at least give them a little of my hard earned cash. To my happy surprise, I was able to do both. 

We joined up with a tour already in progress in the still room. 

Shiny fermenters all in a row. A far cry from the giant tanks that the big boys use, but if you aren't making as much as them one giant tank would be much less flexible than a few smaller ones. 

An empty barrel waiting to be filled. As you can see, they get their barrels from Independent Stave (like almost everyone else) and they like char #4. Which according to our tour guide on the ISC tour is pretty much what almost everyone gets. 

Bourbon barrels filled just a day or so before we visited. This is either the start of a new set of racks or they are waiting to be put somewhere. Most of the stacks were twice this high.

Apparently they are aging a wheat whiskey and something called 50/50 as well. 

After aging was tasting. I really like this tasting room. I'm a big fan of red and wood together. 

Though they make a gin and a vodka, my wife and I decided to concentrate on those things that spent some time in a barrel. I tried the Barrel Aged Gin and found it to be a tasty gin. I also tried the Old Scout Rye. I knew before I tasted it that they did not make this. One of the things that I liked about these guys is that they made no secret of that fact. There was no claiming it was from a secret family recipe that a gangster used to prefer. It was just "we bought this because we liked it and now you get the chance to like it too." And I did. I thought it was tasty. My wife tried the Old Scout and Old Scout Ten. She liked it enough that that's the bottle we brought home with us. Unfortunately I was not able to try the Yearling which is the only bourbon that they've put out that they made. So that meant I needed to keep my eyes open for it on the way home. I was really interested in trying something that was admittedly only put out to satisfy the curiosity that whiskey geeks had over what the products they made themselves might taste like. Luckily the Party Source was able to satisfy my desire.

Smooth Ambler Yearling Bourbon

Purchase Info: $24 per 375mL bottle, The Party Source, Bellevue, KY

Details: Batch 6, Bottle Date: 11/14/12, Aged: 1 year 8 months, wheated bourbon, 46% ABV

Nose: grain and butterscotch

Mouth: young, hot and sweet. This is the sweetness of grain though, not of barrels.

Finish: longish with a lingering sweetness that transitions to vegetal

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Thoughts: To say that this is good would be a gross overstatement. That does not mean however that is it bad. It is what it is. It's a young bourbon that needed much more time to mature. It shows a lot of promise though and I can consider my curiosity duly satisfied. I'm excited to see what this will turn into with 5-8 more years under it's belt. For now though satisfy your curiosity, but don't expect much more out of it.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Town Branch Distillery

I’ll admit it. I had a bad taste in my mouth when I visited Town Branch. I couldn’t quite figure out why they were part of the main Kentucky Bourbon Trail when they just started making whiskey. In my mind, they should have been part of the Craft Tour. Small shop, limited distribution, product that wasn’t quite there as far as I was concerned. But they are part of a much bigger company, so what do I know?

I’d tried the Town Branch Bourbon when I was at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival last. It was the year after they became part of the Trail. I figured that if they were part of this collective marketing alliance, they must be ok. I mean, if you’re the new guy, and you put yourself among all those logos, you’re borrowing their goodwill. And, if—by extention—you suck, you are using up a bit of that goodwill. Spending it and it can never be recovered. So I figured it must be, at least, ok. I tried it…it wasn’t. It was terrible. It became the first bourbon that I actually disliked. I couldn’t find one nice thing to say about it.

I do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail passport program because I like getting the T-shirt and because I would probably be stopping at most of these places anyway as I travel through Kentucky. I like T-shirts. It was because I want to get the T-shirt again that I decided that I needed to give Town Branch another chance. Plus, my wife likes their beer. And I was starting to belive that the sample I’d had a year and a half previously must have had something wrong with it. Or maybe the food I’d been eating screwed up my palate. In any case, it was time to try again.

So I walk in and pay the $7 each to take the tour. As part of the tour, you get 4 tasting tickets. Each ticket is worth one sample. You’ll need to employ a little strategy here. You will only get to try half of the items they offer for sample. They have 5 beers and 3 spirits. I used three of mine on the beers and one on the spirits. My wife did two and two.

As we waited for the tour we stood in the gift shop. It’s a very pretty shop. They made it up to look like a Dublin street scene. While we waited, I heard the guy working behind the counter council a few other soon-to-be tour takers to give Wild Turkey and Four Roses a miss. I was shocked, but seeing as the secret that is Four Roses has been leaked, I’m ok that there won’t be four more people in the competition to get their hands on some.

Soon enough the tour starts and as is standard in a Bourbon Trail tour, we watched a video. After the video we were led across the road to see the brewery portion of the tour. One thing I liked about the tour is that this is both a working brewery and a working distillery that makes both bourbon and malt whiskey. In the brewery portion, you get to learn about the beer making process from start to finish, including the ancient bottling machine (which was pretty cool to see). The other thing you get to learn about is the pre-distilling portion of the malt whiskey process. It uses basically the same ingredients and the same equipment. It just gets piped across the street to the still instead of being hopped and bottled. Then it’s on to the samples. I tried the Kentucky Ale, the Kentucky Kölsch, and the Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Stout. 

After the brewery, we walk back across the street into the distillery portion. The first thing you see is a large stack of Woodford Reserve barrels. I thought this a bit odd at first until I realized that one of this company’s most famous products is a bourbon barrel-aged beer. All of a sudden, it made sense. They’ve been making the beer a lot longer than they’ve been making whisky. After the tour guide shows us around the bottling area we moved into the bourbon fermenting area and still room.

The bourbon fermenting area and still room has been written about a lot. And with good reason. This is a beautiful room. Rough stone, floor to ceiling glass walls and stills displayed as the showpieces they are. It really is a pretty space. 

Then came the spirit tasting. I gave the bourbon another try while my wife tried the Pierce Lyons Reserve and the Bluegrass Sundown. Pierce Lyons Reserve is a malt whiskey and the Bluegrass Sundown is a coffee liqueur made using bourbon. I can’t really say how good the PLR was as I don’t have much to compare it to. But it didn’t make me want to dump it out. The coffee liqueur was served by making it into a miniature Irish Coffee style drink. Quite tasty. The Town Branch bourbon…well this is normally where I would do tasting notes. I’m not doing that because I couldn’t bring myself to buy an entire bottle for one tasting. I knew I’d have to figure out what to do with it later since I wouldn’t want to drink it. In place of a formal tasting note, I’ll quote a tweet that I published after giving it another try:

I disliked the bourbon as you can see. My thoughts on their bourbon aside, you should probably give this place a look. I liked the tour quite a bit. Some of the beer is quite good. I picked up a four-pack of the barrel-aged stout to bring home with me after I visited. People, including my wife, seem to love the barrel-aged ale (I find it too sweet). The Kölsch is tasty enough. The coffee liqueur is pretty good too. The tour guide was entertaining. And it really is a show-piece of a stop. And if all that doesn’t get you, there’s always the free T-shirt it will help you earn.

Muddy River Distillery, Belmont, NC: a visit and a rum review

Author’s note: Before I left Muddy River, Robbie was generous enough to gift me with two bottles of his product, one each of Carolina Rum and Queen Charlotte's Reserve. I do not normally accept such gifts, but in this case I made an exception. Although I do not consider this payment, the FTC does. As such I am disclosing the info now. And though I had tasted all of the products and made judgements about liking or not liking them before I knew the gift was being made, the tasting notes below are from tonight. Please use this info to judge the relative accuracy of my thoughts on them.

It’s raining as I pull up to the gate. I see a sign that bears the logo I’m looking for, but this isn’t the place I pictured in my head when I made arrangements to visit. 

Though I knew the address included a suite number, I sort of expected that a distillery would need to be a free-standing building. This is a multi-tenant, red brick, light industrial structure with a lot of loading doors. On all sides of the building. 

Some of the suites have numbers on them. Some do not. None of them have the number I’m looking for. I’m in a rental car, driving around the building on a driveway full of potholes. Finally, I give up. I’m not so dedicated to living up to male stereotypes that I can’t call and ask for directions. 

We park the car right outside the door that Robbie Delaney, proprietor of Muddy River Distillery, is holding open for us and run inside to try to stay as dry as possible in the pouring rain.

Once inside, we walk up a set of stairs and are greeted by a large, empty room, dominated by a large black wall with a smallish still set against it. It looks a bit empty and I’m not quite sure what to think at this point. But because I love craft distillers and I love to talk, I press ahead. It turns out that at the time of our visit, Muddy River Distillery had been in this, much larger, location for about two weeks. (That explains the emptiness.) And Robbie has spent most of that time doing the build-out. 

He built the large, black wall. He built the raised floor that we were standing on. He built the tasting area in the next room. He’s building a clean room for bottling. He even built the hand rails for the stairs in the entry way. Let me repeat: he did this all in two weeks. And that’s in between bottling batches of his rum. 

By this point it doesn’t surprise me that he also built the still. Though he built that while in his previous location on the other side of the property. For good measure, he is also elbow deep in his website. Robbie is the very essence of why I love talking to young entrepreneurs: drive, passion, and a real bootstrap mentality. 

My visit lasts a little over an hour. We spend most of it chatting. Along the way I see the still, impressive as hell when he tells you it used to be a milk tank. We see the fermentation area, the barrels where the rum ages. We even see the tent that Robbie has set up to sleep in when the nights get long. A rum tasting and another chat, this time about his website, and we’re done. 

It’s still raining as we run out to the car, but I feel good about this visit and can't wait to come back. I have a feeling that Muddy River is here to stay.

Postscript to my visit: a couple weeks after I get back from North Carolina, I get a note from Robbie that, based on our conversation, he’s launched a new website. Go check it out at www.MuddyRiverDistillery.com. 

Muddy River Carolina Rum 

Details: 40% ABV. Clear as water.

Nose: Dried grass with a hint of molasses and dried fruit.

Mouth: Thin mouthfeel. Initially: gingerbread, becoming sweeter as it moves back in the mouth. 

Finish: Sweet and gentle with just a hint of a burn.

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Thoughts: This is as close to a sipping drink as any white rum I’ve had. It’s really quite good. It’s not quite up to drinking neat, for me. But if it had a little more bulk in the mouthfeel, it might be the first rum that was. I also tried this in a mojito (my “tester” rum cocktail). Let’s put it this way. Until it runs out, it’s now the rum I’m going to use in all my rum cocktails. In fact, I’m regretting giving away the bottle I bought as a gift for a relative because I’m going to have to drive to North Carolina if I want more.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Evan Williams Bourbon Experience

The Evan Williams Bourbon Experience bourbon fountain (not real bourbon).

It is 6:30am on Thursday, November, 21st when I leave Madison, Wisconsin. We have a long drive ahead of us. Google Maps says it’ll be about seven hours to drive to Louisville. Which is good because the last tour at the new Evan Williams Experience is at four o’clock and I really want to hit that before I continue out of town the next morning. Everything is going good. 

Until I hit Chicago. 

Google must have never been to Chicago. With the time change, I should have arrived around three or a little before. I instead arrive at 4:05pm. You’ve never seen a sad Eric like you saw that day. Even with rushing to make up the hour or more I lost in Chicago, I still miss the last tour by 5 minutes. Figuring that we’d at least get to to go the gift shop, we park and go in anyway, maybe the tour is running late.

We walk in and are greeted by three or four people working there. I walk up to the one heading my direction and quietly say “I’m guessing we missed the last tour, didn’t we?” The lady nods sadly and assures me that we did indeed miss it. After she asks if we’ll be around tomorrow, I shake my head and explain that, no, we are continuing on right away in the morning and that we’d driven from Madison just to try to make it there before they closed. The lady asked me to hang on for a minute and walked over to the group. They talked among themselves for a moment and then we were waved over to the counter. It seems a tour has just opened up. 

People in Kentucky are so nice. I didn’t ask them to make a special tour for my wife and I. I didn’t expect it. But they went ahead and offered it. So I said yes, and handed over my credit card. 

After a brief wait for the tour ahead of us to clear out of the movie, we went in. They chose a good name for the tour. It’s not a distillery tour like you are used to. This really is an experience. This is an exhibit designers dream. There are wall sized movie panels with permanent set pieces in and around them. There is a working distillery. There are interior store fronts. It’s really, really nicely done. And Vicky, our tour guide was wonderful. A warm and engaging person, she took us into all the rooms including the tasting room we weren’t going to be tasting in. And along the way we learned the legend of Evan Williams. Starting from the meeting hall where he was nominated wharf-master and ending in the gift shop. How very Disney of them. 

A little bourbon in the glass is a very nice way to end a wonderful experience.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Jim Beam American Stillhouse & Distillery tour

Jim Beam had the distinct honor of being both my first and last distillery tour when I went to Kentucky in September. The first time was right away Monday morning. We visited the American Stillhouse visitor center, took a self-guided tour and wandered around. We knew that the new stuff wasn't officially open yet, so we didn't expect much more than this. It wasn't until Friday night when we were talking to other bourbon enthusiasts at a KBF event that we heard that if you were lucky they were offering guided tours in order to work the kinks out. Well ok, I guess we knew what we going to do the next morning. And that one was our last distillery tour. 

Keep in mind we toured as guinea pigs and did so free of charge. Your tour may vary some.

Jim Beam building near the beginning of the visitor's driveway. It's really this pretty.We got to Beam a little after 9 am. The ladies behind the counter remembered us when we walked in. (I noticed this seemed to be a common thing in Kentucky, so friendly.) We were the last two spots on the first tour. When 9:30 rolled around we boarded a bus and rolled down to the production area. First thing they showed us was the water pump. Every tour talks about the water, this is the first time we were shown an actual water pump.

This is the Jim Beam American Stillhouse, it houses the gift shop and you get your tickets for the tour and tasting hereAfter the water pump, we go through a door into a very clean area where there is a mash cooker coming out of the floor. The lid is open and there is a gentleman waiting to show us how they add the grains to it. I got to help add the ground corn. That's right, I've now helped make a Jim Beam product. Then it's around a corner to three of the smallest fermentation tanks I've ever seen. These are very obviously for audience visualization purposes, though I'd guess they use the product inside in any case. Turn around and there is a small still about the size of some of the craft distillers I've been to. And then out a door and onto a porch.

I'm adding ground corn to the cooker. Yeah, I help make Jim Beam now.

This is Kyle, our tour guide, next to the tiny fermentation tanks. Kyle was a knowledgable, informative, and fun tour guide.

Shortly after the tiny fermentation tanks was giant still. This is a big damn still.Our next stop is the actual fermentation tank room. I will never get over how much each of these tanks hold and just how many of them there are at some of these big plants. After we walk through that room, we get to see the big still. This one produces somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 gallons every minute. Then it's off to the Knob Creek barrel dumping area. This is where we realize we really are guinea pigs. They grab the drill to take out the bung and nothing happens. Three guys come over and play with levers and another tries an old fashioned way of removing the bung with a mallet before they finally apologize and move us along to the bottling line. It seems this runs on the same air pressure system because there is very little bourbon entering the bottles as they go past.

A sheepish and apologetic non-demonstration of a barrel dumping.On our way back to the bus we are shown a collection of old decanters and the room that holds whiskey from each batch for the last two years (quality control samples). Then we jump back into the bus and ride back up the hill to the aging warehouse they have set up for us to wander through. It's well lit with display lighting to help show off what they've got in there. And all those wonderful smells are there too. If it wasn't for the fact that the tasting was next, I might have wanted to stay longer. 

Dramatically lit barrels of probably tasty bourbon.But the tasting was next so off we hurried. Beam has an unusually high tech tasting area. You get a small gift card looking thing that is loaded with 2 credits. You put the card in a machine, hold your glass under a spigot and press a button. A very small amount of bourbon or rye are then dispensed to you. You pull your card out, taste your sample and repeat. Then you give your card back and go spend money in the gift shop or wander around the grounds a bit. Maybe even sit in a rocker in the early morning sun. You could totally do that. I did.

This is a very pretty tasting bar. Push a button, get bourbon. I need one of these for the house.Last year I mentioned how even though the Beam tour could have been just a self guided tour, it was really fun due to the guide we had. This year was just as fun. There is something to be said for an operation that is just that damn big. And when the people you interact with obviously love what they do and who they work for/with it just makes for a nice time. I really liked this tour. The only knock on it was the tasting machine. Every other distillery has someone there to interact with you, pour your whiskies and tell you a bit about them. You got a card here. It lost a little of the personal touch. On the up side, everyone in your party could choose something different and whatever they wanted. Sot that's nice. 

If you are in the Louisville area, take the time to make a trip to Jim Beam. It really is a cool place and a nice tour.

At the end of it all, sometimes it's just nice to sit in a rocker in the sun by Booker.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Woodford Reserve Corn-To-Cork tour

It was Thursday, September 13th. I know because it was my 15th wedding anniversary. My wife and I felt that there was no better place to start this very special anniversary than one of the prettiest distilleries in Kentucky. I'm going to say right off the bat that I like this tour. But I knew that going in. You see, I've been on this one before. In fact, this tour is the one that made my wife decide to give whiskey a chance. There were some differences this time. The price increased from $10 per person to $25. We actually got to see the bottling area. And we wandered around the back of some of the buildings and saw the old water cisterns and the stream out back. Our tour guide was different as well. His name was Earl, and he gave a very good tour. 

 Horses watching from behind a fence along the drive to Woodford Reserve

Looking back from the entrance of the Woodford Reserve Visitor Center. I kinda wish I had these flagstones outside my door.

As you walk up to the fermentation and still building, they are always sure to point out the grind stone that was found on the property and set above the entry. It's cool, but very worn.

Recently filled barrels on a track going to the aging warehouse. Shot out the door to the fermentation room.

Mash fermenting in very large wooden vats. We were told that these were made from boards cut from logs that had been preserved in a swamp for a hundred plus years

The picture everyone takes at Woodford. The beer still, the whiskey safe, and the name on the wall.

A more interesting detail of one of the other stills which was open so you could look into it.

This is the stream that runs out behind the distillery. There is a small footbridge across it which leads to the old farm where the fathers of American Bourbon once lived.

Looking back at the distillery building while standing in front of an aging warehouse.

A close up of the rough hewn limestone aging warehouse. A lot of the buildings on the grounds are made of this material. Only the aging warehouses have bars on the windows though.

You can almost smell the angel's share through the screen can't you. Well, I can.

This is a barrel about to be dumped. We didn't get to see that, the workers were on break. But Earl did thieve some out of the barrel and let us smell it.

Like I said at the beginning. I liked this tour. Earl was a good tour guide. What I really liked about this tour, was that it was apparent that each tour guide was able to customize the tour to their strengths. Last time I was there I had a former science teacher giving the tour and he told us about molecules and fossils. This time, Earl gave us a bit more of the history and details about the grounds. Both were very good, just different.