Visiting bourbon country

[ejlyman]

I’m an Italy-based food and wine writer and long-time bourbon enthusiast soon to visit bourbon country for the first time. I’m not officially planning to write anything about this trip, though these things often end up in a column eventually.

I’m writing here for some advice about where to visit. I’ll be traveling with my Italian girlfriend, so I don’t think I can get away with being *too* bourbon-intensive with the trip planning, but I’d like to work out a schedule that'll help me learn more about the bourbon-making process and to taste and buy some good bourbon I’m unlikely to find elsewhere. It’d also be a plus to know the names of two or three places known to be particularly good with visitors.

Does anyone here have any favorites to cast a light on?

Many thanks!

[bourbonv]

Stay in Louisville and visit a few of the Urban Bourbon Trail restaurants. Louisville is also about 45 minutes away from all of the distilleries. I would spend a day and do Four Roses and Woodford Reserve in the morning and the Buffalo Trace hard hat tour in the afternoon.

Mike Veach

[cowdery]

We talk about this from time to time here so you might want to use the site's search function.

Maker's Mark and Woodford Reserve are good choices for distillery tours, as they are both attractive sites in attractive locations (I'm thinking about what will appeal to the girlfriend) but they also let you see all steps in the process, "from corn to cork."

In both cases if you contact them ahead of time and tell them you're a writer, you can probably get a private, behind-the-scenes tour.

The Woodford distillery is near Lexington, Kentucky, which is horse country. Many horse farms welcome visitors and there are other horse-related attractions in the area.

Bardstown is a very quaint town with excellent bed-and-breakfast lodging (again, thinking of the girlfriend). The Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History is there as well as the Heaven Hill Visitors Center, which is a museum in its own right. You can forgo the tour there and just do the Visitors Center, but do participate in the tasting. You can taste at Maker's and Woodford too.

Depending on the season and how outdoorsy you both are, there are some good opportunities for hiking in the Bardstown area. One is Bernheim Forest, a gift to the people from a distiller (I. W. Bernheim, who created I. W. Harper Bourbon), that happens to be right across the road from the Jim Beam Distillery.

Also depending on the season, just driving around the countryside can be very enjoyable, especially in the horse country near Woodford.

Some people prefer to stay in Louisville because it's more urban but it pales in comparison to Rome so you might prefer to stay in Bardstown or one of the other smaller towns.

That should get you started.

[ejlyman]

Many thanks, Mike and Col. Cowdery. I do think I like the idea of staying in a small town B&B better. Based on your advise, I'm going to look into Four Roses, Woodford, and Maker's Mark.

I don't know how well known this story is, but there's actually a connection between Four Roses bourbon and an Italian rose' wine from Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot) called Five Roses. Evidently, some enterprising wine makers from Puglia created the wine to market to American GIs during WWII, banking on the name recognition to help sell the stuff. The label still bears a slight resemblance to the Four Roses label:

http://www.diwinetaste.com/html/dwt200604/images/LeoneDeCastris-FiveRosesAnniversario.jpg

My only thought is that all three of the names you guys mentioned are bourbons I can get in Europe. Do they have smaller bottlings that may be worth trying out? Or is there a smaller producer in the area worth considering?

Also, colonel, what should I look for in the archives to find previous threads along these lines? I looked for key words like "travel," "visits," or "tours" and either found too many choices to wade through, or too few to be useful.

Thanks again.

[smokinjoe]

Four spots down from the "General Bourbon Discussion" is "Distillery Trips". There's a lot of good info in many of those threads

When are you planning to come over?

[barturtle]

My only thought is that all three of the names you guys mentioned are bourbons I can get in Europe. Do they have smaller bottlings that may be worth trying out? Or is there a smaller producer in the area worth considering?

[cowdery]

I suggested the Heaven Hill Visitors Center and tasting because there you will be able to taste bourbons you won't find in Europe. Likewise Buffalo Trace. At Heaven Hill you can do the Visitors Center at your own pace then do a tasting. At Buffalo Trace you can do a short tour and a tasting.

In addition to browsing the Distillery Trips section, you can try search words like "Bardstown," "Frankfort," "Louisville," etc. Posts that mention the cities will tend to be about tourism. (That's just a theory, I haven't tested it.)

[ejlyman]

Thanks again for the good advice, everyone.

Barturtle: What you point out about the number of distilleries makes perfect sense but I hadn't thought of it. You're right: I was falling back to my habits of looking for small winemakers when I travel in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

Joe: I'll be there later this month ... around the 20th or so (haven't settled on the exact date yet). We'll be working our way from Nashville up to Detroit.

[bonneamie]

If you have free time when you get to Detroit, there are quite a few of us bourbon enthusiasts in and around Detroit who would be happy to try to get together with you for a little sampler.

[ACDetroit]

If you have anything you think you would absolutely want to try? Post a list and between the hounds we'll see what we can pull together for a little tasting. Looking forward to your visit to Detroit.

Tony

[ODaniel]

I am probably reiterating most things, but for what it's worth...

I'm from Louisville. I love the place - downtown and the outskirts. I currently live in Lexington and do not like the downtown or its outskirts much at all. However, once you get a ways away from the town it becomes a nice countryside. In Louisville you have to get pretty far to see the nice countryside.

I would recommend staying far away from Lexington area in late September...

http://www.alltechfeigames.com/

This place is going to be a mess. It cannot even handle the amount of people it normally has, much less 600,000 more people.

As far as the small bourbon distilleries... I am hoping I can change that in the future. Starting off with a brewpub and if that is successful we would like to make bourbon. We shall see... That is a huge ordeal in itself.