Frizzy and Far Away: Day Six or Bourbon Day !!! Louisville, KY to Ashland, KY

We woke up outside Louisville in our hotel with a big day planned.

Tanner has been drinking, buying, researching and sharing the joy of scotch for a little over a year now. So when we were planning our trip he looked at the route a little and realized we would be passing through Kentucky. Kentucky makes whiskey, especially bourbon! So we talked about it a little and decided we could drive slowly through the state and stop and taste the bourbon the way.

He booked us a 1:30pm "Hard Hat Tour" at Buffalo Trace, so we knew we had to be there at that time. He wanted to try to and squeeze in two more tastings and tours before then. So we had to rush out the door.

Forgive me for the writing in this blog post. Tanner and I tried to brainstorm and takes notes, but that was a few days ago. He really wanted to go into every single detail of the tastings and tours. I pointed out that our relatives weren't as interested, and we can always tell them about it if they decide to start drinking whisky or go to Kentucky. So the writing here is part Tanner, part me, and I am hurrying to get back to the apartment today.

The earliest tour in the area we were going was at Four Roses. They are one of the older still functioning distilleries. They were allowed to keep making whiskey during Prohibition for medical purposes, so they survived that time. They are owned now by Kirin, the Japanese company, whisky is very popular in Japan. Who made the decision in the late 70s to stop exporting all the bourbon, and try the American market again. Bourbon was not very popular in American for a long time. So they helped fuel the resurgence of it's popularity in America.

Jo was our guide. She was knowledgeable and nice, personable, if not funny.

The vibe at all of the distilleries was unique, which made the day so fun. The vibe and decor at Four Roses was relaxed elegance, fairly professional. The building is Southwest Mission style, which is weird for the area. The grounds were beautiful. The tour itself was only $5 per person, and they gave us complimentary rocks glasses. Also gave us three pours at Four Roses. I guess there is a law that they can only give you a once ounce free, so we got two half ounce pours at all the other places we stopped.

Fermentation vats, where the cooked corn, wheat, rye, and/or barley sits with the yeast and makes alcohol! Four Roses was also in shut down, they use local stream water, and in the hottest part of the summer the water is too hot and runs too low to make whisky

After it ferments it is called "distillers beer" and has to be distilled to actually make whiskey, this i the inside of a column still

The fresh whisky runs through this box, which is locked, and this is where the master distiller can get tastes of each batch

Nice decor

Woodford Reserve was the second place, we also arrived late and just caught the tour, so that was fun. We don't remember our guides name here, possibly Mary. She was nice enough, but obviously forgettable, since we don't remember her name. But she also does the historical tours they only give two days a week, she knew a TON about the history of the grounds, the different families that have owned it, what whisky distilling was like two hundred years ago, etc. It is one of the few distilleries that are a historical landmark, the building is listed on some list of historical locations. It was beautiful masonry. But the visitor center and tasting room was in a new building, the style was Contemporary Southern. The vibe was professional, almost a bit snobby, but also very knowledgeable. The tour was $10 each, and you can't taste unless you tour, so that was a turn off.

Running to get on the tour! Most people take a few days to go through the Bourbon Trail

Fermentation! You can see the corn oil has separated and floated to the top

Woodford Reserve is the only place to triple pot still their whisky

So funny! We were arguing about taking pictures inside with no flash, etc.

Whiskey rails! They still roll out the barrels. This room is up higher, and they roll the barrels all the way downhill to the warehouses where it ages

Behind his right shoulder you can see barrels sitting on the whiskey rails

In the bottling facility we actually got to see the whisky getting poured out of the barrel!

The tasting came with a bourbon ball

They also had some comfy furniture

Buffalo Trace, Bob was our tour guide. Bob used to be a state folklorist, so he had some good stories, and asked us some questions. He was charming and fun too. They do simple free tours, or what we did, the Hard Hat Tour, which Tanner had to reserve that back in Seattle.

The style was vintage, western or backwoods, and pretty casual. The vibe was casual and friendly. But they were all really enthusiastic. The head distiller is young, he is in his 40's which is very young for that job, and trying new things. They also make W.L. Weller, E. H. Taylor, Pappy Van Winkle, Buffalo Trace and even other things at this distillery. So it felt like they were growing, and excited about all the things going on.

They have different big buildings for each purpose, so these pipes have water for cooling, distillers beer, white lightening, and other things running through them!

Corn makes whiskey!

We walked through a tiny skyway between two buildings

This is the cooked grains, mixed with water, getting poured into the vats where yeast will be added for fermentation. It tasted like sweet, corny, oatmeal

The head distiller has an experimental still for making small batch special projects. Tanner was jealous

The buildings are a hodgepodge from all the time periods and owners, so it felt more DIY. Old fashioned. Or as Tanner put it, cowboy steampunk. The tour was $10 for both of us and a free shot glass.

They let us taste and touch stuff at Buffalo Trace. Here we could smell white lightening and even taste it if we wanted.

Open vats, really funny. I guess a lot of stuff gets filtered out. They have a joke about the man who started Pappy ( a super expensive, exclusive whisky) that the best batch he ever made had a cow fall in it

Got rained on a bit! But we were having a ton of fun. Here we are between the ricks in an aging warehouse

Awesome barrels. I really liked E. H. Taylor, the head distiller has this one on hold for an experiment of some kind

Tanner was excited about this one. It says "Peated Malt." Smoking with peat is part of what makes Scotch so special

This one is a W.L. Weller, their head whiskey taster will choose some of these barrels to make Pappy Van Winkle

The only chairs here was this cute rocking chair

Wild Turkey, Jill was Tanner’s guide. I had gotten hot and was getting a headache at that point. I think the different temperatures, humidities and odd smells is what triggered the headache. Tanner says Jill was deadpan and funny, had some good puns.

Wild Turkey is huge, they just built a new bottling facility. It is owned by an Italian company, they bottle a ton of vodka here. The vibe was professional, modern, industrial. It was also in shutdown, so Tanner only saw six people in total. So maybe hard to get a read. The grounds were pretty enough, spread out, but not fancy or designed to be showy, they very well groomed and utilitarian.

An entire warehouse of fermentation vats

It is a modern factory, so they have a control room

Elevator helps move around the barrels in the aging warehouse

Great view from Wild Turkey, the rusted out bridge is no longer used

Driving around in Kentucky to find all these places was so beautiful. We still can't get over how beautiful it was. We drove past signs that read Stud Barn, Thoroughbred School, Horse Trailers This Way, Owens Farm, Woodford Estate, etc. The term rolling hills has a new meaning. They were almost steep little hills, so rounded, one after another. With little creeks in the bottom or trees, really fat happy cows sleeping in piles, and beautiful, shiny horses walking around.

Train crossing, but we were in a hurry!

See the limestone

Cute downtown. I think this was Lawrenceburg

Corn for the whisky

You can see the black horse fences on both sides of the road

I asked Tanner what we wanted to say about the actual whiskey, and the tastings. He is still too modest, and at first he wanted to say he couldn't tell the difference. But I pushed him a little. He feels like he could definitley tell the differences from one distillery to the other. But maybe the different product lines within each place are harder. Buffalo Trace and Woodford Reserve the different product lines were easy to tell apart. Four Roses was a bit harder. Over the last few days he sort of reinforced the fact that he doesn’t really like the rye whiskeys. So at Wild Turkey both pours he felt were too hot and spicy, he couldn’t tell a big difference. I liked them all. I do like the mildly rye whiskeys.

We stopped at a Costco, Tanner wanted to see what the selection and prices were for bourbon. The selection was not great, the prices were good. Then we stopped at a really delicious barbecue place one more time for dinner. It was really good, they had a bottle of each style sauce too, which was fun. Our waiter was really nice, he reminded Tanner of some of his cousins from Montana.