Breweries/Wineries/Distilleries, Kentucky, Road Trip from Columbus, Travel

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail (Day One of Three)

updated on 2 Comments on The Kentucky Bourbon Trail (Day One of Three)
I love to be on-the-go; my life goal is to see everything I possibly can and lately I’ve been craving a good road trip, someplace not too far and a location that I’ve never been before. Part of my Christmas present to my boyfriend JJ was a bourbon package which is why I settled on my Spring Break 2015 adventure: the Kentucky Bourbon trail.  I did loads of research before our trip began (including the Official Kentucky Bourbon Trail website) and mapped out our best trip itinerary for the time we had free (going from Monday morning until Wednesday night), and came up with 11 distilleries that we could visit.
 
This blog post focuses on the first day of our trip-

Day One:
Drive from Columbus, Ohio to…
    A) Jim Beam Distillery (Clermont, KY)
    B) Willett Distillery (Bardstown, KY)
    C) Heaven High Bourbon Heritage Center (Bardstown, KY)
    D) Barton 1792 Distillery (Bardstown, KY)

 

I have two other blog posts about this trip along the Kentucky Bourbon trail.  Click on the links to visit those posts.

Day Two
   E) Maker’s Mark (Loretto, KY)
   F) Limestone Branch (Lebanon, KY)
   G) Wild Turkey (Lawrenceburg, KY)
   H) Four Roses (Lawrenceburg, KY)

Day Three
 
   I) Woodford Reserve (Versailles, KY)
   J) Buffalo Trace (Frankfort, KY)
   L) Town Branch (Lexington, KY)

Now, if you want to do the Bourbon Trail yourself, it’s been set up so that you can get an “official” Bourbon passbook at any of the distilleries, and when you visit each distillery you can get a stamp. After visiting all 9 of the official distilleries you get a t-shirt.  The passbook doesn’t have an expiration date, so you can visit the distilleries at any time, but it was pretty easy to visit a lot of them in one trip, and that was our main goal.  There are also several craft distilleries that we stopped at. I learned that the Bulleit distillery is only open from Wednesday through Saturday, which is why we decided not to start in Louisville, where many people suggest the Bourbon Trail begin.  Louisville has two of the official distillery tour stops, but JJ and I decided that we’ll make a separate trip to Louisville on a future road trip weekend because there is a lot of things I would like to see and do there (and future blog post opportunities!)

 
 
DAY ONE
Monday morning, we left at 5:30 to make the 4 hour drive to Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, KY. 

 

They open at 9am with tours every half hour.  I thought that when we arrived at 9:30am we would surely be the only ones there, I mean it was a Monday before noon at a bourbon distillery, normal people don’t start drinking until at least after noon, right? But we joined a tour with about a dozen other people and a tour bus showed up shortly after we arrived, so I can only imagine what it must be like on a weekend! 

 

The Jim Beam tour lasted about an hour and 15 minutes, during which time we learned all about the process of how bourbon got started, the process of making bourbon and the history of the Jim Beam brand.  I won’t go into anything super specific about the distilling process but what I learned at that first distillery (and all 10 distilleries after) is that for bourbon to be called bourbon it has to:
 
  1. Be made up of at least 51% corn
  2. Be made in the USA (but about 90% of bourbon comes from Kentucky)
  3. Be made in an oak barrel that is charred and can only be used once (no worries follow tree-huggers, the barrels are sent to other places to be reused)

 

 
 
 
Now what makes every bourbon a bit different (at least to experienced bourbon drinkers, honestly I couldn’t tell that big of a difference between them all- I could probably categorize them as going down easy or going down whilst making me wince or gag) is the yeast recipe, and the percentage of corn, wheat or rye and malted barley that goes into it.  Every distillery also has their own “recipe” for charring the barrel and how long each barrel of bourbon sits and ages.  In every distillery we got to see the fermentation barrels (when it’s basically beer), as well as the low wine (what the bourbon is called after first distillation) and high wine (what it’s called after second distillation) vats. 
Model JJ shows off some high and low wine (when the alcohol is about 180 proof)
One thing that was really impressive about the Jim Beam distillery is obviously that it is one of the most recognized and popular brands of bourbon that exists, in fact they have barreled over 13 million barrels since they started in 1935! 


 Another thing I really loved about the distillery is that, unlike a lot of the other distilleries we visited, we got to see, and even be a part of, the bottling process.  We saw that, since they don’t want their bourbon flavor to be tainted with even the smallest hint of water, to rinse out the bottle they use bourbon, which I got to help out with; some lucky person out there will soon get to buy a bottle of the Catching Katie bourbon special!

 

Bottling process at Jim Beam
Another thing I loved about all the different distilleries were the warehouses, also known as rickhouses, which is where the bourbon is stored for between 2-9 years.  For example, at Jim Beam they were these black 8 story buildings.  I personally loved the smell coming off the bourbon barrels that you notice immediately when walking into the warehouse, but since that smell is known as the “angel’s share” I guess it makes sense that I would appreciate it (you know- since I’m so angelic). 
 

 The process of how long the barrels are stored and how it is decided which barrels go into which bottles is completely different at each distillery, but I never tired of the beautiful views inside each warehouse, with barrels upon barrels upon barrels.   

 
You can see how the barrels add the color to the bourbon, and also how much bourbon is lost during the aging process due to evaporation.
 
To finish off the Jim Beam tour, we got to go to the tasting room.  Jim Beam was completely unique from every other distillery because they have tasting machines.  We were given cards and were allowed to choose 2 each from their 12 different samples (and we were lucky to be standing next to a man who didn’t want to try any so we were given his card).  I loved that they had different flavors, like apple cider, honey and maple bourbon, but JJ wanted to go for the stronger (and usually rarer or at least more expensive) bourbons; since we went the smart route and shared everything we got to sample a lot of their bourbons, neither of us were disappointed, and we got to keep the little tasting glasses afterwards as a souvenir.

 

The tour was $10, one of the more expensive, but I thought it was worth it, the grounds were beautiful, the tour was informative and the samples were yummy!  It was definitely a great one to start with.

 

Our next stop was the Willett distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. This distillery is not one of the offical Bourbon Trail distilleries, but there is a separate craft distillery tour, and this was one of the craft distilleries that is just gaining popularity.  In fact, if you visit this distillery in a couple years you’ll see the addition of an inn which they were just starting to build.  This tour had fewer people on it, we were with about 8 other people, but all of the people we were touring with were very excited and enthusiastic about Willett Bourbon.  
 
What was different about this distillery was that it obviously smaller, but family run and it definitely had that homey feel during the tour, which was awesome.  We even got to meet a member of the family, who is also the master distiller and signed some of our tour buddies bottles.  Upstairs in the of distillery we got to walk around all their mash tubs, which are the big tubs that are cooking the mashed up corn, rye and malt barley mixes, which are called a “mash bill”.  

Now some people might be thinking that visiting so many distilleries would get boring.  But JJ and I both agreed at the end of the trip that that was not the case.  Each distillery definitely had some similarities (like I said, I heard at EVERY distillery about the fact that to be called bourbon there has to be at least 51% corn in the mash bill), but every distillery offered something different. Willett is where we learned the term the “heads and tails” of bourbon, which are the first and last parts of the distilled bourbon that don’t taste good and that go back into the next distillation process, and the “hearts” which is the good bourbon that goes into the barrels for us to enjoy later.

The Willett distillery at their low and high wine cooper vats

 

 Willett Bourbon bottles are designed after this unique looking still. 

Next at Willett we toured a separate building where they bottle the barrels before they go into their warehouses. Compared to what we saw at Jim Beam this was of course a much smaller-scale production. There were a couple of guys working and it was awesome to get up-close and personal with the actual bourbon barreling process.

 

JJ stands in a truck of recently delivered barrels

 

Recently filled barrels being rolled down to the Willett warehouses. If they didn’t weigh over 500 lbs I would’ve tried to keep on rolling one to the car.
 
A lifting-lever inside a Willett warehouse, to get the barrels up several levels

 

The white Willett warehouses

 

 
Willett Distillery is open from 10-4 with tours every hour.  I suggest you plan out your trip really well, we arrived late to this distillery and had to join in a little bit after the tour had already commenced, but that was better than waiting another hour.  The tour cost $7 or $12 if you want a souvenir glass and concludes with a tasting of two of their bourbons.  
 
After Willett we headed a mile up the road to the Heaven Hill Bourbon Heritage Center. 
 
 
We had just missed the tour (poor planning) but they did have a lot of information in the center about the history of Bourbon and its history in Kentucky that was pretty interesting.  We couldn’t do a tasting, we learned that most of the distilleries do not have a liquor license which is why you can do a tasting with a tour but not a tasting alone.  We were told if we wanted to buy something we could taste, but since we had sampled quite a few bourbons that day, coupled with the fact the JJ was pretty familiar with the Heaven Hill family of bourbons, we read the displays and went on our way (getting a stamp for our passports however).
 

Our fourth and final distillery stop of the day was at Bartons 1792. This distillery is not an “official distillery” but it ended up being one of our favorites.


We got there just as a tour was departing but were able to join in right away with the group because this distillery tour is FREE!  Our tour guide was a lovely lady who gave us lots of new information. At this distillery we learned about how the grains (mostly corn remember) get delivered several times daily and goes through a very scrutinous test before it gets accepted to be turned into mash. This distillery also was the only one in the area that had its fermenters on the outside of the building.

We climbed up several flights to get to see the interior workings of this distillery, such as this cooper high wine vat.

We went inside one of the barrel warehouses to check out some of the barrels they had in storage. None of the bourbon barrels at any of the distilleries ever get rotated during any of the aging processes.  Bourbon has to be aged at least 2 years but usually gets aged 4 or more years.  The barrels do sometimes get opened up to get sampled to see if they are ready, now how would you like that job?  I would settle for just licking these barrels!
An elevator pulley system to lift up the barrels in a warehouse- no electricity is used, we wouldn’t want a fire to break out with all this flammable alcohol!

At the end of this tour we got- bet you can’t guess it…FREE SAMPLES!  And again, this place was not only free, but also one of my favorite stops, the workers were so kind and the bourbon was delicious: they had a cream bourbon that would kick Bailey’s butt!  We also got our first taste of a bourbon ball- a delicious chocolate treat!  Definitely include this distillery in your tour despite the fact that it isn’t on the official tour.

We were staying in Bardstown for the evening, so I was pretty excited when I learned that there was a civil war museum in town that we had to check out.  We finished with the 4 distilleries at 3:30 and headed to the museum before it closed at 5:00pm.  The entrance price is $10 a person, but the museum was awesome!  The admission fee allows guests to visit 2 other museums in town (a women in war museum being one of them) as well as the civil war village located outside the museum, and is good for two days.  They had TONS of civil war artifacts and loads of information to read.  

 


When we were done inside we went outside and did a quick tour of the Civil War village.  Every building had some information, and I imagine that during weekends they have people “working” in the buildings, it was a cute walk around that would be better with demonstrations but I enjoyed it.

 After the civil war museum we headed back towards Louisville (about a 20 minute drive) to check out the zappos.com outlet, which was called 6pm and was just a big warehouse building, but the deals were awesome!  I got a pair of $200 boots for $10!  And a pair of sandals for $19, it was definitely worth a quick stop!

Finally, to finish off our day, we decided to eat dinner at The Old Talbott Tavern in the center of Bardstown. We had driven by it a couple of times earlier in the day and I was dying to check it out because it was so quaint!  I was really struck by a lot of the little towns in Kentucky that seemed to have done a great job of keeping their older buildings intact and in good shape, I was ready to drop everything and move to Kentucky several times.  

 
The Old Talbott Tavern was built in 1799 and has been visited by some famous people, like Abraham Lincoln as a boy, Daniel Boone, Jesse James (who reportedly shot some holes in one of the rooms upstairs) and the exiled French King Louis Philippe. The Talbott Tavern is also an inn, which I wish I had known about before I traveled because I would’ve loved to have stayed here, even though there are reports of it being haunted.  We ate in the main dining room and it was adorable.  The food wasn’t amazing, it was good, but what it lacked in amazing flavors it made up for in charm. 

 

 

 

 

The Old Talbott Tavern, since 1799

And that was our first day!  We were exhausted, especially knowing that we had another jam-packed bourbon tasting day in front of us. Be sure to check out day two of our Bourbon adventure!

Katie

I'm a teacher, and I have a passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures. People are always asking me about my travels, and about how I am able to do it on a budget.

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2 Comments

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    […] final day of my Kentucky Bourbon tour.  Make sure to check out the previous blog posts about my first and second days.  I really recommend this trip, educational, historical with tastings- […]

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    […] And no trip to Scotland would be complete without learning about Scotch Whisky. I have been to many Bourbon distilleries in Kentucky, so I was eager to learn the difference between the two […]

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