If there is a website where the definition of 'trail' can be stretched, the Appalachian Trail Cafe is it.

Background

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is a marketing collective of 41 mainstream and craft distilleries organized by the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA). The overall mileage depends on how you schedule your visits. The KDA publishes a passport / guidebook and the goal is to collect all 41 passport stamps to qualify for a special memento (kind of like the 2000-Miler certificate). Surprisingly, two popular distilleries - Buffalo Trace and Barton 1792 - don't participate in the KDA and aren't in the passport / guidebook. But they do offer tours and tastings. Unfortunately, Barton 1792 announced that they would no longer be offering tours after June 30th 2022 and would also be closing their Visitor's Center.. That fact moved up my plan to start the Trail.

Hike #1 - May 27th, 2022

I scheduled this trip pretty quickly to be able to visit Barton 1792 before they closed their gates to visitors. And fortunately, I was able to add two additional distilleries to make the most of a day trip. Mrs. Tortoise joined me to ensure I could get home safely. Smart move...

We couldn't get a tour at Barton but did stop in at the Visitor's Center. 10:00 am and I'm tasting bourbons. A helpful staff member sold me on an Early Times Bottled-In-Bond


Next up was a tour of the Preservation Distillery. They're a very small craft distiller that makes 3 - 5 barrel batches. All of their current salable offerings are blended from barrels of whiskey that were purchased from defunct distilleries in the 80's and 90's. Everything distilled on-site is still in the maturation phase. After four tastings, I decided that I needed a bottle of the Wattie Boone. Smooth.



The last stop of the day was the Willett Distillery. It's small enough to be in the Craft category but large enough to offer a traditional distillery tour. Their claim to fame is their copper pot still and unique matching bottle. After five tastings, we had lunch in the on-site bar and then headed back to Cincinnati.


Two passport stamps down, 39 to go!

For a whiskey to call itself bourbon, its mash (the mixture of grains from which the product is distilled) must contain at least 51 per cent corn. The mash must be distilled at 160 proof or less, the distillate must be stored in charred new oak barrels at 125 proof or less, and it must not contain any additives.

The Wattie Boone Whiskey I bought can't be called bourbon because it was drained from its charred new oak barrel, the oak char was scraped off and re-charred, then the contents were returned for another aging process. Thus, the barrel was no longer a new oak barrel. So it was a bourbon, but now it's a whiskey.

An interesting difference between distilleries is their target distillate proof. Preservation Distillery likes to start low so they don't have to add much water at the blending / bottling phase. Willett started off with a higher proof and didn't mention the dilution that occurs afterwards.

Speaking of blending, most bottles are a blend of different barrels taken from different floors of the rickhouses where the barrels mature. Barrels on the upper floors of the rickhouse see higher temperatures which cause the oak staves to have more expansion / contraction cycles. This causes more distillate interaction within the barrel's oak staves (flavoring) while also leading to more water evaporation (higher proofing). Single barrel bourbons are chosen from a sweet-spot in the rickhouse that has the perfect combination of temperature, air flow, and humidity.

The lesson of the day was on the difference between American and Canadian whiskeys. Canadian whiskeys ferment all of the different mashbill ingredients separately then mix them together before distillation. American whiskeys blend the corn, wheat, rye, etc. together during the fermentation process. The more you know...

Hike #2 - June 17th 2022

My company offers a summer schedule where we work our 80 hours over nine days and get the 10th day off. June 17th was my day off so I visited the New Riff Distillery just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The distillery shares a parking lot with The Party Source, one of the largest liquor, beer and wine retailers in the U.S. I thought it was a happy coincidence but I learned that it was no accident. The owner of The Party Source decided that he wanted to get into the bourbon distillation business. And since the law says you can't own a distillery AND a retail operation, he sold the booze store to his employees.

New Riff only has two mash bills - a traditional bourbon and a rye. Both bottled products conform to the Bottled-In-Bond regulations. The Bottled-In-Bond Act of 1897 requires conforming bourbons to be distilled by one distillery in one season, then aged in a federally-supervised warehouse for four years before being bottled at exactly 100 proof. New Riff also offers single-barrel versions of their bourbon and rye which are labeled with the actual proof. These are essentially the tastiest barrels that are saved from being blended into the Bottled-In Bond offerings.

It was a fun tour and we were encouraged to get up close and personal to the fermenting mashbill. The sweet smell must have been in my hair of clothes because I kept getting whiffs of it later in the day.

Bourbon History 101

So why is it called bourbon and why did bourbon originate in Kentucky? Good questions. I learned the answers during my tours over the July 4th weekend.

After the Revolutionary war ended, there were two very important but unrelated events. First, the folks in Kentucky paid homage to the French for their assistance in winning the war by renaming several places after French things and cities. The eastern fifth of the state became Bourbon County, named after the French House of Bourbon. Louisville was named after King Louis XVI. Even the small town of Hopewell became Paris, the county seat of Bourbon County. Unfortunately, Kentuckians didn't want to be bothered with learning the French pronunciations. Bourbon (boar-bone) became Bourbon (burr-bun). Versailles (Ver-sigh) became Versailles (Ver-sails). Louisville (Lou-e-ville) is Louisville (Lou-a-vul) unless you want to sound like a tourist.

The second event was that President George Washington began to tax alcohol production in order to pay back the war debts to France. Some east coast distillers of Irish and Scottish descent packed up and moved to Kentucky, which at the time was the frontier of the new country. Kentucky entered the Union in 1792, so there was a temporary reprieve in taxation.

The distillers that arrived in Kentucky found that corn was well suited to the local environment and that the limestone water was excellent for use in the fermentation and distillation process as it strips out many undesirable compounds and provide a high pH which helps the fermentation of the grains. After the corn liquor was distilled, it was placed in oak barrels (another plentiful resource) and transported via horse-drawn wagon to the Ohio River for distribution. Each barrel was marked with the distillers name and location. The barrels would eventually make their way down the Ohio to the Mississippi and eventually to the Port of New Orleans.

During the six-week river barge trip, the corn whiskey sloshed around inside the oak barrel and picked up significant color / flavor from the oak staves. As the barrels were distributed from New Orleans, they continued to mature. People started specifically asking for the whiskey from Bourbon County Kentucky, or simply Bourbon whiskey.

The 7 Rules of Bourbon

I touched on this earlier, but here are the seven requirements for a liquor to be called bourbon:

1. It has to be made in the USA
   
2. The mashbill needs to be at least 51% corn
   
3. The distillate can be no more than 160 proof
   
4. It has to be aged in a new American oak barrel
   
5. The distillate cannot enter the barrel with a proof higher than 125
   
6. The finished product must have a proof of at least 80
   
7. There can be no additives (coloring, flavors, etc.) added to the barrels
   

#7 has some technicalities. You can post-age a bourbon in a port wine, sherry or pickle barrel and add a finishing note to the label. But if you put a tablespoon of pickle brine into a bourbon barrel, it becomes a flavored whiskey. And yes... there is a pickle barrel bourbon that isn't half-bad.

Maturation Process

Straight bourbon must be aged at least two years. Any bourbon aged less than four years must contain an age statement on the label. And here's an interesting fact: bourbon is taxed every year it is aged. So that 15-year bourbon that cost $100 is a combination of inflation, evaporation, storage costs and taxes.

Several tour guides have debunked the 'Made in Kentucky' claim. I have a George Dickel Tennessee Bourbon in my collection.

Yes on the charred barrel. There are char levels from #1 (light) to #5 (alligator char). Most barrels have a #3 char.

I just received a cool item from one of my college buddies. It's a Time & Oak stick that is used to age a distilled spirit in 24 - 48 hours. Each oak stick is laser cut exposing lots of slots with a char on all external surfaces. The ratio of char surface area to 750 ml of liquid is much higher than a 53-gallon barrel, so the liquid picks up the flavor in a short period of time. I tried it out on a bottle of clear rum and the color matched a bourbon-barrel-aged rum after 36 hours. The taste was significantly changed as well - for the better!

timeandoak.com/

My bottle certainly does. And the rear label confirms it was distilled and bottled in Tennessee.

Folks in Kentucky would like for bourbon to be a state specific item. But it isn't.

distiller.com/articles/bourbons-not-from-kentucky

Hike #3 - July 1st & 2nd 2022

I took advantage of a long holiday to hit some of the distilleries that are a bit out of the way or a little more obscure than the popular sites.

July 1st

I visited Second Sight Spirits in Ludlow KY - just across the I-71/I-75 bridge from Cincinnati. Second Sight is a micro distiller with a unique back story. Two high school buddies from northern Kentucky that ended up in Las Vegas designing and fabricating show sets for Cirque du Soleil. The started doing some home distilling and crossed paths with a gentleman that was building Nevada's first distillery. During their off-hours, they traded free labor for knowledge of commercial distillation and eventually decided to return home to start their own distillery. Their equipment is a hodge-podge of items sourced from ebay and scrap yards. I ended up with a 1-on-1 tour which was really cool.

Because they don't have any tie-ins with historical Kentucky distillers, they chose to infuse their operation with a bit of Vegas flair. Things like a fortune-telling goldfish, a giant mustache ride, and a swami-style cap for their still. Their bourbon is a bit young - they readily admit that they are selling everything they produce and don't have the luxury right now to hold back any barrels for longer aging. I did pick up a bottle of the oak barrel aged rum and a hazelnut liquor.



The next stop was the Old Pogue Distillery in Mayville KY. This distillery does have bourbon history as the current Master Distiller is a 6th generation member of the Pogue family. Old Pogue was one of the earliest bourbons to be licensed in Kentucky (DSP-KY-3). Mayport was an important bourbon port on the Ohio River for all of Bourbon County and the original distillery was between the river and the current highway. The family lived in a mansion overlooking the distillery. Right up until Prohibition.

The Pogues lost the distillery and the house. But they kept the bourbon recipes and as many of the original bottles of bourbon as they could. In the early 2000's, the family was able to purchase the old homestead and realized a long-term goal by building a micro distillery on the grounds overlooking the original site. They use the original family recipes and distillation techniques but on a much smaller scale.





Both their bourbon and their rye were very good, but bottles for both products are back-ordered (damn Covid!) and they had no bottles for sale. I guess I'll be heading back once they have inventory. A little extra barrel aging won't hurt anything...

July 2nd

My wife had been in Texas for a week and was flying home today. I figured that if I was going into Kentucky to pick her up at the airport, I might as well drive another hour or so and tour two more distilleries!

First up was Hartfield & Company in Paris. This distillery is in an old brick building and utilizes three floors for cooking, fermenting, distillation and aging. The grains are cooked on the third floor, gravity-fed to the fermenting tanks on the second floor, and then gravity-fed to the still and column on the first floor. Aging takes place back on the third floor.







Prohibition had a devastating effect on Bourbon County. Between grain production, milling, distillation, barrel-making and distribution, the majority of people in this region made their wages from bourbon. In the early 2000's the owners decided that there should be a distillery within the current Bourbon County lines and launched into re-creating a pre-prohibition bourbon. Note that the smaller barrels provide for greater surface area of charred oak per gallon than the typical 53-gallon barrels, so a shorter aging process still provides an excellent product. After the tastings, I picked up their bourbon and a bourbon-barrel aged rum.

The last stop on this 'hike' was at Bluegrass Distillers in Lexington. This tour was unique as the we started with the tastings and a detailed explanation on the various flavor notes found in bourbons. And this is where I tried their Pickleback Bourbon which is finished in pickle barrels. I was disappointed that they were out of their blue corn bourbon but was able to walk away with a bottle of their Toasted Oak offering. I enjoyed the different content of this tour and would like to go back when they have more offerings in stock.

It appears that the 'bourbon' name is both a legal definition and a marketing tool. It was 1964 when Congress came up with the legal definition I listed above. That prevents any foreign competition. But there are spirits such as Jack Daniels that could be sold as bourbons. The pre-barrel charcoal filtering performed on Jack Daniels whiskey doesn't violate the definition of bourbon. I think the folks in Lynchburg TN decided that there was no reason to get lumped in with Kentucky bourbon whiskey from a marketing standpoint. Google confirms that Jack Daniels didn't want to be called a bourbon.

George Dickel seems to want to play both sides of the discussion - competing with Jack Daniels as a Tennessee whiskey but also offering a bourbon to get a toe into that market.

Sweet Mash vs. Sour Mash

Very few distillers use a sweet mash in the production of their bourbon. A sweet mash does not introduce any remnants of a previously fermented bach of grains. This process requires very close monitoring (time and temperature) during fermentation to prevent the yeast from burning out and stopping the production of alcohols. Preservation Distilling uses a sweet mash process that works with their limited production.

Sour mash is when a small quantity of the fermented mash from the last batch is added to the new batch. Pretty much the same thing as sourdough bread starter. The sour mash adds some consistency to the process by stabilizing the fermentation process - much better for large batches.

Speaking of 'small batch', I don't believe that there is a set definition. If you asked one of the high volume distillers how they define 'small batch', you will probably be directed to their legal department.

Hike #4 - July 23rd, 2022

It was a good day to return to Lexington to tour the last three distilleries in town. First up was the Alltech Lexington Distillery & Brewery. Yes - that's right. This is the only distillery / brewery combo on the Bourbon Trail.



We started with the history of Alltech and how the Irish founder (Pearse Lyons) diversified from agricultural enzymes into brewing and distilling. The guy has his PhD in yeast so it wasn't a stretch branching out into fermentation. Next up was a tour of the beer-side of the operation and samplings of their various Kentucky Ales. I had previously tried (and liked) the Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. Mrs. Tortoise used all four of her free drink tokens at the beer bar and voted their Tangerine Cream Ale as her favorite. It was interesting that all of the cooking and fermentation happens in the brewery building. When a batch is destined for distilling, it's piped across the street.



After crossing the street to the distillery, I used my tokens for the Town Branch bourbon, malted whiskey and rye offerings. Good stuff!

Next up was the James E. Pepper Distillery. Col. James E. Pepper was quite the character and found himself in an out of distilling several times before his death. He inherited the family's original distillery in Versailles KY but lost it in bankruptcy. Interestingly, that distillery is still in operation and now sells products under the Woodford Reserve name. The current distillery is at the site where Pepper built his next distillery. However, the current distillery is a craft distillery and uses only a fraction of the original footprint. The rest of the site has been developed into restaurants, bars, and other supporting businesses. Pepper successfully petitioned the Commonwealth of Kentucky to get their original DSP-KY-5 (Distilled Spirits Producer) number for use in their current products.







We all owe a debt of gratitude to James Pepper. Back in the day, distillers were not allowed to bottle their own products per Kentucky law. Bottlers had a nasty habit of diluting bourbon with water then using things like charred animal bones and tobacco spit to darken the liquid. Pepper fought the Kentucky legislature and got the law repealed. Then he introduced a seal on the cork to show that his bourbon had not been altered or tampered with after bottling.

We sampled the white dog moonshine right off the still along with a high proof bourbon directly from a cask. Back in the visitor's center, we also tasted a rye and a blended bourbon in the 90-proof range.

Last up for the day was the Barrel House Distillery, named for the fact that it is fully contained in the original James E. Pepper Distillery barrel / bottling house.



The tour was very factual, but the tastings were generous. They offered their corn-based vodka, straight moonshine, used bourbon barrel aged moonshine, rum, cask-strength used bourbon barrel aged rum and their standard bourbon. They offer a premium wheated bourbon in the fall and spring so I will be back to give that a try. But I did leave with a bottle of the oaked rum to help me pass the time.

All in all, a very good day of hiking on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail!

Call it spitoon contents. The old KY bottling law definitely didn't do anything to protect the consumers or provide a consistent product.

And now, a word about MGP - Midwest Grain Products in Lawrenceville, Indiana. Many bourbon companies either start their operations with distillate from MGP or exclusively utilize MGP distillate for their products. It's much easier to get into the bourbon business if you only have to focus on barreling, aging and bottling.

Angel's Envy is a good example. Before they added distillation capabilities to their Louisville location, Angel's Envy relied on MGP to distill the alcohol for their bourbon. The distillate was aged in new, charred American white oak barrels then post-aged in port wine casks within an Angel's Envy facility. After the brand was well-received and the money started coming in, they added the cooking, fermentation and distilling equipment to their operation.

Old Pogue is also a good example. When the family got back into the bourbon business, they would book a one-day distilling run at MGP using the old family mashbill recipe. Then they would mature the distillate until the bourbon achieved the taste that matched their recollection of the original bourbon bottles retained from Prohibition days. Now they have their own fermenting and distillation equipment.

So if you come across a bourbon with a note on the label stating that the product was distilled in Indiana, it most likely came from MGP. But the real magic happens in the barrel during the maturation process.

Hike #5 - 8/18 - 8/20/2022

This was a whirlwind tour of six distilleries over three days with my bourbon-loving buddy from Florida. He and his wife flew into Cincinnati on Thursday evening and we immediately headed for Second Sight Spirits in Ludlow KY. I toured their operation in early July but one of the owners was kind enough to schedule a private tour for four of us on our way home from the airport. A great way to start off the weekend!

Saturday morning required an early start to drive down to Frankfurt KY for the second tour at Buffalo Trace. We snagged tickets for the Hardhat Expansion Tour - an up-close and personal tour of the production areas and the current expansion activities.





Buffalo Trace chose not to participate in the Kentucky Distillers Association Bourbon Trail marketing, so there is no passport stamp. But as a giant middle finger to the KTA, they offer all of their tours for free. We each purchased the daily allotment of one bottle of Buffalo Trace and the 3-month allotment of EH Taylor Small Batch. In other words, you can visit and buy a bottle of Buffalo Trace every day they are open, but each allocated bourbon (Eagle Rare, Blanton's, etc.) can only be purchased once every 90 days. Keeps the locals from buying up the good stuff in volume. And for reference, only one of the allocated bourbons is sold each day. Another fast fact: the gift shop operates as a retail operation and must buy their bourbons from a distributor. They make it, sell it to a distributor, and buy some back to sell on-site.

Next up was a 25-minute drive to Castle & Key Distillery. It was a happy coincidence that we scored EH Taylor bourbon at Buffalo Trace since Castle & Key was originally the EH Taylor Distillery. Colonel Taylor had his fingers in several ventures back in the day and envisioned this site to be a destination for the rich and famous. He built a train station adjacent to the distillery and put all of the production inside of a castle building. Even the limestone aquifer was covered and shaped like a keyhole since good water was the key to making good bourbon.



The site was abandoned in the 1990's and became completely overgrown. It was sold to a reclamation company that started selling off the building materials and contents. But fortunately, the housing boom bust in 2008 saved most of the buildings. The concrete rickhouse had holes in the walls (light-colored square) where a wrecking ball made for easy removal of the wooden ricking.



At $30 per person, this is the most expensive tour on the Bourbon Trail. But it does take a pile of money to restore the buildings and grounds to their former glory.



Their first two bourbon releases sold out in minutes so I'll have to wait until they have another batch for sale later this year. I did pick up a bottle of their Restoration Rye.

We finished the day at Lexington Distilling and Brewing. It was a re-visit for my wife and I but we still enjoyed it. Especially the addition of their Pumpkin Spice Bourbon Barrel beer to the tasting and gift shop offerings.

I have one bottle of Blathers (love it) that I bought for MSRP at Total Wine. Good, but not worth any more than MSRP.

Last Monday, the BT gift shop had Blanton's. Tuesday, they had Eagle Rare. I was just happy that they had something in addition to the Buffalo Trace when we arrived. Some days they don't get an allocated bourbon from their distributor.

Saturday was a more relaxed tour day. We only had an hour drive to Boone County Distilling in Florence KY - just minutes from the airport.



Historically, there was distilling in Boone County through 1910. This site in an industrial park was opened in 2015 to bring back distilling to Boone County. The distillery tour was informative and included the historical content of the original distillery, but I found the rickhouse part of the tour to be the best part. The first rickhouse fact was on black bourbon mold that forms on the outside of rickhouses from bacteria feeding on the alcohol fumes. Various groups have sued distillers because the mold also grows on nearby houses but all of the suits were dismissed. The mold is non-toxic per the company-paid scientists and has no relation to toxic black mold that is caused by trapped moisture. Many distilleries paint their rickhouses black to hide the mold.



The second rickhouse fact was on barrel leakage. In the rickhouse barrel picture, you can see black stains from barrel leaks. Most of the leaks are self-healing as the bourbon crystallizes with air contact and plugs the leak. If a leak continues, the warehouse staff rotates the offending barrel so that the leak is at the top of the barrel adjacent to airspace.

One interesting note is that Boone County petitioned Kentucky to be able to regain their original district DSP number 8. Unfortunately, another distiller that had been DSP 8 in their district had already claimed the now state-wide number 8. And Four Roses wasn't about to give it up to a micro distiller. So Boone County settled for DSP-20028 and proofs all of their products to a number that ends with 8. They also incorporated an 8 into their logo.

The last stop of the day was at New Riff Distilling. Another re-tour for me but a different tour guide made it a fresh experience.

I have now toured 12 of the 41 stops along the Bourbon Trail and two distilleries that are not on the Trail. Every tour is different and I learn something new each time.

Bourbon Fact of the Day

My tour guide at Buffalo Trace started off my tasting by explaining that all three bourbons on the tasting started with the same secret mashbill of corn and rye. The grains are delivered by the truckload, ground into a fine powder using rolling mills, then cooked with limestone water to start breaking down the starches into sugars. Yeast is added in the fermenter tank to convert the sugars into alcohol, then the resulting low wine (8 - 15% alcohol) is distilled until it reaches a higher proof. The high-proof distillate is what would be referred to as moonshine, white dog, or white lightning.

Getting back to Buffalo Trace, they eventually have a tank of white dog whiskey and have to decide how they are going to barrel and age it.

• For Buffalo Trace Bourbon, the barrels are aged for a minimum of six years and are stored in the middle floors of a rickhouse.
  
• For Eagle Rare, the barrels are aged for a minimum of 10 years and are stored in the lower floors of a rickhouse.
  
• For EH Taylor Small Batch Bottled-In-Bond, the barrels are aged for a minimum of four years in the middle and upper floors of a federally bonded warehouse. Most folks believe that EH Taylor is aged much longer than the required four years.
  

So same mashbill, same new American white oak charred barrel but different rickhouse aging times and storage locations. Upper floors get more heat (since heat rises), and lower floors pick up earthy-notes like a box that has been stored in the cellar for years. The one factor that wasn't divulged is if the same level of char was used for all three bourbon barrels. That's a question for my next tour at Buffalo Trace.

Archaic and interesting.

The 1897 Bottled-In-Bond Act was passed by Congress to ensure the purity of bourbon.

Nine years later, the FDA was created to monitor the food we eat and the medicines we ingest.

They say that it's an effort to protect the local booze shops. If distilleries could sell direct without a middleman markup, it would theoretically hurt Beaver Liquors in downtown Louisville.



The variations from state to state are maddening. Blue Laws, limits on time of day for purchases, etc. In Pennsylvania, all liquor has to be sold in a state-owned and state-run store. In Ohio, the state government buys the liquor but distributes it to privately owned state-licensed stores. And I can buy low-proof offerings like Bailey's Irish Cream or pre-mixed margaritas at the supermarket along with beer and wine. Pennsylvania had a law on the books until a few years ago that any retailer that sold gasoline could not sell beer and wine. Obviously, the only way for someone to drink and drive is to do it right after they fill their tank. Another stupid law was that grocery stores couldn't sell beer or wine unless they had indoor dining. My local grocery store added two or three tiny cafe tables near the deli to comply.

Some of the small distilleries can only distribute in a small number of states. And usually, Ohio isn't on the list. But I can receive shipments from wine.com. If I recall correctly, they were not allowed to ship to a Pennsylvania address.

One of these days, I'll drive 30 miles west into Indiana and figure out their liquor laws.

Hike #6 12/16/2022

My sister was visiting from Italy and wanted to partake in a few tours. Today, we visited Woodford Reserve and Buffalo Trace.

The first stop was at Buffalo Trace to pick our 13:00 tour wristbands and hit the gift shop to purchase the day's allocated bourbon. I would have been thrilled if the allocated offering was Eagle Rare. I was even more thrilled to see that it was Blanton's. My wife, sister and niece wondered why we had to stop there first. Simple - the shelves were bare when we returned at 12:30 for our tour. I love it when a plan comes together.

It was a short drive over to Woodford Reserve. Lots of distilling history here as Eli Pepper started distilling on his farm back in 1812. Most recently, it was the Labrot and Graham Distillery before being purchased by Brown & Foreman (Old Forester & Jack Daniels) in 1994 and renamed as Woodford Reserve in 2005.



Woodford Reserve uses cypress fermentation tanks and Scottish pot stills for all of their production. Instead of running the distillate through the same pot still three times, they run them in series so each bank of three stills produces finished distillate that goes directly to barreling.








The post-tour tasting was back at the visitors center and was informative. My sister gets her Woodford Reserve through Amazon Italy but now she has seen where it is produced, aged and bottled.

The Buffalo Trace tour was pretty much the same one I had in August but this one took us into one of the rickhouses for an opportunity to breathe in the angel's share. A nice ending before the tasting then the 2-hour drive back to Cincy.

I think I finally have the Buffalo Trace tour and allocated bourbon purchase procedures fully figured out.

Tours On the first Tuesday of each month, Buffalo Trace opens up their tour calendar at 09:00. Some local tour companies try to snag up specific tours so they can offer them as part of a package. Saturdays & Sundays only offer the generic Trace Tour. My thought is that your best bet is to look at Monday - Thursday if you have your heart set on one of the other tours. Or be quick on the clicks...

Allocated Bourbons There are locals who show up every day just to buy the allocated bourbon of the day so they can sell it for a profit. Buffalo Trace has two policies to make the process difficult. First, they require all visitors to have a wristband that is linked to an ID before they can make a bourbon purchase in the gift shop. One bottle of Buffalo Trace, Wheatley Vodka, Sazerac Rye and Bourbon Cream are available per person per day. The allocated bourbons (EH Taylor Small Batch, Eagle Rare, Weller Special Reserve and Blanton's) are only available once every 90 days. The cashiers scan your wristband at checkout to confirm.

The parking lot gate opens at 08:00 and lines form for a chance to buy the allocated bourbon. Buffalo Trace posts a sign listing the offerings of the day shortly before 09:00 and we saw people immediately turn around and leave since they were within the 90-day time frame for today's offering.



There had to be 200+ people in the line when I arrived at 08:45. But here's the cool part. If you have a tour reservation any time that day, you get into a different line that gets their wristbands first. And there were BT employees keeping things organized in both lines.

On this last trip, my group purchased our bourbon by 09:15, left to tour Woodford Reserve, and returned at 12:15 for our 13:00 tour. All of the Blanton's was sold out. But here's the second cool part: after our tour and tasting, our guide informed our group that there was a secret stash of Blanton's just for afternoon tour members. Anyone who missed out on the gift shop inventory got to buy a bottle. I asked if the secret stash was always offered and my guide said no. Arriving early is always the safe bet.

February tours are open for booking at 09:00 on 1/3/2023.

12/30/2022

I snuck in two more tours on the Friday before New Year's Eve.

The first was at Kentucky Artisan Distilling (KAD) just outside of Louisville.



Kentucky Artisan is the home base for Jefferson's Bourbon as well as a few house brands. Jefferson's is an interesting story. Their founder started off by purchasing various finished barrels of bourbons from large distilleries then blending them together to meet his intended flavor profile. This is still the case today with KAD handling the blending and bottling. They are distilling and barreling bourbon for future bottles of Jefferson's but everything on the shelves today has been produced elsewhere.



Jefferson's biggest claim to fame is their 'Ocean' brand. Shipping containers filled with partially-aged bourbon barrels are shipped all around the world on container vessels where the ship's motion is transferred to the bourbon inside the barrels. The result is an accelerated aging process that also is claimed to impart a salty caramel flavor into the bourbon. I've enjoyed two bottled from Voyage 23 and am a fan.

Heading back towards Cincinnati, I stopped into Neeley Family Distillery just outside the gates of Kentucky Speedway.



Royce Neeley is an 8th generation distiller and the operation prides itself on doing things "the old way". There is documented history of Neeley family members being charged with murder for killing Federal agents and competing moonshiners in the hollows of northern Kentucky. The Neeley feud with the Allen family is right up there with the Hatfields and McCoys. The history video at the beginning of the tour was very entertaining to say the least.



NFD produces three bourbons, a large variety of flavored moonshines and absinthe. Believe it or not, their absinthe has won double-gold at the San Francisco Spirits Competition twice. And they just finished refurbishing an absinthe still purchased from a Belgian distillery so they can use authentic historical equipment for their new batches.



The tour was informative, but the hour-long tasting was the memorable part. Each tour participant received eight sample containers and had to choose which of the 12 products to sample. The absinthe is offered last as the strong botanicals render your taste buds useless for enjoying any other spirits afterwards.

If you are ever traveling I-71 from Louisville to Cincinnati, I strongly recommend taking a 2-hour stop at the Neeley Family Distillery.