How to dive into bourbon
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Centre in the Frazier Heritage Museum downtown is a great spot to begin. Orient your self to the state’s bourbon scene by searching its numerous displays, including printed maps, preview videos, diagrams and artifacts. Concierges can aid you with your itinerary (excursions and tastings ought to be booked in advance).
The metropolis also has downtown distilleries inside of a mile of the welcome centre, this sort of as Angel’s Envy Distillery, a smaller-scale procedure, and the Kentucky Peerless Distilling Co., which has been earning whiskey due to the fact the late 1880s. Both of those supply fascinating excursions and, of training course, tastings.
To visit distilleries outside the house Louisville, travel (or just take a taxi or Uber or Lyft), or e-book one of the full-day distillery excursions offered by Mint Julep Excursions, setting up at $179 for every person. Its various tours — which involve both of those preset and custom choices — accommodate from one particular to 100-in addition people (utilizing all the things from personal autos to buses).
The preset types normally depart at 7:45 a.m. and hit three distilleries, though none stops at Buffalo Trace or Woodford Reserve, two of the most well known distilleries.
It is quick to strike them both of those without a tour, however (they are an hour’s drive east of Louisville off Interstate 64, and just 20 minutes aside). At Buffalo Trace, in Frankfort, readers get an in-depth lesson on the aging procedure, and why some manufacturers, such as the company’s Pappy Van Winkle, value what they do — consider provide and demand from customers and how extensive they’re aged. At Woodford Reserve, in Versailles, the experience is far more major and insightful. The distillery tour is followed by an personal tasting with a bourbon professional who guides people as a result of tasting notes, such as banana or chocolate strawberry.
Extra excellent stops on the path consist of Heaven Hill’s Bernheim Distillery, America’s major unbiased, relatives-owned-and-operated bourbon distillery. It has been producing the spirit for more than 80 yrs. And if you do not intellect a little bit of a push, there’s Maker’s Mark, just one of the most significant names in bourbon, found 58 miles southeast of Louisville, close to Loretto, Kentucky.