Bourbon pilgrims from every corner of the country — along with a couple who traveled all the way from Australia — belly up to the tasting-room bar after their tour of the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Vicky, a high-spirited tour guide with an infectious laugh, coaches the group through a tasting of a single-barrel bourbon: first, smell the whiskey with parted lips to get the full effect of the aroma, then take a sip. “Are you feeling the finish? Are you feeling it go down?” she asks. “I like to call that a ‘Kentucky hug.’”
That expression just as easily describes the warm embrace the Bluegrass State has extended to whiskey enthusiasts making the Bourbon Trail circuit. Having bounced back with a vengeance from a decades-long lull, bourbon is the comeback kid of the spirits world, and 95% of it is made in Kentucky. The Commonwealth has responded with a boom of bourbon-related attractions that encourage fans of the corn-based whiskey to delve deeper into this uniquely American spirit.
Distilleries scattered around the central part of the state have thrown open their doors, enticing bourbon buffs with new visitor centers and an expanded array of tour and tasting options. For some folks, hitting two or three distilleries before heading off to the races in Louisville or Lexington might be plenty, while hardcore whiskey hounds could spend a week on the trail, soaking up all the nuances of mash bills, yeast strains and charred barrels.
Louisville is the gateway to bourbon country for most, and it’s a fitting place to start. The bourbon business got its start here when Evan Williams founded Kentucky’s first commercial distillery on the banks of the Ohio. In late 2013, Heaven Hill — the distilling company whose flagship bourbon bears the name of the pioneering distiller — opened the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience on Louisville’s Whiskey Row, the historic stretch of Main Street that was once the nerve center of the city’s whiskey industry.
It’s easy to find: Just look for the five-story-tall bourbon bottle pouring into a four-foot-tall glass behind a wall of windows. On the tours, immersive multimedia presentations tell the story of Evan Williams and the birth of Kentucky distilling. A giant flow chart illustrates the production process. Among the particulars: Bourbon must be made from at least 51% corn, it must be distilled to no less than 160 proof and it must be put in new charred oak barrels at no more than 125 proof.
At the end of the tour, guides dispense fun facts and bourbon samples. Vicky informs her group that there are more aging barrels of bourbon in Kentucky — nearly five million — than there are people or horses. “I tell my dad that’s why it took me six years to get through the University of Kentucky,” she laughs. “I didn’t stand a chance with all the bourbon!”
About an hour’s drive east, in the heart of horse country, a cluster of distilleries fans out in the rolling hills around the sleepy town of Versailles. Woodford Reserve is a clear contender for the honor of Kentucky’s most scenic distillery. Nestled in a wooded glen a few miles north of town, it occupies the historic Labrot & Graham distillery. On a tour bus making the short drive to the main distillery buildings from the recently renovated visitor center, a guide with the no-nonsense manner of a retired schoolteacher says that horses and whiskey both thrive on the region’s limestone-filtered, calcium-rich water. They call it “sweet water,” she explains, because of its lack of iron.
In the oldest of the distillery’s limestone buildings, dating back to 1838, stand three enormous Scottish pot stills. (Woodford Reserve is unusual for distilling its whiskey three times, a practice more typical of Irish whiskey than bourbon.) Outside the still house, filled barrels roll on gently sloping rails down to stone aging warehouses. An intoxicating aroma greets a tour group entering a warehouse, where the barreled bourbon undergoes the seasonal expansion and contraction cycles that lend it its amber color and distinctive vanilla, toffee and spice flavors. The warehouse is heated several times over the course of a winter, the guide says, to accelerate the natural maturation process.
Although only 20 miles to the east, 2-year-old Town Branch Distillery’s urban setting in central Lexington seems a world apart from Woodford Reserve’s bucolic surroundings. The distillery has a symbiotic relationship with the brewery across the street (both are owned by Irish billionaire Pearse Lyons). The brewery supplies the fermented mash from which the whiskey is distilled. And after the whiskey is finished aging, the barrels are used to season the brewery’s ale.
Town Branch’s still room looks more like a showroom than the heart of a working distillery. A gleaming glass wall frames two copper pot stills. In addition to bourbon, Town Branch makes a malt whiskey, akin to a single-malt Scotch, and a straight rye. Tastings finish with a hot drink featuring Bluegrass Sundown, a coffee-infused, bourbon-based liqueur. “This is like an Irish coffee with a bluegrass twist,” says master distiller Mark Coffman as he serves the cream-topped concoction to a visitor.
If compared to other bourbon brands Town Branch is a mere toddler and Woodford Reserve still a teenager, Four Roses is a veritable Methuselah. A 15-minute drive west of Versailles, the distillery dates back to 1888 and even thrived during Prohibition, offering a popular “medicinal” bourbon. But it’s hit some rough patches along the way. After Seagram bought the brand in the early 1940s, it converted the domestic product into a bottom-shelf whiskey blended with neutral grain spirits (imagine a whiskey-flavored vodka) while continuing to export Four Roses bourbon to Japan and Europe.
It was only after Jim Rutledge became master distiller in 1995 that the bourbon slowly started reappearing on American shelves. “All we have to do is find a way to get people to taste it,” he recalls thinking at the time, as he shows a visitor around the unusual Mission-style distillery. “They’ll begin to realize that this is not that rotgut blend.” Soon after Japanese brewing company Kirin purchased the distillery in 2002, Four Roses released a premium single-barrel bourbon to great acclaim. It was followed shortly by the launch of a small-batch bourbon, blended from four of the brand’s 10 proprietary recipes. Rutledge says that Four Roses’ sales have been growing rapidly, with an increase of 71% in 2013 over the previous year: “It’s been an amazing comeback.”
Some 45 minutes west of Versailles on the Bluegrass Parkway sits Bardstown, chosen as the most beautiful small town in America a couple years ago in a contest sponsored by Rand McNally and USA Today. It’s also the self-proclaimed Bourbon Capital of the World, and each September, more than 50,000 bourbon aficionados descend upon the town for the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival.
On the south end of town, overlooking what had been the site of the Heaven Hill distillery until it was destroyed by a massive fire in 1996 (operations have since moved to the old Bernheim distillery in Louisville), the Bourbon Heritage Center is a convenient one-stop shop for boning up on bourbon facts and lore. Exhibits shine a light on key figures of bourbon history: Evan Williams, of course, but also Elijah Craig, the Baptist minister credited with the idea of charring the insides of bourbon barrels. Interactive displays literally illuminate the various steps of the distillation process. The “mash bill tour” circles through one of the 20 nearby aging warehouses before doubling back for a tasting session — conducted inside a giant barrel — of a trio of Heaven Hill whiskeys made from three different mash bills with varying proportions of corn, wheat and rye. Heaven Hill remains a family-owned business, an anomaly in an era of corporate consolidation in the spirits industry. But another distillery just a stone’s throw south on Loretto Road takes familial involvement to an entirely different level. The Willetts started their namesake distillery on the family farm just a few years after the repeal of Prohibition. After a brief shuttering in the early 1980s, the distillery was purchased by Even Kulsveen, the son-in-law of one of the company’s founders, who began bottling bourbon produced elsewhere under a variety of labels (including Willett).
Whiskey distilling was revived at Willett two years ago under the direction of Kulsveen’s son, Drew, with his sister and brother-in-law pitching in on the administrative and marketing fronts. Drew’s wife, Janelle, greets visitors stopping by the gift shop for a tour and a taste.
Sometimes he likes to bring his young son to the distillery to watch the bubbles dance in the open fermentors. “It’s like a farm without the animals,” Drew says. Numbering among the growing ranks of craft distilleries in Kentucky, Willett pumps out some 20 barrels of bourbon and rye whiskey a day. (Heaven Hill, by comparison, makes 950 barrels a day.)
Farther down the road is Maker’s Mark, a distillery that has gone through several ownership changes, the latest being its recent acquisition by Japan’s Suntory. Yet it, too, is a family affair. There has always been a Samuels at the helm: first founder Bill Sr., then Bill Jr. and now Bill Jr.’s son Rob. The distillery itself hardly seems to have changed at all, despite having doubled and tripled (once the expansion now underway is complete) in production capacity. With its red-shuttered Victorian buildings arrayed along the banks of a lazy creek, it looks almost too quaint to be real.
“We’re sticking with what we know works,” master distiller Greg Davis tells a visitor as they stroll around the grounds of the National Historic Landmark property, where commercial distilling began in 1805. “We’re not into the new technology, we’re not into trying to be more efficient. We’re into making sure that we preserve what we had here before us.”
Entering one of the older warehouses, Davis points out that Maker’s Mark is the only distillery that still rotates its barrels between the upper and lower floors to compensate for the significant temperature differential. When the visitor comments on the wonderful aroma from the evaporating whiskey, known as the angel’s share, Davis laughs. “I keep thinking that’s going to be my pass into heaven,” he says. “They’re going to say, ‘C’mon in, Greg. Thanks for all the good times. We’ll pardon you for everything else you’ve done.’”
Betting on Brandy
An entrepreneurial couple takes on Kentucky. Building a brandy distillery in the heart of bourbon country might seem like a risky proposition. But anyone contemplating betting against Joe and Lesley Heron, owners of the new Copper & Kings brandy distillery in Louisville, better take a close look at their track record. Originally from South Africa and until recently Minneapolis residents, the Herons successfully created, built and sold two big-time beverage brands — Nutrisoda (Pepsi) and Crispin Cider (MillerCoors) — before pumping all their proceeds into brandy.
There’s method to the Herons’ madness in making brandy in Kentucky. For starters, the company that built their custom brandy stills is just up the street. “The cooperage is all down here,” Joe notes, “so you can get the barrels.” And there’s the engineering expertise, he adds: “What people don’t see is all the engineering that goes into a distillery. There’s a ton of pipes and pumps and boilers.”
For raw material, the Herons ship in California wine made from classic varieties of brandy grapes: Muscat, Chenin Blanc and Colombard. Each has its own distinct personality. “Muscat is the girl who dances on the bar,” Joe jokes. “Chenin Blanc is the girl in the pretty black dress. Colombard is the girl in the pretty black dress dancing on the bar.”
Copper & Kings’ stills are topped with distinctive onion-shaped domes that gently condense the vapors rising from the boiling vessel. “Whiskey is a pretty robust distillate,” he says. “Brandy is way more delicate. It’s really about maintaining nuance and varietal character.”
This gentle nurturing continues down in the barrel cellar, where the temperature fluctuations are more subdued than in a standard bourbon rick house. The brandy is mostly aged in used bourbon barrels, though some is put into cognac, sherry and port barrels.
You don’t need to spend much time with Joe to realize he’s really into music. He’s covered the wall of a gallery space in the distillery with black-and-white photos of rock and blues legends, and he’s even named their pot stills after women in Bob Dylan songs. So it’s not completely surprising to learn that he plays music to the aging brandy through sub woofers placed throughout the barrel cellar.
“It’s a concept called sonic aging,” he says, explaining that the vibrations from the music enhance the brandy’s interaction with the wood. “We think happy brandy makes good drinking brandy.”
If You Go
LOUISVILLE
Driving down Main Street, you’ll know you’re approaching the 21c Museum Hotel when you spot the giant gilded replica of Michelangelo’s “David” atop an 8-foot-tall pedestal. Inside, contemporary art covers the lobby-level galleries and just about every other conceivable space (including the men’s room just off the lobby). On a recent evening, celebrity chef Bobby Flay and his entourage were spotted holding down a corner of the bourbon-friendly bar adjoining Proof on Main, the hotel’s well-regarded restaurant.
Just across Seventh Street, in a historic cast-iron-fronted building (this part of Louisville has the largest collection of such structures outside New York City’s SoHo, St. Charles Exchange looks like a well-heeled version of a pre-Prohibition saloon. Its bar menu features at least half a dozen bourbon-based cocktails as well as nearly 100 different bourbons. Don’t miss the deviled eggs appetizer, which tweaks the familiar favorite in novel ways.
VERSAILLES
Nestled against a park at the edge of town, The Woodford Inn feels more like a full-service country inn than a small-town bed-and-breakfast. Guests staying in one of the 10 upstairs rooms can start the day with a complimentary full breakfast, head off to tour the nearby distilleries, then come back and relax with a drink and dinner at Addie’s, the inn’s restaurant and bar. Though there are certainly more elegant options on the menu, the pulled-pork sandwich topped with onion straws and coleslaw is hard to beat.
BARDSTOWN
The newest lodging option in the Bourbon Capital of the World is the Bourbon Manor, a bed-and-breakfast in a stately brick plantation home built in 1830. A broad spiral staircase leads up to comfortable guest rooms (all with private baths) named after bourbon drinks. Actual libations are served at the adjacent Bourbon Bar, a renovated tobacco barn. The highlight of breakfast on a recent stay was a sticky bun laced with a tantalizing bourbon sauce. Howard and Dede Keene offer a warm welcome to customers at the Kentucky Bourbon Marketplace, the combination gift shop/liquor store/cocktail bar they opened in 2013 in a 200-year-old building. Made from barrel staves and reclaimed planks, the bar is a cozy spot to sip an expertly made Manhattan.
Instead of trying to choose from the 120 bourbons available at The Rickhouse, a cave-like restaurant in the basement of a former Catholic college building, pick a price point and order a flight of five small pours to sample while tucking into a steak.
Read this article as it appears in the magazine.
