Depending on where you live, you might have never heard of such an alcoholic-like trail. But it’s deserving of its name and your time to adventure to it. The Bourbon Trail is located in Kentucky where 95 percent of bourbon is made. Quite a few of the distilleries decided to create a little challenge for the strong-spirited. The bourbon trail is a series of bourbon tastings all through the winding roads of Kentucky. But remember, #dontdrinkanddrive.
Most people take 3 or 4 days to complete this daunting task, but my mom and I were determined to hit all of the locations in a weekend trip! Lucky for me, I live in Cincinnati in the summer, so getting to Kentucky wasn’t the hard part. We decided to do the trail a little backward and start in Lexington at the Town Branch Distillery. The cool thing about Town Branch is it’s also part of the Craft Beer Tour. Winning! At each of these tours they explain the process of how their bourbon is made and what makes them unique against the rest. With Town Branch, we were given four tasting tokens between their bourbon and their beer. When we saw how big the samples were, we all of a sudden realized why people rented drivers for this tour. There was no way we could sample this much at each distillery! After the tour we took our picture to document it and were on our way to Versailles, Kentucky. (Pro tip, Versailles is pronounced the Kentuckian way. So ditch your middle school education and don’t say it like the Versailles Treaty).
Other than the funky pronunciation, Versailles is probably the most beautiful old Kentucky town you will ever see. White picket fences, grazing horses, and beautifully ordained stables, it’s surely a sight to see. But don’t stare too long! The roads are a little narrow (but not as narrow as the roads to Maker’s Mark, more about that later). After driving in between all of the old horse farms we finally arrived at the Woodford Reserve. Unfortunately, we didn’t have tour reservations for this one. But that didn’t stop us from taking pictures! Now before this voyage, I knew approximately 1% about bourbon. And that was, all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. So when we arrived, and we saw these jail like buildings, I was very perplexed! Only to find out that all of the distilleries house these weird dirty looking jails known as rick houses where the bourbon ages. After a couple pictures of these weird looking buildings, we hopped back in the car and headed to a few other distilleries. The last one of the day was at Maker’s Mark. Now just to understand how tucked Maker’s mark is, imagine driving down a road the same width as your car. No shoulder, no railings, just some shrubbery…oh, and you’re on a hillside. It’s so fun! Until someone is coming the other direction and all you wish for is the power to teleport!
The tour starts by this beautiful old Victorian house, most likely where the William’s family lived. Unfortunately, it was literally 100 degrees outside and the first building was not air conditioned. Luckily, we had the best tour guide ever and the tastings at the end were in air conditioning!
Now the coolest part of the trip was my mom’s golden ticket. Oh yes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets bourbon. She had signed up to be a Maker’s Mark Ambassador 7 years ago, and finally got her ticket to hand dip her own bottle! Their ambassador program is completely free (yes, you should look into that). And each Christmas they send you little gifts like ear muffs for you bottle. Overall, Maker’s Mark was my favorite tour. While bourbon is still a little too strong for me, Maker’s Mark origins were one worth tasting. And I can now say I am a proud Maker’s Mark Ambassador.
The second half of the trip was in Louisville, Kentucky. When we arrived later that afternoon we were able to snag a room at The Brown Hotel. The inside of this hotel looks like it’s straight out of the early 20thcentury, completely unchanged. We cleaned up and walked down to Fourth Street Live, which is an open street converted to a covered venue. There are all of these great open patio restaurants to eat at and people watch. And that’s always the best part since Louisville is a random hot spot for Bachelor(ette) parties.
The next morning we were ready and off to the races! I got to take a selfie with a metal statue of Jim Beam. And at Bulleit Distillery, I was able to snap a picture with 1000 barrels of whiskey behind me. It was definitely one for the books.
We ended the tour in downtown Louisville at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. We decided to do their tour since it was our last stop. And we are glad we did! Not only was there bourbon tastings, they gave us a bourbon truffle!
All in all, this was a bucket list item checked off. We got all of our stamps in our little bourbon trail passport. And I have gained not only the invaluable knowledge that bourbon has to be 51% corn, but a t-shirt to prove my accomplishment.
