Mixed Results on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour

One of the things I like to do in Kentucky is visit distilleries. To this end, when I heard a couple years ago that the Kentucky Bourbon Trail was organizing an offshoot passport program for craft distillers, I was not only intrigued, but excited. I owe my entire love of whiskey to one of the founding members of this tour (MB Roland) and so the very first opportunity I had to pick up a passport, I did. The reward is a julep cup. I really love free stuff.

My first stop was the Willett Distillery in Bardstown, KY. The Kulsveen family has been selling amazing bourbon out of this facility for many years. The current craft distillery is relatively new though. So new that they only recently released the first product distilled there, a two year old rye. This is a beautiful place. I highly recommend stopping in for a tour. (I did a review of my first visit back in 2012, though I know some things have changed in intervening time).

The second stop on my Craft Tour experience was at Old Pogue. Old Pogue was as much of a history tour as it was a distillery tour. And I loved that about it. Good history, good bourbon, a pretty drive. It hit all the right notes for me. (I did a separate review for this one as well.)

Barrel House Distilling was kind of an impromptu stop for me. I was trying to get over the disappointment that was Town Branch and found I had just a little time to kill before my planned drive to the Party Source to do some shopping. They were literally minutes away from where I was. Barrel House Distilling is located in the barrel house of the old James E. Pepper distillery on Manchester Street in Lexington. I was a bit unsure what to expect as I drove up to what looked like an abandoned building. But, ever the adventurer, I parked the car and made my way to the door. 

Upon entering I was greeted by Noah Brown, Operations Manager for the company. There was no one else there so even though we didn't have enough time for a full tour, we chatted a bit about what they were working on. I saw the still, some of the experiments they were conducting and did a tasting. Along the way, I decided I needed to do a little shopping before heading out of town and bought a bottle of rum. All in all, I found the place fascinating and need to get back to do the full tour.

Fast forward almost a year between stops in my journey to complete the passport and you'll find me driving southwest from Elizabethtown toward Bowling Green in search of a visit to Corsair Artisan. Corsair is one of those places that I've admired for a while. They literally wrote the book on experimental whiskey recipes. And while I've never had the opportunity to buy one of their liquid products, I do own the book. And have enjoyed it the numerous times I've read it. 

Corsair is located just off of a lovely little park/commercial area in Bowling Green. The space they are in is beautiful and spaceous in a manner that suggests that it had a previous life, maybe light industrial or retail. (A little searching of the internet suggests that my theory on the retail is correct.) Exposed brick and polished wood floors abound in the gift shop and tasting area. I have a feeling I may be stopping here again.

Paul and Merry Beth Tomaszewski at MB Roland Distillery are two very fine folks that I consider friends. I try to either stop in for a visit or meet up with them every time I pass near their place. The distillery is on the grounds of an old Amish farm just a mile or two north of I-24 in Southwestern Kentucky. Tours are available (and I would encourage you to take one), there is a gift shop and tasting room and several times throughout the summer they host a concert series named Pickin' On The Porch at the distillery. If you visit, you will not be disappointed. Great people that make great products.

I will admit to bias, but I love the stuff they make. I currently have bottles of their bourbon, white dog, Kentucky Black Dog, Pink Lemonade and St. Elmo's Fire on my shelf (or in my fridge). 

I just posted a review of Limestone Branch Distillery last week. But I will give you the 30 second synopsis. Great people making tasty products. Visit them next time you are near Lebanon. You can team it up with a visit to Independent Stave's Kentucky Cooperage and Maker's Mark if you wish.

And since that was my last stop, I got my julep cup. It was smaller than I expected. And had some rust/discoloration on it. Disappointing, but I’m not one to complain to loudly about how my free thing isn’t perfect.

Because I picked my passport up fairly early in the life of this endeavor, my passport only had seven distilleries on it. There are currently two more and someday soon I hope to visit those as well. But wait, you might be saying, you've only listed six above? You are correct. I couldn't bring myself make this next one look nice.

You see, I find people that use women as accessories to be offensive and I go out of my way to not give them money. This is the only weapon I have in the fight to get companies to treat women as if they are equal human beings worthy of equal respect. In this case, in order to get my stamp, I had pay up. You see, the only way to get a stamp is to go to the distillery. The only way to go to the distillery is to buy a $7 ticket. You are free to make your own choices, but I won't be visiting here again. 

I'm going to be a little judgmental here. Silver Trail is reason that I can't recommend participating in the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour passport program. I think that every other one of the distilleries that I visited are worth visiting in their own right. They make great products and you absolutely should visit them all. But Hardin is very far out of the way, the company at least presents itself as misogynistic, and it will cost you $7 per person to get your stamp. I recommend saving that money. Maybe spend it at one of the other distilleries to buy…oh, I don't know...a non-rusty julep cup?

A Pair of Wheat Whiskeys from Heaven Hill: Bernheim Original & Parker's Heritage

I am a 38 year old man. My dog has been aged for a minimum of two years. My wife is…

…yeah. My wife is NAS. That’s No Age Statement for those of you who are not versed in geeky acronyms. And much like my wife, many whiskeys have recently chosen to remove their age statements. It’s due to a lot of factors, but the main one seems to be a decided lack of stocks of an adequate age. 

So in an era when age statements are falling faster than the leaves outside my house, it would be big news if someone actually added an age statement to their bottle. It would mean not only that they had adequate stocks of that particular whiskey, but that they foresaw that they would continue to have it for as much of the future as is foreseeable. Plus, why bother? NAS whiskey is selling fine.

But, in spite of all that, that’s what Heaven Hill recently did to their Bernheim Wheat Whiskey. Bottles bearing a large, yet slightly oddly worded, “7 Years Aged” have recently begun to work their way through retail channels. I have yet to see it in Minnesota so when I saw a bottle down in Kentucky bearing the age statement, I knew I needed to buy it. If for no other reason than I like to reward good behavior.

Positive Reinforcement People!

Bernheim Original Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey, 7 Years Aged

Purchase Info: $28.99 for a 750 mL at Liquor Barn, Louisville, KY

Details: 45% ABV, Aged 7 Years

Nose: Sweet cotton candy, pears, fleeting hints of peanuts

Mouth: Sweet with a black pepper tingle and vitamin or mineral notes

Finish: Gentle burn. Continues the palate with lingering sweetness along with the black pepper and mineral notes.

Thoughts: This is pleasant though uninteresting. It can take a little water, but not much. I like it but wouldn’t want it for every pour. I’d love to see that age statement creep up even further.

That last statement is something that I’d heard almost every time that I talked to someone about Bernheim. It’s the common refrain: a higher proof and more age would make this perfect. And I’d say in this case, they might be right. Lucky for me, shortly after I got home from Kentucky I got the chance to see for myself if common knowledge was correct.

While I was in Bardstown for BourbonFest last month, Heaven Hill released this year’s Parker’s Heritage Collection to their gift shops. It is a 13 year old cask strength wheat whiskey along the lines of the Bernheim. Just older. And higher proof. I missed it in both the Even Williams Experience and in the Bourbon Heritage Center gift shops. The Bourbon Heritage Center by mere minutes. 

Things take a little longer to get to Minnesota some times so when I started to see tweets from local liquor stores showing that they had this year’s PHC I started making my rounds. Many were holding it for raffles or events, but one new comer to our market doesn’t believe in that. They just put it on the shelf. And I happened to walk in looking for a six pack of beer at just the right time. 

Parker’s Heritage Collection: Original Batch Wheat Whiskey

Purchase Info: $109.99 Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 13 years old, 63.7% ABV, minimum 51% wheat mashbill

Nose: Dark brown sugar and caramel, leather and bready notes.

Taste: Sweet caramel, but hot on the palate. Cinnamon red hot candies, mint and ripe fruit.

Finish: Long, rich and warm. This one hangs around for a while.

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Thoughts: This is a fantastic whiskey! A little hot without water, but settles down. At $110 I would seriously consider getting another if I saw it. But at that price I will probably only consider it. It’s just under my price ceiling for a bottle of whiskey. I’m happy to have bought it once, don’t know if I can bring myself to do so again.

Since I had a little of each left in my tasting glasses after this, I decided to try one more thing. 

Parker’s Heritage Wheat and Bernheim Wheat in a 50/50 blend

Details: My math puts this at 108.7° proof (54.35% ABV)

Nose: Brown sugar, red hot candies, ripe fruit. Shows a lot of the Parker’s in the nose.

Mouth: Thick mouthfeel. More so than either separately. Sweet brown sugar and baking spices.

Finish: Gentle burn that lasts a decent length of time. Sweetness mixed with spice.

Thoughts: I think I like this better than either alone. The Parker’s is awesome, both in flavor and in power. This is a bit more approachable without being boring. It is sweet but balanced with spice. I’d drink this everyday if they released it.

A Visit to Limestone Branch Distillery

For a bourbon fan, no trip to Kentucky is complete without making a few stops to visit the place where your favorite whiskey is made. Odds are though, that your favorite whiskey is not made in Lebanon, KY. At least, not yet. Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon, KY sells sugar shine in unaged, flavored, or (as of last month) aged varieties.

Sugar Shine is a clear unaged spirit, typically made from a combination of sugar and corn. Limestone Branch's version follows that tradition, being made from a mash of 50% corn and 50% cane.

As you pull into the parking lot, the first thing you see on the side of the building is a large Moon Pie sign. One of the products they produce is a Moon Pie flavored moonshine that, my wife tells me, is scarily close to the real thing in flavor. I'll have to take her word for it as I have never developed a taste for Moon Pies due to an aversion to marshmallows. 

You enter the building into the gift shop and are warmly greeted and offered a tour. We accepted and since we were a bit early, we passed the time with a trip to the tasting bar to try some of the products. After trying a few we wandered around the gift shop for a little bit deciding which of the products we couldn't live without. 

I have to mention one thing about the gift shop. It had the most ingenious ceiling I've ever seen. It's a metal roof. Being such, it's bound to get hot if there isn't any insulation. So there is insulation, black spray foam looking insulation. You wouldn't think, from reading about it, that this was something worth mentioning. But with the color of the walls, the floor, and all the visible wood around, it reminded me of nothing less than the inside of a charred barrel. It was an amazing effect. 

Once the tour started we were given a little history of the owners. As you might guess from their names, Paul and Steve Beam are part of the whiskey-making Beam clan. And from the little I talked to them, they seem to be a couple of really nice guys. 

After the history lesson, we enter the distillery area itself. This is not a big distillery. In the room is the research lab, mashing, fermenting, distilling, bottling and shipping area. 

This is one of the fermenting areas, if I remember correctly. I believe the tour guide told us that it is repurposed from a winery. In any case, it is really pretty.

This is the still. I hesitate to use the word cute, since that normally has condescending connotations. I don't mean it that way, but it is the best word I can come up with. It's a little over my height. It's little, but it gets the job done.

The condenser, the last part of the distilling process. The product is coming out of the tube below the gauge. As you can see it is clear as water. It won't get color unless it spends some time in a barrel or gets flavored.

This is the entire set up shown in the last three photos. Behind the condenser and the still is the fermenter. There are a few other smaller barrels acting in the same capacity scattered around as well. Behind us is the research lab and over to the right is the rest of the process. 

If you visit Limestone Branch, you may very well be coming from Maker's Mark which is just down the road. And if you do, you may think that you will be disappointed. I want to assure you that you won't be. After you get there, talk to the people, see the passion they have for what they do, and taste the fruit of their labors. You will understand what draws people to visiting craft distilleries. The ones worth visiting are exactly like Limestone Branch—filled with excited, passionate people who make a tasty product and are glad you are there to visit.

Speaking of products, the one I found I couldn't live without was the Apple Cinnamon Pie Sugar Shine. It's their unaged shine flavored with natural flavors. I assume apple and I can see the cinnamon stick since it is still in the bottle.

Limestone Branch Sugar Shine: Apple Cinnamon Pie flavor

Purchase info: $18.99 for a 375 mL at the distillery gift shop

Details: 20% ABV. "Mashed, Fermented, Distilled and Bottled by Limestone Branch Distillers" (I thought that was a nice touch.)

Nose: Apple pie, I swear I can even smell the crust.

Mouth: Thick, syrupy mouthfeel. Leads with cinnamon but transitions to cooked apples as it moves back. 

Finish: Slight lingering bitterness. No burn. 

Thoughts: This is a tasty liqueur. Tastes exactly like a baked apple pie that has been allowed to cool. Even the mouthfeel is correct since the liquid in an apple pie gets nicely thick and syrupy. I like it better cold, but ice waters it down too much. I'm keeping mine in the fridge. And this being October, I can promise that it won't last there until Christmas. It's autumn in a glass.

I urge you to go visit these guys even if you aren't a fan of shine. It's an interesting tour and they now have an aged product that is made from the sugar/corn mash. I got to sample it during Bourbon Fest and remember liking it. 

Chocolate-Bourbon Cocktail Cherries

Door County Wisconsin is famous for it’s cherries. And when my wife and mother-in-law went on a short trip there, I asked them to bring me some back. You see, I had the idea that I wanted to make a yummy garnish for my manhattans and I couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

Chocolate-Bourbon Cocktail Cherries

Chocolate cherry juice

  • 1 cup 100% cherry juice
  • 1 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • pinch of salt

Bring these ingredients to a boil in a small sauce pan. Allow to cool enough to fish out the cinnamon stick (or leave it in if you want more cinnamon influence). 

Cherries

  • 1 pint Cherries (I used tart cherries because I like tart cherries, if you don't you might want to try sweet)

Pit the cherries while the Chocolate Cherry Juice cools. Pack them into a wide-mouth one pint mason jar. 

Alcohol

  • 1 cup Bourbon or Rye (I used a 50-50 mixture of Buffalo Trace and Sazerac Rye)
  • 1 splash of Luxardo Maraschino liqueur

Once the Chocolate Cherry Juice has cooled to below 160° or so add the spirits. Mix well and pour over the cherries. You will have too much, reserve the rest for topping up the jar after the Cherries start to absorb it. Store in the refrigerator, shaking occasionally.

These get better with time. I found that after a month the tartness had mellowed and the chocolate and cinnamon had a more subtle influence that integrated better with the other flavors.

Now, I need a manhattan...

Book Review: Beam, Straight Up by Fred Noe (with Jim Kokoris)

Fred Noe is a man that I have seen on a couple of occasions. Each time it was to get a bottle signed. I didn’t say met, or spoke to, or anything more personal because for some reason, he intimidated me a bit. I’m unsure of the reason. I normally don’t get intimidated by people just because of celebrity. He’s kind of a bigger guy, so maybe that was it. Maybe I just didn’t have anything to say that would be worth taking up his time. He looked busy. He was telling stories. 

After reading this book, I don’t think I’m going to have that problem anymore. I’ll have at least one thing to say: “Sir, I enjoyed your book.” And I did. The book is one story after another with a little history thrown in for good measure. In those stories you learn a little about what makes up the man that is the face of Jim Beam. 

It starts where the story starts, with a little family history. It moves into Fred’s boyhood and his view of Booker, his dad. And then into college where he really used a trunk full of Jim Beam to try to solve every problem. And it turns out that he did have problems, not being the best student. After a stint in college he hits the road with a band and eventually ends up back home working at the distillery. Finally taking over for his dad as the face of the company.

But my synopsis doesn’t do the book any justice. Fred is a masterful story-teller, I’m guessing from years on the road doing just that, and it comes through in the stories he tells and how he tells them. I can almost hear the soft Kentucky accent as I read and laugh. And, oh did I laugh. This is a damn funny book. If you haven’t, go read it. It’s short. You won’t be sorry. (Oh, and my wife seconds this review...so there's that.)

Purchase info: Signed copy, $22.95 at the Jim Beam booth, Kentucky Bourbon Festival

Maker's Mark: Beyond the Mark Tour and Cask Strength Review

While in Kentucky, I took the opportunity to take a more in-depth tour of the Maker's Mark Distillery. It's called the Beyond the Mark tour and it costs $35 per person. There is a maximum of 12 people per session. My wife and I purchased out tickets ahead of time and didn't hear them offer it to anyone while we were waiting so it probably wouldn't hurt to do the same if you choose to do this.

The tour starts the same way they all do. You cross the bridge and walk down the path, pausing along the way to hear a little bit of the history of the distillery from the time the land was cleared until today. We stopped off to peek inside the Quart House, the first liquor store in the state of Kentucky.

Then we enter the distillery proper. Up to this point, the tour isn't that much different from the nine dollar tour. Smaller, more intimate, the tour guide seems more knowledgable (even acknowledging the gentleman who called her on the myth of the recipe origin with a sidelong, "hush, we'll discuss that amongst ourselves"). All in all, Aggie was the best part of the tour up until this point and the one thing that made it different. Everyone gets to see the stills and the tanks as they are beautiful.

Not every tour gets to drink the white dog dipped out of that tank. I don't care for white dog, but this was too cool to pass up.

Of course we saw the fermenters. Lovely old wood. (We even got to see Bill Samuels, Jr. getting interviewed by a tv crew of some sort. He stopped over to say hi and thanked us for touring so that was nice.)

But after that, we got to see the "real" fermenters. Not that the others are fake, but these are the 34 stainless steel ones that make the bulk of the mash.

After the fermenters, it was up the stairs to have a very nice shift supervisor tell us about their yeast. It's hopped to keep the bacteria from taking it over. We got to taste it...tasted like a flat Belgian beer.

Every tour gets to see the printing presses and die cut press that makes the labels.

​But this was the first time I got to enter the Quality Control Building. This was one of the samples. I didn't get to taste it and make notes, though come to think of it, I didn't ask either. The tickets in the background are prizes to incentivize the employees to participate. I guess when you are around bourbon all day, tasting it might be just...work. 

Gotta go through the warehouse. No distillery tour would be complete without that awesome smell.

Watching the folks on the bottling line is always impressive. 

But going through the room where they dip all the specialty items and different wax colors was really cool. It was nice to see the "not-so-polished" side of Maker's. I've worked in factories and always knew it had to be there. I liked seeing it.

No tour would be compete without a tasting. We got the standard four (Under-aged, normal, over aged and 46) plus a sample of the Cask Strength.

The Cask Strength which we toasted to one another under the light of the Dale Chihuly art installation on our way to the Gift Shop.

Maker's Mark Cask Strength

Purchase Info: $39.99 for a 375 mL at the Distillery Gift Shop

Details: 56.6% ABV

Nose: fresh cut apple, spearmint, honey and oak

Mouth: very sweet, cinnamon and clove with distinct floral notes

Finish: good, long warmth that sits in the chest and a sweetness that hangs around, but then transitions to sharpness.

Thoughts: This is Maker's just stronger and more concentrated. It's fabulous and well worth the equivalent of $80 for a 750 mL when compared to other cask strength offerings. It's very drinkable and I like it more than either regular Maker's or Maker's 46. 

This whiskey was money well spent and the tour even more so. I gathered a lot of knowledge from a very good tour guide. I got to see places and have experiences that I didn't normally get to have and got to geek out just a little bit. I'd recommend both.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2014

I used to be a “try-every-bourbon-you-can” sort of guy. I’d buy one of everything on the shelf over the course of a year. I’d long for those bottles that were featured on the blogs, but that I didn’t get to try. I traded samples. I waited in lines. I searched stores (sometimes going from one to another). I attended events. Over time, I tried a lot of bourbon that way. 

But as I settled into my bourbon journey for the long-haul, I stopped trying so hard to get the “next big thing.” I still attend events, but I do it more to talk with fellow bourbon lovers than I do to taste what’s in the glass (though that is a nice bonus). But I don’t try very hard to get most of the “Limited Edition” bourbons that come out each fall. Pappy is too expensive, plus I generally don’t prefer wheated bourbons. Buffalo Trace’s Antique Collection is too much effort to find for a lazy guy like me. Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is one I like to get, but apparently doesn’t show up at the stores I frequent. So like I said I don’t try very hard to get these. 

Well, except for one: the Four Roses autumn release of the Limited Edition Small Batch.

I first ran across this at a tasting a local liquor store chain was having. Minnesota was in the midst of a government shut-down so the store lined up a few more types of bourbon than they might normally have served. We tasted through the Jefferson’s bourbon line, including the last of the 17 year and the first of the 18 year bourbons. We tasted a few different types of Prichard’s including the Tennesee whiskey and the double barreled bourbon. But for me, the highlight of the night was tasting through the Four Roses line. Even then, I knew that I loved four Roses. We had the Yellow Label, the Small Batch, the Single Barrel and a “special one” that turned out to be the 2009 Mariage bourbon (the previous name of the Limited Edition Small Batch). I was blown away by it. So much so that once my wife was diagnosed with cancer in late 2011, I scoured the Twin Cities looking for another bottle. I wanted that bottle very much and wasn’t going to settle, even passing up an offer of Pappy instead from one retailer after I told him why I was looking so hard. I eventually did get it and it was that bottle we celebrated her first diagnosis of there being no sign of cancer left in her body. I still have a few samples put away for the 5 year mark.

Ever since then, I’ve tried to pick up at least one bottle per year. In 2012, I happend to be at the gift shop the day it was put out, but had to order a second bottle when the first one ran out. Last year my local retailers were unable to get me one, but a friend came through and shipped me one from another state. Both of those were released to rave reviews and cries of “best-ever!” from reviewers who didn’t have to purchase a bottle in order to taste it. (That isn’t sour grapes, I just choose to only review things I actually purchase.)

This year, the reviews were not quite so glowing. I didn’t read a single “best-ever” from the pre-release crowd. I read a lot of things similar to “it would be hard to follow up those last two years.” But, I’m a Four Roses fan-boy and when my wife and I happened to be in Kentucky for the release again, I knew we needed to get our hands on at least one bottle. Luck was with us though and we each snagged one. 

So how was it? 

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2014

Purchase Info: $110 at the distillery Gift Shop.

Details: 55.9% ABV. Bottle 9,235 of 12,516

Nose: Candied orange peal, tobacco, allspice and maple. 

Mouth: Light in the mouth. There’s a nice tingle at the front and sides of the mouth. Pears, honey and clove dominate.

Finish: Gentle spice with a lingering sweetness and warmth.

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Thoughts: This is a very good whiskey and I like it a lot. It’s extremely drinkable, even at over 55% ABV. But at $110, when I compare it to a very good Four Roses Single Barrel retailer selection that you can find for less than $65, I don’t know that it is $45 better. If you find it and find yourself flush with cash, pick it up. If you are a fan-boy like me, pick it up. But if you can’t get it, don’t feel too bad about it, grab a good Four Roses Single Barrel private selection to enjoy instead.

Kentucky Bourbon Festival: Ticketed Events

Paul Tomaszewski of MB Roland Distillery signing the Louisville Slugger made famous on WhiskyCast

While at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival I like to attend some of the ticketed events. As the tickets to some of these are expensive, I aim to attend three each time. This year I attended Kentucky Bourbon All-Star Sampler™, Let's Talk Bourbon™, and the ARCO Speakeasy.

Chris Morris, Master Distiller at Woodford Reserve, pouring a couple Old Foresters at the All-Star Sampler™.

Kentucky Bourbon All-Star Sampler™

Picture it: a large open room that looks like it could house a small manufactuing company inside it. Down the center of the room is a large table heaped with food. Scattered around the room are tables and barrels with lighted tops for you to eat that food. All around the exterior of the room are small bars pouring spirits for you to taste. 

Sounds like a nice place to be right? Well for $50 per person you could be there. And as far as I’m concerned, you probably should. It’s not every day that you get the opportunity to shake hands with and be poured a drink by the likes of Jimmy Russell, Chris Morris or Jim Rutledge. I met up with a few friends, both old and new, while there and had a great time. Most of the distilleries were pouring their standard line up. Jim Beam had their Small Batch Collection, Heaven Hill was pushing Evan Williams, Woodford Reserve had both Woodford and Old Forester there. I was especially interested in what some of the craft folks were doing though. MB Roland from south-western Kentucky had their bourbon and Black Patch Whiskey available to try. Old Pogue had Five Fathers Pure Malt Rye to be sampled. Limestone Branch debuted their aged product, Precinct No. 6 at the event. There was also a brandy from Copper and Kings in Louisville that wasn’t too bad.

All in all it was a great evening and it made me very happy I decided to go back again this time.

Your materials to help you enjoy Let's Talk Bourbon™: the lyrics to My Old Kentucky Home, some notepaper, a booklet on how bourbon is made and a breakfast cocktail.

Let's Talk Bourbon™

The ticket is $30. For that you get breakfast, should you want it. You get cocktails, both with breakfast and after the event. You get a gift, this year a Four Roses branded Tervis glass. Plus, to top it off, you get to listen to Jim Rutledge talk about how bourbon is made and answer any questions the audience might have about it for about two hours. There is no event I can reccomend more than this one. This is my favorite event. I try to be early and get into the front row because I like to take notes, even thought the base presentation might be the same, the questions and tangents are always different and very informative.

The band, the screen, the distilleries and the costumed attendees all help to set the scene for the ARCO Speakeasy.

The ARCO Speakeasy

This was an event that I almost did not go to. I hadn’t planned to do anything on Saturday night because I was supposed to be up at 6am Sunday morning to drive 13 hours home. I was talked into it by my friends at MB Roland. And boy am I glad I was. This was a very fun event put on by the members of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour. They each made a cocktail or two and you got to drink them. The best part, of course was that almost everyone was dressed in Prohibition-era costume. The people watching was fantastic. The cocktails weren’t bad either. 

It’s $50 or $100 per person depending on if you considered yourself a VIP or not. I did not. The event happens at the same time as The Great Kentucky Bourbon Tasting and Gala™ which is a black-tie event for $150 per person. Too rich and too fancy for my blood. The Speakeasy was just right. I didn’t have to dress up too much (I didn’t have a costume so I just dressed nicely and didn’t feel out of place) and it was a third of the price. I mean, that money could be spent on bourbon (and was). Plus I met and talked to a lot of great folks that are part of the Craft Trail while enjoying drinks showcasing some of their products. All in all it was worth needing extra coffee for the drive home the next morning.