Thursday, June 19, 2025
Kentucky, Day 7 & 8: Louisville, then home
Friday, June 13, 2025
Kentucky, Day 6: Louisville
Having just visited a series of small towns, I was startled to find that Louisville is an actual city city. And I love cities, especially those wherein I can find parking so that I may walk and drink and walk and drink and so on. Louisville offered me that very opportunity. My hotel was one block south of Main Street downtown, and everything was accessible by foot, including...
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Phallus much? |
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So much good wood |
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That's what she said |
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Big hands, I know you're the one. |
- Heaven Hill Distillers makes Hpnotiq!?!
- The big Louisville distillery uses the same yeast as the Bernheim facility.
- Evan Williams 23 year old comes from only the bottom two rows of the warehouses.
- They have their own mini distillery onsite that produces the Square 6 brand.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Kentucky, Day 5: Clermont
So did I wake up early enough to get to Bernheim Forest before my lone distillery tour? NOPE. I was a 46-year-old man drinking unwise amounts of oak extract for four days in a row. The fact that I woke up at all is a testament to the existence of an intact liver.
Perhaps I should qualify and quantify "unwise amounts". Some of you excellent readers burn through 1/4 or 1/3 of a bourbon bottle on a Wednesday night. I cannot. Usually I'll make 30mL of bourbon disappear without much struggle, but then the sweetness and tannins lead me to a low-abv lager to wash it all down. On this Kentucky trip, I was trying 8-12 whiskies a day, some 15mL, some not.
Thus when I woke up on Day Five after 11 hours of sleep [Ed. Attention parents, this is a thing you can do when vacationing without children.], my priority was hydration and finding an easy breakfast, rather than sticking to a silly schedule.
Nonetheless, I made it to James B. Beam Distillery on time. And I was the only one in my tour group. That made for a great visit, especially since my guide didn't toe the entire company line about all of their products. In this person's professional defense, I will say they provided all the production facts and history at a perfect pace. And they also didn't disagree when I stated my feelings about the Basil Hayden range, and the company's Canadian brown spirits.
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Triple sploosh |
The thing is, I really like Beam's bourbon (aside from BH). Despite the company being another soulless conglomerate, they've honed a certain type of figurative wheel that cannot be reinvented by any of the new startups, unless those baby companies are still around in 100 years. (If anything is still around in 100 years.) Knob Creek bourbon just hits right, as does the new Jim Beam 7yo Black Label. OGD 114 still works, as does the latest version of Baker's. I'll never forgive them for disposing of Old Taylor and degrading Old Crow, but that doesn't mean Beam can't maintain a good product or two.
As you may see above, the product ranges aren't just about picking barrels in the rickhouse, though Booker's does come from the center rows, furthest from the windows. There are different spirit cuts, and varying fermentation times (3-5 days) depending on the mash's starting temperature.
Their 65'x6' column still easily measures up in any size contest. They continue to source their corn (yellow #2) from within Kentucky. Bernheim Forest provides their water. And they're transparent about batch sizes. Beam White Label = 1000 barrels. And "small batches" are around 250 barrels.
The company now has a trio of distilleries: the one I visited; another in Boston, KY (where White Label is made); and a little crafty one that was completed four years ago.
At the conclusion of the tour, I got to put my thumbprint on my own bottle of Knob Creek Single (1 of 1, baby! It's worth a fortune!), and then I went upstairs to the bar, because of course.
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Is this heaven? No, it's a Bob Ross painting. |
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Happy little trees, flooded |
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Me posing with Ardbeg's latest cask experiment. |
Upon returning to the hotel, I got changed and headed out for another long stroll, this time to downtown Bardstown. After an early dinner, I went to Evergreen Liquors to explore their bar.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Kentucky, Day 4: Bardstown
I started writing this post a few days ago, and now I'm completing it on a day when many of my coworkers and friends were laid off. And I'm doing so without a drink in hand. The optimism of the first half of the post is genuine, but no promises about the second half.
Downtown Bardstown won me over instantly. It's so cute! A bunch of restaurants, independent shops, coffee houses, bars, and at least one good liquor store. It all closes up very early though.
Thousands of acres of bright green not-quite-bluegrass surrounds the town. And upon that land stands a number of distilleries and their warehouses. Thus I booked two nights in Bardstown.
My original goal was to wake up early and walk a few miles of Bernheim Forest. I did neither. And in a rare moment of insanity, I arrived at my first facility early.
Though I have no pictures of the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience, there are plenty of notes staring back at me right now. Heaven Hill's actual distillery operates in Louisville, but their offsite Experience offers more whiskey stuff than Evan Williams in River City (more on that in a few days). At the Experience I chose the "Grain to Glass Tasting Experience" experience.
That Heaven Hill had partnered with independent farmers to make spirit-forward whiskies I had known, but not much more than that. The Grain to Glass range offers a bourbon, wheated bourbon, and rye. With the corn (strain Becks 6198) and wheat grown at Peterson Farms. The event lets tourists try each of the three, get all the supply chain details, and receive a Heaven Hill history lesson.
While the wheated bourbon and rye rumble in at barrel strength, the rye-d bourbon is bottled at a lower strength, 52%abv. Each has a 6-year age statement. And, yes, they are spirit-forward, but in a calmer fashion than Craft whiskey. For what it's worth, I enjoyed all three, but the straight rye won (surprise!), it also took to water much better than American whiskey usually does.
Heaven Hill stats: The founding family, the Shapiras, still owns the company with Kate Shapira running the show. (Yes you read that correctly, a woman of Jewish lineage oversees a massive American whiskey company. 🩷) Within their 83 warehouses, in seven different locations, Heaven Hill has the second-highest volume of aging whiskey in the country; 2.6 million barrels, with Beam edging them out at 2.8 million. The current distillery produces 450K barrels per year, while a new smaller distillery in the works.
If you have not seen any of the footage of the 1996 Heaven Hill fire, I strongly recommend you do so. The images may be triggering for some of my California readers, specifically the size and intensity of the conflagration's flames. As the company rebuilt its facilities in the late '90s, many of the other major distilleries provided whisky for Heaven Hill to bottle so that business wouldn't stop completely. One wonders if the industry would be so united today.
On a final note, I may have discovered why I find HH's whiskies so much more palatable than most of the other distilleries' products. The majority of major bourbon distilleries use a #4 or #5 char inside their barrels, while Heaven Hill uses #3 char. Could that lead more graceful aging, more spirit notes, and less bitterness? I think so.
And then I went to Willett...
On the tour I tried nine of their whiskies (all of them distilled on site), and liked none of them. The rye, of all things, was the most difficult to drink. The bourbons were all very bitter and acidic. The rye was such a shock because, after all the years of gorgeous MGP-sourced single barrels, the product with the same bottles and labels now contain unbalanced Craft rye. Expensive unbalanced Craft rye. Maybe it gets better after 4 years?
Here's the rundown of Willett info: They have seven five-story rickhouses, none of which are temperature controlled. They do not rotate their barrels (similar to Four Roses but with very different results). Their mash gets 2-3 days of fermentation (in their seven 10K fermenters) until the beer is 8-10%abv. Each whiskey comes from a small batch, 18-24 barrels (#4 char).
After buying a bottle of Noah's Mill — Why? I don't know. — I drove to downtown Bardstown for dinner at the Talbott Inn bar. Then I walked around until the sun set. This old body started feeling beaten up by all the booze. Weather reports said there'd be no rain the next day. So I tumbled into bed, setting my alarm so that I'd wake up early enough to get to Bernheim Forest before my lone distillery tour...
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Kentucky, Day 3: Lawrenceburg
Day 3 loomed large on my schedule and, sure enough, it did not disappoint. A lot of alcohol was consumed.
Before Austin, Nichols & Co. changed the distillery's name to match the brand, Wild Turkey Distillery was known as Old Ripy, Old Moore, Old Hickory Springs, Ripy Brothers, Anderson County, and J. T. S. Brown & Sons Distillery. Master Distiller Jimmy Russell has been there since the Ripy family broke ground on the original facility in 1850. Just kidding, a little bit. Jimmy Russell has been working at the distillery for a mere 71 years.
Wild Turkey and its warehouses sit on a gorgeous piece of land bursting with greenery on the day of my visit, thanks to all the downpours.
Here's a pro amateur tip: Go to the toilet before any distillery tour starts, but also leave time to do so. Three times during this Kentucky trip, I ran out of the bathroom, chasing after my tour group, struggling to zip up my fly on at least one occasion.
Wild Turkey grows their yeast on site, from a batch started over 70 years ago, though the Mother is kept in a lab in San Diego, as a precaution. They source their corn from Kentucky, rye from Poland, and barley from Montana (where it's malted). Their mash gets a 72-80 hour fermentation until the distiller's beer reaches 10-12%abv. This cloudy sweet stuff then gets fed into the 52-foot Vendome column still for the low wines, then to the doubler pot still for the high wines. The spirit (which often reaches 65%abv) is reduced to 57.5%abv before barreling. 850,000 of these barrels are currently turning the spirit brown in the company's warehouses.
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Warehouse A was built in 1894, and it looks all of its 131 years, in a good way. |
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🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 |
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Oh look, more rain. |
Friday, May 16, 2025
Kentucky, Day 2: Frankfort
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The limestone aquifer |
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Kentucky, Day 1: Cincinnati
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Kentucky is happy to see me |