Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Buffalo Trace

Editor’s note: Please note that I went on this tour a month ago now, Easter Weekend. I might have gotten a few of the details messed up, but I think my memory is pretty accurate. And you might have a different experience since it was a holiday. Also this is not an official Bourbon Trail stop, but is one you should go on anyway. You’re right there. You might as well. Ok. On with the show. 

It’s Saturday morning. We’ve had storms all night. At one point the thunder is so loud that I jump straight out of bed and land on the floor looking to make sure the ceiling is still above me. Reports of flooding are rampant. I’ve got one distillery to go and after a bit of packing I’m ready to go.

As we head out of Bardstown for the last time on this trip we notice that the thunder was only the most audible of the storm’s effects. Branches are down everywhere and there are a traces that running water was everywhere too in the not too distant past.

We get to Frankfort a little early. There is a definite need for some coffee. Can you believe that the only coffee place in Bardstown was closed still at 8am? So we stop for coffee and plan what we are going to try to do when we get to Buffalo Trace. 

We get there just as they are opening and we get on the first tour of the morning. We had reservations for the Hard Hat tour a little later, but are assured of making it back in time. So we decide to give it a try. 

The first thing I notice while waiting for the Trace Tour to start is that we are in a beautiful old building. The second, as I chat with the tour guide, is that I think I am going to like this tour. Our tour guide is JW (editors note: I’m pretty sure…it has been a month now). This guy is awesome! So much raw excitement.

We start out with a little history. Then we head over to another building for a movie. This movie is as good as the rest. That is to say very informative and nicely done. After the movie JW takes questions and then we are asked to gather in the back of the room. 

Once we are in the back of the room, JW gives an old cabinet a pull and it pops out from the wall. It’s actually a doorway to get into one of the aging warehouses. It’s a small thing, but is impressively cool none the less. 

 Unlike some of the other tours we’ve been on, we don’t go into the rick house very far. We get to see some barrels and even an experimental barrel or two. But it’s all good. The smell is the main reason I like going into them anyway.

After the rick house we travel to a small building where JW explains just how much liquid is lost due to evaporation over time. This is the coolest visual aid we’ve seen on this. the rest of the tours we’d been on just sort of tell us there is evaporation. All of a sudden I understand why an 18 year old bourbon is so much more expensive than a 12 year old one. Pretty cool.

The one thing we didn’t see was the bottling. Once again. Make sure you don’t plan your trip for a holiday weekend. Or really a weekend in general if you want to see that. Just saying.

Then it is back for the tasting. We get to taste the Buffalo Trace and the Eagle Rare single barrel. Both are very good. There is something about seeing how something is made that kind of changes your opinion of it. I didn’t care for the Buffalo Trace before I went, but really like it at 11 am this rainy Saturday morning, so who knows. But the star of the show is the Bourbon Creme. Toss that guy in a little root beer and you have a knock your socks off adult root beer float. Holy Cow. That’s what I ended up buying as my souvenir.

After the tasting I chat with JW a little more. He’s a great guide and I hope that the rest are as good as him. After that it is time for the Hard Hat tour. 

We gather next to the tasting area for this one. It is my wife and I, an older couple and their daughter and son-in-law. Coincidentally, they are from the Twin Cities too, just not recently. Small world. We all keep an eye to the sky because there is more weather threatening.

To start this tour we get a tiny bit of history, not a lot since this is much more of a factory tour. We see some of the grounds. Very pretty. Then it is over to the industrial portions. The first stop on the way in is where the grains are unloaded. They are unloaded through a grate in the ground.  

Once inside we walk past the mash cookers and up some stairs. Once up there we get to see them from the top. They really look like giant pressure cookers. And wow, are the lids attached with some heavy duty closures! We also see the yeast cooker.

Then it is across a skyway to the fermenting building. It seems like each place we go to builds them bigger than the last. These fermenting tanks hold 92,000 gallons! Buffalo Trace also has a very cool CO2 removal system that we haven’t see anywhere else. At least I thought it was cool. (Oh and the “No Swimming” sign next to them is pretty much priceless.)

After that we see a small still for making experimental bourbons and some smaller fermenting tanks. Nothing in these.

Finally there are the stills. These suckers are multiple stories high. I forget how many, but we were way up there. These are column stills. I like the little touches here. Even the taps to pull a sample have a small buffalo on them. Love that.  

Then we are done. We stop a little bit to look at the flooding. The river in their back yard has not crested yet and is already high. Amazing.  

Then tasting. I already had one of these so I tell them that so they didn’t get in trouble for serving me twice. While he was serving the others I ask about the root beer. Dr. Mcgillicuddy’s. Not available most places. But available online, in that distillery and in certain places in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Yep. It’s made near me. It’s owned by the same company as Buffalo Trace. Some of the best I’ve had. Seriously. I also buy some of root beer. It’s gone before I leave the parking lot. Sad.

I loved Buffalo Trace distillery. I wish I had seen it in operation and on a sunny day. It was pretty, but I could only imagine the improvement a some sun would make. I will go back. I may try to get on both tours again. I think this tour was the best one. If I had to choose just one tour, it would be this one. And it isn’t even on the Bourbon Trail officially.

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Jim Beam

It is still raining when we leave Maker’s Mark. Raining so hard that we at times we need to slow down as the wipers can’t keep up. We’d planned to go to the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln this afternoon. But, that’s out due to weather. So what else can we do?

I know! We’d planned to go to Jim Beam tomorrow, but we might be able to get a tour in yet today. Let’s give it a shot! 

I’m not all that excited to go on a tour because everything I’ve read states that this is a self guided tour. They list tour times on the Bourbon Trail site so I’m confused. But I figure I’ll figure out when I get there so off we go.

The rain is letting up by the time we get to the Beam Distillery. As we walk up to the steps to the gift shop, the sun is even peaking out. There’s a nice lady inside the front door. I ask her when the next tour starts and she tells me that it’s coming soon. Cool. We use the rest room and wander around the gift shop for a while. Here I get my first hint that Beam makes something other than the White label that I never really cared for. I’m intrigued and am starting to get to the point where I can’t wait for the tour to start. 

We gather at the back of the gift shop and head out the side door. The first stop of the tour is the old house. We looked at the old photos and saw a very small working still. This is pretty cool. I must admit. After that is the obligatory movie. They all do this and they are all pretty good. This is no exception. 

The tour guide answers some questions for us and we head out the back door. Now some of this part is the old self guided part, we kind of breeze past that with a promise that if we come back next September (2012) we’ll get tour of the distillery for the first time. But for now we get an enthusiastic tour guide who tells us stories and paints us word pictures. 

We work our way down to an aging warehouse. Oh man. That’s heaven. This is the money part of the tour. Our tour guide, I wish I could remember her name, gave us such a description of the aging process that even though I’d been on 5 previous tours at 5 other distilleries, I felt like I learned something. Then it was out for a tasting.

We got to taste the Basil Hayden and the Knob Creek Single Barrel. Both are awesome. At this point my mind officially changes regarding Jim Beam. 

I loved this tour. It was short and you didn’t see as much of the process as you do at others, but the enthusiasm of the tour guide made it the most fun tour of the six we went to. This tour is FUN. Capital letters. And if your only exposure to a Beam bourbon is the white label, especially take the tour, get the tasting. If your a fan, you’ll love it. If you are not, you’ll change your mind. 

This was the tour where we got our last stamp on our passports. Our t-shirt stop. So fun.

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Maker's Mark

It was raining by the time we left Heaven Hill. The other tour we were planing to take this day was Maker’s Mark. We expected that by the time we got down there we would be too late for the next tour and would need to wait around. It was still raining when we got to Maker’s Mark. The tour was just leaving the building where they start and we were told to tag along. 

The first thing we got to see was an old house that the founders of the company once lived in. We were told that nothing really is done with it, but that they show it off now and then. We were then given a bit of the history of the company. How the original company president had inherited a recipe that was terrible and he set out to find a better one with the help of his wife the bread baker. Nice story, some of it might even be true.

After that we enter a beautiful building. Large, exposed timber frame beams holding up the building. This place was beautiful. There was a portion of the column still showing through the floor and the decorative spouts that the distilled spirits flowed through on it’s way to the holding tanks or the doubler still. 

Next we were led into the room that holds the fermenting tanks. They used a mixture of wood tanks and stainless. The tour guide didn’t let us see the stainless ones, claiming these looked more interesting. 

After the fermenting tanks the tour guide stopped for questions. One person asked about the origins of bourbon. (This leads me to believe that they didn’t show the normal movie at the beginning.) The tour guide fumbled for her words a bit before saying that Bourbon was the name of the French kings and the people who originally came to Kentucky were French so they named the drink after the king. If this is the truth then every other distillery lied to us. Or the tour guide was no good off script.

For the next stop, we were taken to an aging warehouse. This was a showplace of a warehouse. Like most of them, you could tell that this was set up for people to see. There were decorative barrels commemorating the last barrel under the old president and the first under the new. We got a small lecture including the tip that they rotate the barrels around the warehouses to ensure even climactic conditions. 

I guess this means no single barrel Maker’s since this would theoretically minimize the barrel to barrel differences.

You walk through the warehouse after the lecture and walk into the gift shop. This was the coolest part of the tour. This place is a cross between a mall store and the coolest night club you can imagine. There should have been some jazz playing over the speakers and a Playboy Bunny serving you drinks. All honey colored wood and red accents. The thing I liked best was the ability to dip your own bottle. I did a terrible job, but will aways have the memento of the trip. 

Overall, the tour was short, didn’t go into many details or show you much. The tour guide didn’t know anything but what she was coached to say and as such made me wonder if anything she said was accurate. But the place was gorgeous and I recommend taking the tour just to see it and hope for a more knowledgeable tour guide. You get a tasting at the end and the product is good. In any case go into the gift shop and buy a bottle to dip. It is the coolest and most prized souvenir I have from the entire bourbon trail trip. This was not a bad tour. I think we just got a bad tour guide.

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Heaven Hill

It’s raining. Oh boy, is it raining. I’m sitting in the hotel because I don’t have anything planned until 10 am. I need to be at Heaven Hill at 10 to fulfill my reservations for the Behind the Scenes tour. It’s a $25 tour. Per person, but I think it’s going to be worth it. This one doesn’t have a distillery in it, just aging warehouses and a bottling facility. But, we didn’t get to see the bottling facility on the other in depth tour so it’s all good.

It’s 9:15. I’m impatient. It’s going to be a good day. I can feel it. And I really want to get it started. So I do. It’s not even a ten minute drive away from the hotel so I drive around for a while. Driving in the rain isn’t very exciting, unless it is. Then it get’s a bit too exciting. So I go back to the parking lot and just wait. It’s less than a half hour, I have the iPad, so I’m set for a while.

At about 9:55 people start gathering around the door. I’m thinking that I better get up there too. My tour starts as soon as the doors open so it doesn’t hurt to be up there when they do.

When the doors open at ten a older gentleman says to us: “Who’s here for a tour. We have a deluxe tour starting at 10:10. Here’s a sticker to show you’re on the tour. What’s your name? Where are you from?” He works his way through the group until he gets to my wife and I. 

“I actually have reservations for the Behind the Scenes tour.” 

He frowns. “Well, I have some bad news for you. We aren’t running that tour today. Whoever took that reservation shouldn’t have” I’m thinking he’s kidding. Trying to be funny. Why would a company take your reservation, email you a confirmation and then not contact you if the tour was cancelled?

“But I received an email confirmation. It has today’s date and this time.” I counter. 

“Sorry. Do you want to go on the Deluxe Tour? What’s your name? Where are you from?”

Well, I want to do a tour at each so I decide to try to make the best of it. My wife is extremely upset. She doesn’t think that good customer service is too much to ask or that bad should be rewarded. She has a good point, but it’s my call so I decide to move ahead with what we’re handed. 

Compared to the other tours, what we are handed is not very much. (Looking back, I hope that my experience was not colored too much by my disappointment.) The tour starts out as they all do, with a movie. It is basically a big commercial for their business with a bit of history of Bourbon and Kentucky thrown in for good measure. Not a bad movie. But, I’m still upset, otherwise I might actually enjoy it.  

After the movie we get up and follow the tour guide outside. We walk along a path that has very pretty flowers along it to a crosswalk where we cross the street to go into an aging warehouse. Along the way the guide is giving us a bit more of the history of the company and a run down on the products they make.  

Once we get into the warehouse, I’m immediately less mad. Who could be upset with the wonderful smell that surrounds you when you are in a building like that? This is a good warehouse tour. Every company handles their barrels a different way. Some store them in one spot for 10 years, others rotate them as they age so they get the benefits of all the various climactic conditions in the building.

Then it is back outside and back across the street. Another run down of the products they make. Or actually a continuation. They make a lot of stuff.

Once we are back in the center the guide proceeds to show us the signage inside the building. The parts of the tour that you could see on a self guided walk through the building. 

Finally it is time for the tasting. Now, this part really is really well done. Heaven hill really goes in depth to make sure you know what you are tasting and quizzes you on the flavors. To show you that you really don’t have the training to taste for a living, they test you on two scents that are stored in small vials at your seat. Most folks get them wrong. I did.

After you smell the samples and look at them in the light you are allowed to taste them. Really well done. The only part I really don’t like is the contestant sales pitch about other products. But I can forgive it in light of the quality of the tasting.

Then on to the gift shop to give them some of my money. You know reward them for the disappointment. 

So, overall I probably wouldn’t do this tour again. I’d probably just go into the gift shop to get my passport stamped and visit the gift shop. Especially if you are taking other tours. A movie, an aging warehouse, an explanation of the self guided tour signs and a tasting were not really worth my entire morning. 

I still think that the Behind the Scenes tour sounds great, but I probably won’t try again. If you do, please call ahead to confirm that you actually have a tour. After the tour guide asked who took my reservation (I didn’t answer, I didn’t know) he told me that the person tried to get ahold of me, but couldn’t. Strange since they were able to get ahold of me to send me the email confirmation. 

So far, not a good day.

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Four Roses

It’s getting on into late afternoon by the time we pull up to the Spanish Mission style building that is the Four Roses Distillery. We are pretty sure that we’ve missed the tour we’re aiming for, but are content to wait around until the next one. As we walk up to the building a young man opens the door for us and asks: “You guys want a tour?” Since our answer is yes, he points us over to a side room and tells us to go ahead and join the one that’s starting since the video has just started. 

As far as videos go, this one is about the same as the rest. Pretty, well made, etc. But this one shows how the barrels are fired. I’m happy as none of the rest have done that. 

After the video we are gathered around a white board where a small older lady gives us the run down on just what goes into making Four Roses Bourbon. She explains a bit of the history of the name and the distillery. And the fact that between two recipes and five strains of yeast (or was that five recipes and two strains of yeast? no, I think it was the first one) they have ten flavor profiles to play with when blending the various barrels to get the different varieties of Four Roses Bourbon whiskey.

Run down finished, we go outside. It’s a nice afternoon so we are content to linger as we allow a couple stragglers to catch up. We wander around the outside of the building next door. This is the main production floor. We go around it to see the hammer mill where they turn the grains into power on an as needed basis for fermenting. We can’t go inside since there is no telling when the hammer will start up. 

We continue our journey around the production building to check out the grain receiving facility. It’s a small building so we just peek inside to avoid disturbing the workers inside. 

Then we get to the main event. We walk back around to the entry of the production facility. As we go inside we are led to the yeast cooker. This is the only place we are allowed to see the yeast in a viable form. It sort of looks like really bubbly porridge. 

Then we get to see the fermenting vats. These are a mixture of wood vats and steel ones. Apparently each gives a slightly different flavor. I’ll have to take their word for that. Obviously. 

We walk across a catwalk, over to the stills. There are two here, a column still and a pot still. The column does most of the work of boiling off the alcohol, the pot acts as a doubler to raise the proof. As we walk across the catwalk we got to see the big steel holding tanks (almost two stories high) and all the pipes running every which way. This is either a plumbers dream or nightmare. Maybe both since at least some of those pipes are carrying white dog whiskey. 

After a look at the working still and then a peek inside a replica that is there for us to view we head back to where we started for a tasting. But can I take a moment to say just how happy I am for the replica, you get to see the perforated plates that the tour guides and videos keep talking about. And for the first time, I think I can start to get a handle on how the column still works. The guide didn’t mention it, but it may be the coolest part of the tour for me.

So then back for a tasting. We get to taste the basic Four Roses (what they call their Yellow Label), the Small Batch and the Single Barrel. The Yellow Label is ok, nothing to write home about, and the Single Barrel is hard to swallow. No that isn’t a bad thing. It literally feels like it’s stuck in your throat, but the subsequent sips are all the tastier for it. I really enjoy the Small Batch though. And that is what I end up buying. 

I buy it in the gift shop. It’s a small gift shop, but very well stocked. I also buy a very nice rocks glass, etched with their logo. The Bourbon Trail distilleries are nothing, if not classy.

I’d do this tour again in a heartbeat. Next time I might make an appointment to visit their bottling facility over near Jim Beam as well. That part looks pretty cool too. 

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Wild Turkey

The second distillery we visited was the Wild Turkey distillery. I wasn’t expecting much from this one to be sure. I’d read a few things that had made me almost decide to skip it altogether. That would have been a mistake. This was a good tour. 

It is a fairly short drive from Versailes to Lawrenceburg. Warm sun makes for a cheerful drive. The drive ends just after the bridge over the Kentucky River gorge. On the other side was a big sign welcoming us to Wild Turkey. Turn the corner, make a left and you’re there. 

The gift shop is a small house. Brown painted trim and a rocking turkey greet you at the front door. That’s right, a rocking turkey. The gift shop is comfortably run down. Not like they don’t care,  it looked like it was intentionally so. The staff is dressed comfortably in t-shirts, work shirts and one had a pull over windbreaker. Not going to feel under dressed at this one. I’m immediately very comfortable. 

The next tour was about to start so I get my name on the list and look around for a bit. I see some bottles where you can get personalized labels. I make a note to pick one up later. 

The tour starts with a bus ride to the newly opened new distillery. On the way the tour guide apologizes for not having the landscaping finished yet. But says that they wanted to make sure we got to see the inside anyway. We are shown the grain receiving area and the silos where it is held until needed. This was certainly a bigger operation than Woodford Reserve. 

We went inside, went up the stairs and watched a movie starring Jimmy and Eddie Russell, the Master distiller and his assistant/son. After the movie we turn and look through the windows along the right side of the movie room and are shown the yeast cooker and the mash cooker through the windows. 

After that we leave the movie room and are shown to the fermenting room. Wild Turkey had the strangest looking fermenting product. It looked like brains on top and was the only distillery that had that pattern occurring. There were at least 20 30,000 gallon fermentation tanks (i have a photo of number 20, but there may have been more). The fermentation room smelled great. I love the smell of the fermentation rooms in these places. 

Through another window we are shown a control room where two employees can run the entire plant. Big plant for only two employees. That’s a lot of automation. 

The next part of the tour is the still. You can see and get a brief explanation of how the column still works (once again through glass). While we were looking through the windows, Master Distiller Jimmy Russell stops over and thanks us all for taking the tour. I don’t know if the does that for all the tours, but it was a nice touch. He seemed like a very nice guy.

Next we go back down stairs and across the parking lot to the barreling center. This is a pretty cool assembly line looking place (no assembly, it just looked like there should have been) where empty barrels come in off of one truck work their way through a series of conveyors and end up at the filling station. After that they go back out the door and into another truck which will take them to an aging warehouse. 

Speaking of which that’s where we went next. We took another short bus ride down to the old distillery where there are still a lot of barrels aging. We got a very quick tour of the grounds and entered the rick house. Once again you are hit with the excellent smell of old oak and alcohol. Angel’s Share smells awesome. After a short discussion about how long things are aged it is back to the gift shop for a tasting. 

We get to choose two of six different whiskeys. There are four bourbons, a rye and a bourbon honey liqueur. I got the Russell’s Reserve Rye and the Kentucky Spirit. The wife had the American Honey. We both liked our choices. She liked hers a lot.

After the tasting I bought my bottle of Rare Breed with a personalized label and headed over to the next distillery on the list. 

I liked this tour. The new distillery grounds will be very pretty once the landscaping is done. It was the only tour where we saw barreling actually occurring. The tour guide was very informative, even if he did seem a bit bored by the information itself. Overall, it would have been a mistake to miss this one. 

Bourbon Trail Distillery Tour Review: Woodford Reserve-Corn to Cork

The roads leading up to the distillery are narrow. They wind between rolling hills covered with grass, green and glowing, in the early morning sun. Horses stand together in the distance enjoying each others company. And I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the family van, amazed at just how unexpectedly picturesque the scene was. 

When we got to the distillery, the only people in the parking lot were workmen who where there to install the new copper gutters. We had reservations for the 9:30 am Corn to Cork tour. I got there at 8:55 am. The doors were unlocked so I walked in. I immediately felt underdressed. I knew I would be walking through some factories so I dressed for comfort in a T-shirt, jeans and a hoodie. I was the only customer in the building not wearing at least a sport coat. 

The lobby of the distillery is all shiney wood. There are educational displays, some tables, and a tasting bar. The employees are in logoed polo shirts and a pair of khaki pants. This is a place that seeps quality. Every detail has been looked to. 

As I said earlier, I had reservations for the Corn to Cork tour. This is a small tour. There were seven of us. My wife and I, two other couples and a baby. A very good baby I might add. The tour started with a short movie. Basically a commercial for bourbon, Kentucky, and Woodford Reserve. After the movie, we got a small lecture on the history and science of bourbon. This tour was huge on the science. 

After the movie we took a short bus ride down the hill to the actual distillery. After we disembarked we were informed that we would not be able to see the last part of the tour. It seems that for us, Corn to Cork would be Corn to Aging Warehouse. I’d have liked to get a partial refund due to this, since we were aguably missing about a third of the tour and this was a $10 tour. 

After the initial disappointment, the first thing I’m struck with is how pretty the historic stone buildings are. We are shown a line of freshly filled barrels and the information on them is explained to us. After that we go inside the fermenting building. 

Inside the fermenting building the guide explains the three grains they use and where they come from. (Minnesota Rye and Wisconsin Malted Barley, w00t!). Then we travel up a set of stairs to look at the mash cooker and the fermenting tanks. The tour guide pulls a sample from the tanks and we’re given a taste of the fermenting beer. 

After the tanks, we go onto their lab. There we are given a demonstration of how distilling works in a bit of lab equipment. We are shown yeast through the lab’s microscope and we see how they test the grain once it arrives at the distillery.

After we see the small demonstration we get to see the real thing taking place in the three copper stills out in the distilling room. We get an explaination of the barrels, a soft sell on the possiblities of buying an entire barrel and see how a barrel is filled.

After that it is a short walk to the aging warehouse. If you have never been in an aging warehouse it is probably the best smell a bourbon lover could smell. The barrels make the flavor and all you smell is wood and alcohol. 

After that would be the bottling, but we didn’t get to do to that. Instead we walked up the hill to the tasting. Along the way the tour guide, told us a bit about the fossils in the steps. And a bit about the rocks that make them up. Loved that. 

The one knock on this tour, and I didn’t know it at the time (since it was the first one), was that we were sort of left alone to go get our tasting. At other distilleries, we got an explaination of the stuff we were tasting along with the tour guide. Since Woodford Reserve makes one bourbon, you could say that the entire tour was that. But we were just sort of pointed to the bar as he rushed off. To the next tour? Maybe. Who knows. 

So, overall aside from the shortened tour, this was great. So much fun. I loved all the science that the tour guide gave us. I really felt like we were being taken good care of and if I decide to do it again, I would ask if I could request the same guy. He was excellent. Great tour. Might have been the best. Definately top two out of the seven I went on.