It’s Bourbon Heritage Month and as such, I am celebrating all things bourbon. Not just the liquid, but travel, tours, and book, as well. Tonight, I’m taking a look at the newly opened Lux Row Distillery in Bardstown, KY.
While in Bardstown, I made sure to stop in and grab a tour at the newly completed Lux Row Distillers. I was at the name announcement ceremony two years ago when the grounds consisted of a historic home and a large pile of dirt. I was really looking forward to seeing the finished result. I wasn’t disappointed. This is a beauty of a distillery. The fact that it is also very obviously a working distillery first and a tourist attraction second just adds to the charm.
Upon walking up to the distillery, I was struck by how welcoming it looked. I knew this was a manufacturing facility, but it looked like someone’s house. (A house well out of my price range, but a house none-the-less.)
The tour started with a movie. They all seem to. It’s a nice efficient way to bring everyone up to speed. After the movie we stepped out into the manufacturing floor. They had two 4,000-gallon cookers that feed twelve 8,000-gallon fermenters. Four of the fermenters were open for tourists to experience, the other eight were closed like the ones shown above.
After making our way around the cookers and fermenters, we were at the stills. The stills live in a lovely, though very warm, room with large windows to show off all the lovely copper.
Out the windows is a nice view of the 200 year-old house that was the main structure standing on the grounds the fist time I visited the property. They have plans for it that they didn’t disclose, but said that for now it is only used for storage.
I thought this was a nice bit of transparency. As you may know, until recently, Luxco was not in the business of distilling bourbon. They were in the business of buying, blending, and bottling bourbon. (In a fun tidbit, they admitted that the current stocks are coming from Jim Beam and Heaven Hill.) As such, with a distillery that has been producing spirit for less than a year, they are filling barrels, but not yet dumping any. And they told us as such when they pointed out the dumping station in the foreground. They roughly said: it’s here for when we need to start using it in four or more years. I liked that. It’s nice to see companies that are not trying to sell a fantasy.
After we saw where barrels are filled (if it wasn’t a Saturday during the Kentucky Bourbon Festival), we move over to where they are stored after they are filled. With this one, they took steps to make sure that the view was worth the walk over.
Unlike most of the Lux Row aging warehouses (or those from most other companies for that matter) this aging warehouse was built with visitors in mind and has a large viewing area inside the front of the warehouse. These very large beams keep all those barrels in place even though there would normally be more supports (and barrels) in their place.
I know every warehouse has a view something like this, but I just liked the photo.
We finished the tour in the tasting room. It was a lovely tasting room. Lots of copper. We tasted Rebel Yell, Ezra Brooks, and David Nicholson 1843. In the process we got to meet members of the Lux family who were in town for the festival. And in another fun tidbit, I learned that if you are looking at the labels of a Luxco bourbon, you can tell if it is wheated or not but the color of the label. All the wheated bourbons have a white label (aside from the Rebel Yell Single Barrel whose label is painted on).
I thoroughly enjoyed my tour at Lux Row Distillers. The grounds were as beautiful as I remembered. The distillery and gift shop were welcoming, and the information was accurate and transparent. Honestly, what more can you ask for?
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