Kentucky Bourbon Trail

[Sierra66]

Mornin' ladies and gents, we are thinking of setting up a Bourbon Trail experience centered around Loretto Kentucky. I would love to visit the Knob Creek distillery and others. We live in Ga and would spend a week for this trip. Any routes, personal experiences and shared knowledge would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[gregw]

We have family in Frankfort. Buffalo Trace is there. When we are in town we stop and get supplies. Been on the tour several times. Nothing like bourbon and bourbon ball candy! Woodford Reserve is off Rt 60 heading toward Lexington. They have a great tour also. We have been to several others but can't think of the names right now. KY has a bunch of info on them just have to google it. There is also wineries popping up everywhere now. Have fun!

 

[NWILSON]

This will help you with planning Kentucky Bourbon Trail
You can spend several days touring all of the distilleries. The tours themselves vary a lot. On some you will see the fermenting tanks while other tours just tell you about it. Either way they all keep it interesting.
If you're needing a campground there are several to choose from too!
Let us know if we can offer any assistance when you come to visit our state!

 

[Kbvols]

We have done most if not all the distilleries on the bourbon trail. We stayed in 2 different locations. There are not an over abundance or campgrounds in the area.

We stayed at the Louisville south KOA and hit Makers Mark, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey and Evan Williams all of which are in the Bardstown area. We also went to Louisville and went to Bulliet.

The second part of the trip we moved over to Frankfort and stayed at Elkhorn campground. Went to Buffalo Trace, Woodford Reserve, Four Roses and town Branch in Lexington.

The "Bourbon Trail" area is beautiful countryside with many horse farms. We enjoyed the back roads travels between the distillerys.

Hope you have a great time....all this bourbon talk is making me thirsty.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Sierra66]

This is great info! I know what you mean, I was looking at the Knob Creek website and was getting thirsty myself! The in laws are wrapping up a month long trip and heading into Shepherdsville to stay. Then they may go down to Clermont and visit Jim Beam. I'm sure I'll get some stories. I'm really excited about making this happen soon! A cool fall trip would be ideal to check out this beautiful country.

 

[olcoon]

We did the Bourbon Trail after the rally in Goshen, and loved it, and loved Kentucky! We stayed at Taylorsville State Park, because looking at a map of the trail it seemed to be centrally located, and we prefer staying at state or federal campground. We really enjoyed ourselves while there, not only the distilleries, but at least that area of the state in general. The previous post with the link is what we used while we were down there. I couldn't tell you what routes we used while we were down there, we let the GPS take us, and didn't regret it! The only bad thing was that we didn't really make any time from one location to the next, as it took us on some pretty windy roads, that in my opinion were paved goat trails! BUT we didn't mind as we were in no real hurry, and the scenery was to die for!!! Some of the roads were basically one curve after the other, and one lane with no shoulders...just a strip of grass before you were in the ditch. Just went slow and enjoyed the route less travelled.

The Bourbon Trail itself is 10 distilleries, and if you get a "passport" and get it stamped at each distillery, you get a free "T" shirt. You can mail it to them & they'll return the passport with your T shirt, or they have places where you can go & get it before you leave the area. Each distillery charges for a tour (I think the most was $20.00) which takes about an hour, and includes samples, and it's their best stuff. They will give you 3 sometimes 4 samples & I don't think that the total amount amounts to over a shot. At Jim Beam (Knob Hill), if you want, you can bottle your own bottle of Knob Hill's single barrel bourbon for $50.00, and for an extra $10.00 you can get it laser engraved with what you want & the date. Plus you can put your thumb print in the wax seal. We didn't take a tour of all 10 distilleries, because to be honest they were all basically the same, except for their bourbon. It took us about 3 days to hit all of them.

We would like to go back to Kentucky sometime in the future, and hit some more distilleries, but concentrate more on museums & history stuff. If you decide to stay at Taylorsville Lake State Park, I'd recommend getting reservations. We didn't and wanted to stay a day or two longer, but couldn't unless we moved sites, which we decided not to do.

Enjoy, we sure did!!!

 

[NWILSON]

I forgot to mention that one of the better tours (read sampling) is the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort! For whatever reason they are not an official part of the Bourbon Trail.

 

[rdufek]

Agree on Buffalo Trace, it is not to be missed, so much history there.

 

[olcoon]

A couple of interesting tidbits, one of the tour guides told us that there are more barrels of bourbon aging in rick houses in Kentucky, than there are people & horses combined!

At Bulliet Bourbon, there was sort of a guard house at the entrance. There was an older gentleman there who greeted us, real friendly and upbeat. During the tour we were in the cooperage, and they explained that if a barrel of bourbon in a rick house started leaking, they would pull it out & send it to the cooperage to be repaired. First thing was it would be weighed when it came in, then drained into a vat. When the repair was complete it would be refilled & weighed again. This was to prevent any "impromptu QC". The gentleman who met us was their cooper before he retired. When we left, I was joking with him about the "impromptu QC", telling him we were told he was the reason for the weighing. He laughed & said someone in the rick house always had a "mule", which he told us was a rubber/plastic tube they would use for "QC". He said when it was time for QC they'd yell, "Who's got the mule". The mule was wrapped around someone's leg until needed.

 

[Sierra66]

I cant wait to put this together. It's going to be a blast I think. We have also never travelled that far north and we hear the country is beautiful. Definitely going to plan it for a fall trip.

 

[olcoon]

You won't regret it! And if you time it right, the tree colors should knock your socks off! One thing we noticed was 99.9% of the farms we saw were immaculate, and the grass was so green! We've been to areas where most of the farms were well kept, but there were a few that were in pretty sad shape. I really can't remember seeing any that were needing work done.

 

[MCTalley]

I cant wait to put this together. It's going to be a blast I think. We have also never travelled that far north and we hear the country is beautiful. Definitely going to plan it for a fall trip.

Fall colors should be mid-October. Since you'll be in the general area, take a day and check out the horse races at Keeneland in Lexington, KY. The fall meet runs from Oct. 6 to Oct. 28.