Georgetown, Frankfort and Lexington Kentucky & The Bourbon Trail

We lost a day due to our coach needing to be fixed but we sure got to do and see a bunch of things in the Bourbon Trail area. We drove through a bunch of different roads in the cities and the countryside and I must say Kentucky has some beautiful countryside. I loved seeing the pristine horse farms, all the double fences and horses grazing inside them. Ernie did not love the narrow roads.

Our first day we went to Buffalo Trace. We took the Historic Tour and did a tasting. 

We had six different tastings, Vodka (pretty good), Buffalo Trace Bourbon (not bad), Weller Bourbon (not bad), Eagle Rare (I didn't care for it), Bourbon Cream (really good), Freddie's Root Beer (really good), and a bourbon ball (yummy 😋 ). Since I (Sandy) am the writer of the blog this is my opinion and I have never had bourbon before, Ernie however loved them all. If you mix a little Bourbon Cream with Freddie's Root Beer, it tasted like a root beer float.

We also took a drive by Kentucky's capital building in Frankfort. Their dome looks to be under construction.

Our second day we went to Woodford Reserve. We were able to do the Walk to Flavor Tour. This tour was pretty impressive and we had a spectacular tour guide.

Did you know that Woodford Reserve is the major sponsor of the Kentucky Derby.

When we first walked into the fermentation area, both Ernie & I could smell ripe bananas. When we moved to a different spot in the room we picked up citrus notes.

The cathedral of bourbon. Bourbon enters the barrel at 110 proof and they bottle at 90.4 proof.

The spirit safe.

Woodford Reserve owns their own cooperage to make their own barrels. They were the first in the industry to toast their barrels. The process for each barrel is to toast them for 10 minutes followed by a 5 minute flash char. 

Also, after the bourbon is bottled, the barrels are sent back to the cooperage, they are cleaned and rinsed out and sent to wineries and brewery's to use for their aging process.

This shows the depth in which the bourbon soaked into the barrel stave. 

These barrels with the red lids are for the 150th Kentucky Derby Run for the Roses, which is next year. These 2 barrels will produce 150 bottles of bourbon and will be sold for $5000 each. 

We had 4 tastings at Woodford Reserve, here are my thoughts, the first Woodford Reserve was pretty good. The second was a Rye Whiskey that I didn't care for. The third was a double oaked and it was ok but not my favorite, the last was cocktail that contained 1 part lemonade, 1 part cranberry and 1 part bourbon and that was really good. And lastly, the amazing bourbon ball.

Our tour and tasting guide.

Did you know that the rows that the barrels sit on in the warehouse are called ricks? A question was asked if the ricks need to be replaced over time. The guide said that when they are replaced, they are made into tables and that you could see the letter B in the wood from the weight of the barrels being rolled onto and off from when bottled. He said there were a couple of the tables in the Welcome Center so we had to check them out.

You can see the B's down the center board here.

Our next stop on day 2 was Four Roses. We weren't able to take a tour but we did a tasting. As you can see in the picture below there were 4 tastings. Four Roses Bourbon, Small Batch, Single Barrel and Small Batch Select. I didn't care for any of them but if I had to pick one that was my favorite it would be the Small Batch. We were able to keep the glass we used for water. The bottom has roses pressed into it and they are very nice glasses.

The third day we didn't do any tastings but still had an amazing day. We toured the Toyota Manufacturing Plant which was pretty cool. Their building in Georgetown is over 9 million square feet. They don't allow camera's or phones so there are no photos. I thoroughly enjoyed it since I spent my career in manufacturing. They do the tours well, we rode around the assembly lines in a tug style front facing type of golf cart. We had headphones so we could hear the guide. 

My biggest take aways were seeing the different ergo tools and work aids that allowed the operators to not bend over or have their arms above their heads. I loved all the AGV's (automatic guided vehicles) for moving parts around the facility. The lift that take the cars to the upper level was pretty impressive! We saw a few cars drive off the end of the line. Their just in time manufacturing works well. 

Here are some interesting tidbits: They make 477 cars every shift. They do not have a union. They are paid very well with incentive for KPI's (key performance indicators), and they have 2 shutdown's every year. It was good to see that most people seemed genuinely happy to be working there, most of them waived to us as we were driving by.

After the Toyota tour we checked out Keeneland which is a horse racing track in Lexington. We walked around and checked out the whole facility except for the barns, they were off limits. The facility just finished up their spring racing. 

Our first stop on day 4 was Maker's Mark. We didn't do a tour but we tasted 3 different bourbons. The first was Maker's Mark Bourbon Whisky (90 proof) was good, next up was Maker's Mark No. 46 (94 proof), this was my favorite of the 3, and last was Maker's Mark Cask Strength (110 proof) and was a little much for me. 

Check out the decoration behind the bar and up on the ceiling, it is really cool.

The grounds were beautiful but we didn't get a chance to check them out because it was raining. Tom and Carol checked the weather forecast and were prepared but we did not. 😞

The cool thing about Maker's Mark is you can dip your purchased bottle of bourbon in hot wax. 

 

 

A gentlemen came up to us after we were done dipping our bottles and asked us if he could use the picture he took of us dipping our bottles in his magazine article for Tiffin called Roughing It Smoothly. If they choose our picture it will be in the July edition, how cool was that! The funny thing about this is we met him on the Woodford Reserve Tour. We knew he was taking pictures for a Tiffin Magazine but who knew he would be at the same distillery as we were on this day.

Next stop was Heaven Hill. Unfortunately, after we stopped for lunch it was 4pm when we got to the distillery. There were no more tours or tastings for the day so we just looked around. The gift shops are a lot of fun, they all have some really unique items.

We noticed at Maker's Mark the spelling of "whisky", we all know it is spelled "whiskey." So, we googled it and learned that Maker's Mark was aiming for a more premium market and to distinguish themselves from other American distilleries they decided to spell it the way the Scottish does to associate themselves with the perceived quality of Scottish whisky. 

And one more tidbit about Heaven Hill. In 1996 a fire destroyed their distillery and seven warehouses of whiskey (90,000 barrels). On that day 2% of the world's bourbon inventory was lost.