I had some vacation days that I needed to use before the end
of 2017 so I took off on the afternoon of Thursday, December 7 to drive to
Central Kentucky to visit some nearby distilleries. It was especially great that my friend of 40
years, Rex Dillinger, was able to make the visits with me.
I picked up Rex at noon and we made the drive to Georgetown,
Kentucky in a little over two hours.
Once there, we unloaded a few items at the house and walked around the
property. The weather was windy and cool
but not uncomfortable in the sun. We took
a drive around the Georgetown area and stopped at the Royal
Spring Park that was the site of Rev. Elijah Craig’s
distillery. The spring is now the source
of city water for Georgetown residents.
The Bourbon 30
Distillery is across the street from the spring but since we were there
after business hours, we were unable to visit and only looked into the
windows.
We drove around a bit more then met Emily at New Thai Garden in
Georgetown. Emily had her usual drunken
noodle, I had my usual Pad Thai and Rex had yellow curry. We all enjoyed our meals. After dinner, Rex and I drove back to the
Finnell Road house and chatted until around 9 pm before turning in. Since there is no television or Internet at
the house, we enjoyed talking and reading until we fell asleep.
We awoke early around 4 am and had a couple cups of tea and
did a few things around the house. Once
the sun came up and we got hungry we grabbed a quick McDonald’s breakfast then
stopped at Frank’s
Donuts for a treat. We drove south
on I-75 then west on I-64 to the Four
Roses Distillery. Since the
distillery was still under construction, we were unable to visit the operation
but had a nice talk from a guide who shared the history of Four Roses with us
and explained the 10
recipes that make up Four Roses bourbon.
We thought that it was especially interesting that Four Roses was one of
the most popular bourbons in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, the iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor
kissing a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day shows a billboard for Four Roses
in the background. Because of the
preference for Four Roses by American military personnel, the Japanese are a
major market for Four Roses.
Since we didn’t take a full tour at Four Roses, we had some
extra time so we drove the short distance to the Wild Turkey Distillery. We were thrilled that Master Distiller, Jimmy Russell,
in the visitor center. I was able to chat
with him for a good while and even took a few snapshots. Jimmy is a legend in the bourbon industry and
is such a great ambassador for bourbon.
We had been on a tour with his son, Eddie, in March
2015 but meeting Jimmy was a special treat.
We did the tour of the operations with our guide, Edwina, then came back
to the visitor center for a tasting of several of Wild Turkey’s spirits. The room with dozens of stainless steel
fermentation tanks, each of which holds 30,000 gallons, was especially
impressive.
From Wild Turkey we drove to the Old Taylor Distillery that was built in
1887. The distillery is being
refurbished to reopen as Castle and Key Distillery. The building is an attractive structure
modeled on castles that Col. Taylor saw while traveling in Europe. We look forward to visiting the new
distillery soon. We also drove past the
now closed Old
Crow Distillery where Jim Beam Bourbon is now stored. The historic rickhouses are still in good
shape but the distillery building appears to be in ruins.
We made the short drive from Old Taylor to the Woodford Reserve Distillery. We had scheduled a 1 pm tour but since we
were running early, we were able to get a tour at 12:40. The copper Scottish pot stills used at
Woodford make a much lower volume of bourbon than the giant column stills at
Wild Turkey. We especially enjoyed the beautiful
limestone rickhouses that date back to the 1830s. Our guide took us through the fermentation room
where cypress tanks holding 7,500 gallons convert corn, rye and malted barley
into alcohol. We visited the room with
three copper pot stills that were imported from Scotland. After our tour we sampled Woodford Distiller’s
Select, Woodford Double Oaked and Woodford Rye.
After leaving Woodford, we drove to Town Branch
Distillery and walked around the visitor center that is modeled on a street
scene from Dublin, Ireland which was the home of Town Branch’s founder, Pearse
Lyons. We especially liked the highly
lacquered finish on the storefronts. We
didn’t take a tour or do a tasting but chatted with a few people in the visitor
center.
From Town Branch we drove to the Liquor Barn in Hamburg where we bought a
few things including some Christmas presents.
We continued on to the nearby Woodcraft
Store where Rex bought some screws for Kreg joints. By then we were hungry and went to Zaxby’s for lunch. We both had the 5 piece chicken meal which we
both enjoyed. After finishing our meal
we make the two hour drive home.
