Kentucky Bourbon Trail

I’m a huge craft beer «snob» but getting more into bourbon, and have gained a good amount of knowledge. This was my first trip to KY, and solely for finding bourbon I can’t get in Ohio. After hitting six distilleries, I went home with only one bottle, that I later found at the Liquor Barn for $ 3 cheaper. Maybe it was just bad timing, but only one of the distilleries offered something that I couldn’t get at the local store in KY. Willett did have a few high end bottles, way more than I wanted to spend, but that was it. I was hoping to land more. If you want to do tours, then it will take you days. But if just shopping, we hit six within 4 hours, easily. They are pretty much all the same. Gift shops are comparable to the brand, with Beam being huge, and Willett being very much, much smaller. Samples are limited to two very, very small offerings, and I get it. You shouldn’t be getting hammered.

I’m a Kentuckian, born and bred… true blue through and through. When this Kentucky Bourbon Trail craze started, I was honestly a late bloomer. My dad’s drink of choice was always Makers Mark, but as a child, I had no idea that the stuff was made right here in KY. I’d never even tasted the stuff until visiting the distillery, to be quite honest.
In 2013, I decided to start this thing that all of the tourist call the KBT. That’s right, I can travel within minutes and hit several of the KBT stops… STAYCATION!
My first stop started right in my hometown, at Alltech. The first time that I visited, I hadn’t a clue of what the bourbon trail consisted of, but it was neat to learn about the Irish family and this place that they established close to downtown Lexington. They have a niche for brewing good beers, but their perfection of distilling bourbon can’t be denied.
My second stop was Buffalo Trace. It opened in 1787 and set the bar high in terms of pure Kentucky distillery comparisons. It didn’t feel like a tourist trap… it’s was more of an authentic representation of the distillery process. I later found out that the they host many event through out the year… I’ve yet to check out the events, but it’s on my agenda.
Forth stop
very commercialized, with the KY scenery.
I’m not going to list them all, as it’s still a work in progress. But one word of advice is to hold on to your distillery passport. When I first started the trail, I opted for the KBT app, but after the forth stop, it stopped working and still doesn’t work.

I’m in the middle of doing this (though prob won’t finish in one fell swoop), and did two today. If I had started a little earlier in the morning, I prob would have been able to fit three in today. You figure that most distilleries will have their first tour at around 9:00 or 9:30a and have their last one at 3:30 or 4:00p, or so.
I got to my first one at 10:30a, and ended my second one at 3:30p, and this was too late to have to drive to a third one and make it on time. Even though the tours are usually «one hour», they sometimes go over with the tastings, then there is the gift shop, etc., and so an hour and a half is a more accurate allotment for yourself.
Their website is correct in that it’d prob take three days, even if you plan everything out. There are variables such as changed days and hours during winter months, reservations ahead of time, etc. — not to mention driving times between each one on paths that have «never been beaten.»
See my review of Heaven Hill here —
…in which I decided to go to one of them spontaneously, and they were closed.
Call or check directly with the distillery in advance. I purposely tried not to cram all of them into my two days here, because, though it was important for me to do, it was also important for me not to stress out over it since I figured that driving in between all of them is hard to gauge unless you live here. I also wanted to enjoy the area for some of the other things that it has to offer.
Well worth it if you are a fan of bourbon like I am, though I will prob finish up the «tour» on a secondary trip, because even though all the distilleries are different in a lot of ways, they also can ve the «same». ;-)
You can pick up a «passport» from any of the member distilleries, and get it stamped at each one — after which you can send it in for a free t-​shirt.

If you like bourbon, you’ll have a great time doing the KY Bourbon Trail. My husband and I just finished this month with all 8 that were on the trail at the time we started it back in May. (They’ve since added a 9^th). You want to pick up the passport at your first stop, and you get it stamped at each one. It’s free! You don’t have to do a tour or buy anything to get your stamp, but part of the fun is taking a tour at each one. When you get done, you mail it in and they send you a shirt. We’re waiting on ours now, but we saw one at one of the stops and they’re pretty cool.
It took us 3 different weekends to complete the trail. It could certainly be done a little faster if you have more than 2 days at a time to work on it. The distilleries are pretty spread out, and some are busier than others. It takes some planning to coordinate everything, but it’s well worth it. We enjoyed some exceptional tours, tasted products we probably would not have tried elsewhere, and we brought home several bottles of excellent bourbons!

Wife and I had a blast doing the KY Bourbon Trail. We were able to complete the trail in a few months, for all 8 (at the time) distilleries. Now it seems they’ve added Bulleit in Louisville. Shame we missed that one. Saw some beautiful places, tasted some excellent bourbon, bought many bottles, and returned home happy. This will take quite a bit of time planning however. This is not a quick weekend trip. All distilleries are dispersed far apart in KY. You will want to do about 3 a day, more than that can be quite difficult to manage, and at that point, the bourbon taste all starts running together. Give yourself time to enjoy what each place has to offer. Can’t go wrong!

We only went to 2 distilleries on the trail (and one that isn’t), and that was a whole day. Plan for at least 3 days, maybe 4 to hit them all.
The annoying part is that tours are on the hour, every hour at each place. If you miss it, then you’re stuck waiting for the next one. Plus, the distilleries are spaced apart, with pockets of close ones. For example, Four Roses, Woodford Reserve, and Wild Turkey are all very closely located.
I will say that after two tours, I’m not sure I needed any more. I understood the bourbon making process at that point, so everything afterwards was just seeing how each distillery did the process a little differently. I will say that of the tours, Woodford Reserve was my favorite and was the most informational.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the tastings affecting driving. The tastings are small, and if you’re on a 1.5 hour tour, drink water, and have a small snack, you should be fine.

Expensive, time-​consuming, and unnecessarily rigid was my overall impression of the trail distilleries. Either they haven’t figured out how to be customer friendly or they don’t care and they have deduced a brilliant marketing scheme anyway. My primary complaints are having to pay to take their redundant here’s how bourbon is made tours at nearly every distillery and having to pay for and take the tours in order to taste tiny little bourbon samples at nearly every distillery (at between $ 7 & $ 9 per adult per tour). We already spent money in KY on gas, meals, evenings out, and hotels over two days, must we really shell over more than $ 200 for four of us to also take mandatory tours at multiple distilleries? We decided before we left home we would not. We’ve taken a tour at another distillery already. We know how bourbon is made thank you. None of them do it that different from the other. The «reasons» the totally unfriendly and unaccommodating first line of public contact employees at the distilleries gave varied wildly — room size, building code, it’s the weekend, proximity to other distilleries and state law that required minimum times between tastings (so the miniscule droplets of alcohol in our systems wouldn’t apparently make us into raving drunks along the way) and the totally unhelpful answer of just plain, no you can only taste if you take the tour (given with a snobby, superior, snippy, dismissive how dare you even suggest otherwise look from them). If the state law excuse was remotely true, it’s bizarre. In two cases, the distilleries were our first stops of the day, in two others, they were after long lunches and hours after our last tiny tastings, and several more were after driving a fair distance from the last one. Why would your policy presume a customer walking in the door is reeling in from over-​imbibing (which by the way is impossible on your tiny 2 — 4 samples per distillery) at another distillery and must take a repetitive 45 minute to 1 ½ hour tour before tasting your product? It defies logic. If you’re afraid someone is over-​imbibing, then handstamp them with a date/​time at tasting tables so you know when they last had a measly less than a shot of bourbon total. We’ve had more alcohol at communion than we did in a tasting session. Frankly we heard so many lame excuses we ended up not believing any of them. Four Roses, Jim Beam, and Buffalo Trace let you taste without a tour. Patronize them. Heaven Hill, Alltech Town Branch, Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey, Willett, and Woodfield Reserve did not (Woodfield Reserve used to but changed their policy to this one). Skip them. All of them had empty tasting rooms between tours ending there, most plainly visible from where we were. Distilleries could make even MORE money if they’d taken us up on our offer to pay just to taste (none would even consider it) between tours. You’d think that would appeal to their capitalist zeal. The Trail marketing encourages you to tour them all but buries on their skimpy on info website in the FAQ section (and post it nowhere else) that distilleries charge and tastings are at the end of the mandatory tours only. Also, Trail, we do and did spend lots of money on bourbon at distilleries where we could taste the product and where our business was appreciated and we were made to feel welcome, not as some sort of petty criminals for even offering to PAY to just taste. It certainly can’t be financial need. People are buying bourbon and anything else the distilleries slapped their logos on in their gift shops non-​stop. Heaven Hill’s you can only buy there bourbons ran an obscene $ 129 — $ 400 while Four Roses had perfectly good exclusive ones for under $ 65 and their tours, which were optional, were also free. Guess where all four of us spent the most money after tasting? Right — Four Roses, where we were gladly welcomed and made to feel so. Get it, Trail? The customer is always right in retail, or don’t any of you have a retail background or do you just not care as you ride the wave of bourbon popularity? Make your policies and member distilleries public staff more customer friendly and you’ll provide all with a much better experience and you and your member distilleries will make lots more money.

My friends and I had a wonderful time on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail over the July 4^th holiday weekend. We managed to not only complete our Kentucky Bourbon Trail Passports, but we also got a few stamps in our «Craft» Bourbon Trail Passport. Here are a few pieces of advice:
1) PLAN! Some tours are only offered at certain times, and they can fill up fairly quickly. Plan ahead and try to make reservations when you can so you don’t have a lot of idle time. Some distilleries only allow tastings WITH a tour.
2) Allow yourself 2 or 3 full days in order to do all the tours/​tastings. Some distilleries close fairly early and some have very limited hours on Sunday.
2) Pack a cooler with food and water! Sometimes you’re literally out in the middle of nowhere. Pack a cooler with food and snacks in case you get hungry on the trail. Our sandwiches and chips came in very handy!
Now that that’s out of the way, here are my reviews (in the order in which we visited) for the distilleries:
Jim Beam — 4 stars
Largest operation on the trail. Good tour guide. Nothing was in «production mode» when we were there (summer). Definitely felt commercialized/​touristy. Great, 21^st century tasting room.
Heaven Hill — 4 stars
Like the option of having three tours (of varying lengths) to choose from. Informative guide. Good bourbon. Great gift shop.
Maker’s Mark — 4 stars
Beautiful scenery on the «whiskey» river. Good tour guide. Good bourbon.
Four Roses — 4 stars
Beautiful architecture — somewhat winery/​vineyard feel. Decent to good tour. Extremely hefty tasting pours. Good bourbon. FREE
Wild Turkey — 3 stars
Definitely felt like this was the most commercialized/​touristy stop on the trail. However, our tour guide was good. Bourbons were okay. Opportunity to taste two. I picked the «Rare Breed» and the honey one. Rare breed was my favorite. Didn’t care for honey at all. FREE
Town Branch — 5 stars
Didn’t do the tour — only the tasting. «Sundown» was excellent. Also, love their beers — although they weren’t available for tasting. Staff extremely knowledgeable and friendly.
Woodford Reserve — 5 stars
By far, my favorite distillery on the KY Bourbon Trail. Love the historic feel. The guide was extremely informative and knowledgeable. Ended up purchasing the Double Oak Bourbon. One word: Delicious.
Oh, and the last piece of advice… HAVE FUN! :-)

I’ve been wanting to do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail for years. Chose a great springtime in May to do it. The drive is very scenic and shows the true countryside of Kentucky. This is most definitely a photographers dream.
This includes the best/​main seven distilleries– Four Roses Distillery, Heaven Hill Bourbon Heritage Center, Jim Beam American Stillhouse, Maker’s Mark Distillery, Town Branch Distillery, Wild Turkey Distillery, and Woodford Reserve Distillery.
There are many other small members of distilleries I wanted to visit and didn’t get to. One of them was the Buffalo Trace Distillery, Silver Trail Distillery, and many more.
We wanted to make sure we hit the 7 main hot spots.
If you plan on going to all of them, make sure to grab a passport. Which you can either have mailed to you or you can pick it up at any distilleries. The program sends free T-​shirts to people who mail in a promotional «passport» which has been stamped by all the participating distilleries.
If you are visiting the Kentucky area, the Bourbon Trail is a must do on the list.
I will finish and visit the smaller distilleries in the near future.
I will mostly likely visit my favorite ones again which were Woodford Reserve Distillery, Four Roses and Maker’s Mark.
Highly recommend!

Hard to do all 7 Distilleries due to the long distance (Jim Beam will be the one we just could not get to…). We added a couple of Craft Distilleries which are on a separate tour. Willett Distillery stood out as just the exact opposite of the larger sisters and their sometimes more corporate approach…
They all seem to have a similar story to share — All Bourbons are Whiskeys… not all Whiskeys are Bourbons… and other similar statements. But that’s ok. If you like Bourbon, you’ll enjoy the tours, smells, barrel char, fermentation, Heads, tails, warehouses… Angel’s Share! All of it.
Using our smartphone, we had no issue finding the Distilleries. Part of the fun was not taking the major roads and actually driving into some beautiful off the path neighborhoods. We discovered several churches and amazing views we never would have found taking the main paths.
The major improvements or enhancements needed are just a touch more Bourbon to be provided. I’m willing to pay $ 7. Make it $ 10 and add an ounce if possible.
Shipping. Clearly they’re trying to protect the distributors otherwise there would be a way to ship bottles of Bourbons home. There were quite a bunch of Bourbons you just don’t find back at home and I live in a fairly large city.

I’ve been on a few distillery tours before but never done more than one a day. That makes me a jerk. This is the perfect weekend get-​a-​way for anyone in Cincinnati. An easy drive, beautiful state and history.
My review of the trail is mostly the website of the organization that rounds up these distilleries. The website is great. The maps were ok. The website gives a few tidbits and it encouraged us to do it when we had to drop off our oldest daughter in central Kentucky and had some time on our hands.
Go do the trail.
One work of warning: my favorite distillery — Buffalo Trace — is not listed. It’s in Frankfort not far from the others. Make a detour and hit this place. I’ll do a review of it on it’s own but it’s the best distillery tour I’ve ever been on with the best people. I’m assuming their not being listed is something to do with money. It’s a shame because Buffalo Trace would represent them so well. I’ll do a review of our tour of Wild Turkey — the trail should boot them off. They’re an embarrassment. Don’t go to Wild Turkey — their tour and people are as bad and harsh as that stuff they sell.

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Discover Your «Unbridled Spirit» One Tasting at a Time
Most people know that Kentucky and bourbon are synonymous, but, surprisingly, very few know about the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is, in short, a program of the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA) of participating distilleries to promote the bourbon industry in the state of Kentucky. However, rather than being another state-​specific tourism gimmick, the Bourbon Trail (the shortened name is actually a trademark of the KDA) has some depth to it. Whether you consider yourself a novice or a connoisseur on the Bourbon Enthusiast spectrum, you have not truly experienced «America’s Official Native Spirit» until you’ve completed the KBT!
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