Completed Place #1 - The Bourbon Trail

I got up fairly early Friday morning to make the 45 mile drive down to Bardstown. Early enough that the road was busy with people heading to work. It occurred to me that while they were heading toward misery, I was heading to drink bourbon. Life is suddenly good.


Pulling into Bardstown it hit me that I really didn't know where to go. So I stopped at the town square and located a map of the distilleries around Bardstown. Reading the map I learned that there are more than 50 in Nelson County. I just looked for the closest distillery, which proved to be Heaven Hill, and headed over.



The first thing I saw at Heaven Hill made me laugh. On the door was a sticker announcing that Heaven Hill was featured in "1000 Places to See Before You Die." What a great way to start my quest! (I took a picture of the door but unfortunately it didn't turn out. I will try again next time.)



I arrived at Heaven Hill at quarter to ten and learned that a tour would start at ten. I signed up and looked around the exhibit room until time.



The first event on the tour was a 13 minute film featuring the history of bourbon and Heaven Hill and the operation of the distillery today. We then headed across the street to one of the storage buildings and walked among the barrels.

We weren't allowed to make any pictures for fear of the cameras sparking and starting another fire. They are understandably afraid of fire having had one of the worst fires in the history of the industry on November 7, 1996. The production plant was almost completely destroyed and several of the company's warehouses were completely destroyed. Over 90,000 gallons of alcohol were lost.

I remember watching the fire on TV at the time. The most vivid memory I have is of watching the flaming whisky pour down a hill and ignite yet another warehouse.


To the left is a photo from their brochure that shows what the inside of the warehouses look like. There are about 20 of these huge warehouses, they are all 7 stories high and stacked end to end, side to side and top to bottom with barrels of whisky.



We ended the tour with a bourbon tasting in a room shaped like a barrel. We tried two bourbons, a 10 year old Evan Williams and an 18 year old Elijah Craig. Now I'm not a big drinker of bourbon but you could definately tell at difference between the two. The older bourbon was much smoother and easier on the throat.





After leaving Heaven Hill I walked around the downtown streets of Bardstown and grabbed a bite to eat at the Old Talbott Tavern (see my next post for more about this) before heading back to the real world.




I can easily mark this entry completed but I want to go back and tour some other distilleries and maybe take a friend or two. I probably will.


The Woodford Reserve Culinary Cocktail Tour : a Journey with Bourbon




Here are some interesting facts and figures I learned:

• Heaven Hill Bourbon is aged for a minimum of 4 years in new charred white Oak barrels.
• Elijah Craig Bourbon is available in 12 year or 18 year variants.
• The longer Bourbon is aged, the more flavour it takes from the wood.
• Charring caramelizes sugars in the wood, which slowly dissolve into the resting Whiskey.
• Heaven Hill Distilleries charcoal filter all of their bourbon prior to bottling; this process purifies the product and “mellows” the flavour making Heaven Hill Bourbons uniquely easy to drink either straight or with your favourite mixer.

In December 2002 Heaven Hill Distilleries USA filled its 4.5 millionth new-charred white Oak barrel with fine Kentucky Bourbon. For a better idea what that volume of Bourbon represents, consider the following:

• 2,400 miles of White Oak Barrels.
• 385,000 acres of corn.
• 38.5 million bushels of harvested corn.
• 12.8 million bushels of grains such as rye and malt.
• 385 million gallons of Bourbon.
• 160.5 million cases of Bourbon.
• 1.9 billion bottles of Bourbon.

Interesting Trivia that they didn't tell me but I learned from Wikipedia:


All of the Master Distillers at Heaven Hill since its founding have been members of the Beam family. The original Master Distiller was Joseph L. Beam, Jim Beam's first cousin. He was followed by his son, Harry, who was followed by Earl Beam, the son of Jim Beam's brother, Park. Earl Beam was succeeded by the current Master Distillers, Parker Beam and his son, Craig Beam.

Mark