Kentucky Bourbon Trail

If you are making a road trip through Southern Ohio, Indiana, or Northern Kentucky, you've got to take a day and do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  The trail starts at Lexington, KY (on Hwy 75), and goes back through the woods to the southwest and past Elizabethtown, KY (on Hwy 65).  There are campgrounds in the area, but we just stayed overnight at my favorite shopping place.

 I'm not a bourbon drinker, but this was a wonderful day of learning all about moonshine and prohibition, and at the end of the tour, the tasting room wasn't bad either! Yes, they still age the bourbon in oak barrels, some for 25 years!  It's really spooky when they take you into the aging house and there are 12 stories of barrels stacked over your head on oak timber racks.  Some of those oak timbers date all the way back to the 20's.  Each distillery has it's own theory on aging, but once or twice a year all of those barrels are rotated between several floors in the house, because the middle and top floors are different temperatures than the bottom floor.

Now they only make the spirits and most of the bottling during the winter, but they still give hour long tours and of course have gift shops all year long.  Whatever the season, it's worth the stop.  You can stop at all the major, and not so major distilleries along the way, like: Four Roses, Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, Woodford Reserve, Buffalo Trace, Makers Mark, and others.    My favorite was Buffalo Trace, don't miss it.  Our tour guide (Freddie) was great, the company is very family orientated, they don't lay off workers during the summer, they use them to improve their infrastructure and construction projects.

If you are traveling through the area, this should definitely be on your "Bucket List".

Smitty