Monday, October 3, 2016

Back on the Bourbon Trail

It was drizzling, but we were off on another great day of tasting bourbon at some of the finest distilleries in America.  The first stop was the Wild Turkey Distillery which had a new visitors center that was influenced by the tobacco barns which are still found in Kentucky today.

From the visitors center we could see an old railroad bridge that was high above a river.  The bridge has been closed, but today a company provides opportunities for thrill seekers to bungee jump from the bridge into the river below. Crazy!

The visitors center also had a museum that shared the history and development of the distillery.  It told an interesting tale about an employee who was experimenting with bourbon making recipes, but the owners were not interested in changing their bourbon.  He invited himself on a turkey hunt with the executives.  During the hunt he shared his new bourbon and a distributor was so impressed that he asked about the new bourbon.  The executives did not know where it had come from, but the employee said that it was a new bourbon that the company had developed.  Later the company was renamed Wild Turkey after the bourbon that had been developed by one of their employees.

We took the tour which showed us the fermentation process, distilling process, aging, and bottling of the bourbon.  After the tour we got to sip more bourbon. We enjoyed the Rare Breed and purchased a bottle to enjoy later.

Our next stop was Makers Mark which has beautiful grounds with several building that were built in the early 1900's.  On our tour our first stop was at a building that houses huge copper distillers.  The equipment was an art form in itself.


On the tour they had humorous pictures that had been  used in their advertising.  You could hear chuckles as we passed the pictures.

At  the end of the tour we had another tasting and again we found a bourbon that we liked..........so we purchased another bottle.

What a great way to end our tours of distilleries on this trip.

Monday we headed back to Hope, but we have several souvenirs to remind us of the fun we had in Kentucky.