3. Frankfort and Midway

Buffalo Trace and Woodford Reserve

When Kentucky became a state in 1792, officials in both Louisville and Lexington believed their respective cities should become the capital. The new state legislature decided to take bids, and the city offering the best deal would win the honor. A Frankfort landowner agreed to provide property for government buildings, the materials to construct them, a percentage of rents from his tobacco warehouses, and the princely sum of $3,000. So tiny Frankfort (current population 27,000, compared with Louisville's 600,000 and Lexington's 300,000) became the seat of the state government.

Thanks to its location on a double bend in the limestone-rich Kentucky River, Frankfort was also a suitable location for distilleries. Before 1920, more than a dozen operated in the city and surrounding Franklin County, including the Frankfort Distillery Company, which was allowed to bottle stored whiskey for “medicinal” purposes during Prohibition. Many of the brands produced in Frankfort are still made today, though not necessarily in Frankfort. They include Old Fitzgerald, Four Roses, and Ancient Age. Other colorful brand names are now only a memory, such as Kentucky Triumph, Golden Phantom, and Old Woodpecker. Frankfort was also home to the unfortunately named Swastika bourbon. Today, Buffalo Trace is the capital's only operating distillery. Jim Beam has a bottling operation in Frankfort (3200 Georgetown Road), but it is not open for tours.

Other than Buffalo Trace, the Frankfort attraction of most interest to bourbon lovers is the Rebecca Ruth Candy Tours and Retail Store (112 East Second Street, 800-444-3766, http://www.rebeccaruth.com). Founders Ruth Hanly Booe and Rebecca Gooch started their candy-making business in 1919. They are credited with inventing that staple of Kentucky confections, the bourbon ball. The classic bourbon ball is a dark chocolate bonbon laced with bourbon (the Rebecca Ruth brand uses Evan Williams) and topped with a roasted pecan. The store is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tours that let you watch the candy being made are offered daily from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:30 p.m., except during the store's busy seasons: Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Easter. There is a small charge for the tour.

Rebecca Ruth candy factory and shop.

Your best destination for sampling bourbon in Frankfort is Serafini Restaurant & Bar (243 West Broadway), which stocks a large selection of bourbons and hosts frequent tastings and bourbon dinners. On the same block are Poor Richard's Books (a splendid independent bookstore), the Kentucky Coffee Tree Café (a great place for lunch), and Capital Cellars Wine & Spirits Café (an excellent place to buy bottled bourbons).

To see the style in which some bourbon magnates lived pre-Prohibition, visit the Berry Mansion (700 Louisville Road, 502-564-3000, http://www.historicproperties.ky.gov/hp/berrymansion/). The twenty-two-room colonial revival–style mansion was built on a bluff overlooking the capitol by George and Mary Berry in 1900. Berry was the chief executive of the Old Crow Distillery, the ruins of which are still standing in Millville (see pages 85–87).

If you have an interest in Kentucky history, the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History (100 West Broadway, 502-564-1792, http://www.history.ky.gov) is worth a visit, as is the beautiful 1910 Beaux-Arts State Capitol Building (700 Capital Avenue, 502-564-3449, http://www.historicproperties.ky.gov).

A free trolley stops at various attractions all around the city. You can find a trolley schedule, as well as more information about Frankfort attractions, at http://www.visitfrankfort.com. The city's Visitors Center is located in a pretty Victorian house at 100 Capital Avenue, near the Rebecca Ruth store. You can stop in there for maps and other advice on touring the city, or call 800-960-7200.

Where to Eat and Drink

You'll find a lot of chain outlets along US 127 and US 60 leading into Frankfort. The eateries listed here are independently and locally owned. Pricing is indicated as follows: $—inexpensive, with most entrees priced at $15 or less; $$—moderate, at $16 to $25; and $$$—expensive, at $26 or higher.

Adelia's Bakery & Café—1140 US 127 S, 502-227-9492, http://www.links2thebluegrass.com/Adelias.html. $.

Bistro 241—241 West Main Street, 502-352-2412. $$.

Capital Cellars Wine & Spirits Café—227 West Broadway, 502-352-2600, http://capitalcellars.net/. $.

Kentucky Coffee Tree Café—235 Broadway, 502-875-3009, http://www.kentuckycoffeetree.com/. $.

Rick's White Light Diner—114 Bridge Street, 502-330-4262, http://rickswhitelightdiner.com/. $.

Serafini Restaurant & Bar—243 Broadway, 502-875-5599, http://www.serafinifrankfort.com/. $–$$$.

Historic 200 block of West Broadway.

Where to Stay

Many of the national hotel and motel chains, including Days Inn, Best Western, and Hampton Inn, have outlets in Frankfort, located along the US 127 and US 60 corridors. Other options include the following:

 

The Capital Plaza Hotel—405 Wilkinson Boulevard, 502-227-5100, http://www.capitalplazafrankfort.com. The Terrace restaurant has a good bourbon selection.

Meek House Bed & Breakfast—119 East Third Street, 502-227-2566, http://www.bbonline.com/united-states/kentucky/frankfort/meek.html.

The Meetinghouse Bed & Breakfast—519 Ann Street, 502-226-3226, http://www.themeetinghousebandb.com/.

Buffalo Trace Distillery

1001 Wilkinson Boulevard

Frankfort, KY 40601

502-696-5926

http://www.buffalotrace.com

 

Hours: Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, noon–5 p.m. Tours are available year-round and start on the hour. The last tours start at 3 p.m. Closed on major holidays. Call for information about special tours offered at other times.

Bourbons: Ancient Age, Ancient Ancient Age, AAA 10 Star, Benchmark, Blanton's Single Barrel, Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare 17-Year-Old, Eagle Rare Single Barrel, Elmer T. Lee, George T. Stagg, Hancock's President's Reserve, Old Charter 101, Old Charter 8-Year-Old, Old Charter 10-Year Old, Old Rip Van Winkle 10-Year-Old (90 and 107 proof), Old Taylor, Old Weller Antique, Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve 15-Year-Old, Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve 20-Year-Old, Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve 23-Year-Old, Rock Hill Farms, Van Winkle Special Reserve 12-Year-Old, William Larue Weller, W. L. Weller 12-Year-Old, W. L. Weller Special Reserve

Ryes: Sazerac Rye 18-Year-Old, Sazerac Straight Rye Whiskey, Thomas H. Handy Sazerac, Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye

Other Liquors: Buffalo Cream Liqueur (made with bourbon), Buffalo Trace White Dog (not aged), Rain Vodka (made with organic white corn)

Chief Executive: Mark Brown

Master Distiller: Harlen Wheatley

Buffalo Trace Distillery.

Master Distiller Emeritus: Elmer T. Lee

Owner/Parent Company: Sazerac Company

Tours: Several different tours examine different aspects of the distillery, so repeat visits are worthwhile. Visitors are given a choice of bourbons to taste at the tour's conclusion.

What's Special:

• Situated on 130 acres on the banks of the Kentucky River, Buffalo Trace contains more than 100 buildings whose construction spans four centuries.
• Whiskey was first distilled on this site in 1787.
• This was one of only four distilleries allowed to operate during Prohibition to make “medicinal” whiskey.
• Buffalo Trace contains the world's smallest aging warehouse, which accommodates a single barrel.
• It maintains an experimental program producing very limited, special-edition whiskies.
• In December, holiday light displays decorate the grounds, which visitors can tour by car after sunset.
• The distillery was featured in a November 2011 episode of Ghost Hunters (SyFy), and an evening Ghost Tour was developed as a result.
• Rain is the only U.S.-made vodka for which the entire process, from grain to bottle, occurs at one distillery.
• Company offices are housed in Stony Point Mansion (completed in 1934) on Rock Hill, overlooking the distillery.

Distillery tour.

• Landscaped gardens and a log clubhouse dating from 1935 can be rented for events.
• The Independent Stave Cooperage Museum is located on-site.

History

The green, rolling landscape of Kentucky's Bluegrass region, populated by grazing Thoroughbreds, is iconic, seemingly timeless. But the horses and the bluegrass pastures are newcomers. For thousands of years before the arrival of white settlers, the land was covered in forests and tracts of tall native cane, and herds of American bison (or buffalo) dominated the landscape. These herds trampled wide paths through the plant cover, crossing rivers at points where the water was shallow enough for the animals to ford. Many eighteenth-century pioneers used these paths, called buffalo traces, to gain access to the wilderness interior.

Buffalo Trace Distillery is located on the eastern bank of the Kentucky River near Frankfort, where buffalo once crossed the waterway. Whiskey has been made on the site for more than 200 years. Ironically, the current name dates only from 1999, so it is even more recent than the horses and the bluegrass.

In 1775 brothers Hancock and Willis Lee of the Ohio Company, assisted by a twenty-two-year-old surveyor named George Rogers Clark (future Revolutionary War hero and founder of Louisville; see “Locust Grove” on page 47), established the settlement of Leestown “on the Buffalo Trace.” Hancock Lee started distilling, which was a common practice on the frontier. As Henry Crowgey notes in Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking: “People moved in [to Kentucky] who regarded liquor as a necessity of life. The distillation of liquor or brandy occupied the same place in their lives as did the making of soap, the grinding of grain in a rude handmill, or the tanning of animal pelts; distilling equipment was as necessary as the grain cradle, the hand loom, or the candle mold.”

The ready supply of limestone water and corn for the whiskey and oak for the barrels meant that distilling continued to flourish at the riverside location just downstream from Kentucky's new state capital. It also didn't hurt that the barrels could be loaded onto boats docked right beside the distillery. The whiskey, distilled by one Harrison Blanton starting in 1812, was shipped down the Kentucky, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, where there was considerable demand for it.

Distilling continued at Leestown through the Civil War. In 1870 Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr. (great-nephew of President Zachary Taylor) bought the property and began the process of modernizing and industrializing the whiskey-making process. He named his operation “O.F.C.” (Old-Fashioned Copper) because he was using an all-copper distilling apparatus. Taylor's other innovation was to introduce steam heat to the warehouses. The distillery changed hands again when George T. Stagg bought it in 1878. And in 1897 teenager Albert B. Blanton joined the company as an office boy. Eventually, he would become superintendent of the distillery's operations and finally president of the George T. Stagg Distillery.

Barrels being loaded at Buffalo Trace.

It was Blanton who steered the distillery through the dismal years of Prohibition, when it was one of only a few facilities in the country licensed by the federal government to make liquor for “medicinal” purposes. This was prescient on the part of the feds, since a remarkable round of ailments afflicted Americans between 1919 and 1933. For example, the distillery bottled 1 million pints of medicinal bourbon in 1925, and some 6 million prescriptions for bourbon were written in Kentucky alone before the repeal of Prohibition.

The distillery went through a couple of name changes, becoming Blanton's and then Ancient Age, in honor of its flagship brand. Colonel Blanton (as he came to be known) retired in 1952, the same year that Warehouse V was built. The small building stores a single aging barrel, and in 1952, it housed the two millionth barrel produced at the facility since Prohibition's end. The current resident is the six millionth barrel. When it's ready to drink, the bourbon from the barrel in Warehouse V is bottled in special commemorative packaging and donated to selected charities to be auctioned off for fund-raising.

Corn being dispensed by a delivery truck at Buffalo Trace.

In 1968 Elmer T. Lee became distillery manager. Lee can claim the distinction of introducing the first single-barrel bourbon, Blanton's, named in honor of his predecessor. (You have probably noticed that the names of many of the bourbons made at Buffalo Trace today are associated with the distillery's very long history.) Lee retired the following year; he is now in his nineties and remains master distiller emeritus.

In 1992 Ancient Age Distillery was purchased by the Sazerac Company, a family-owned business based in New Orleans. After some remodeling and updating, the distillery reopened as Buffalo Trace in 1999, the same year its new eponymous flagship brand was introduced.

The Tours

Given the size and history of Buffalo Trace, it is not surprising that no single tour provides the complete story of the place. But it is possible to do as many as three tours in a single day, if you're willing to devote yourself to this one site. Alternatively, you can schedule repeat visits.

All the tours are free, although some require advance reservations. They all end with a free tasting. There's even root beer for those who are under twenty-one or abstemious. (It may be hard to imagine, but some people are just interested in the history, rather than the beverage itself.) If you do indulge, try Buffalo Trace's version of a grown-up root beer float. I won't give away the secret ingredient here.

Check in at the Visitors Center for all the tours. While waiting for your tour to start, you can peruse the collection of bourbon history memorabilia, which includes one of those 6 million Prohibition-era prescriptions, and browse the gift shop. Tip: Try the Buffalo Trace cherry preserves laced with bourbon. They aren't just for your breakfast toast. Try them over vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

The Trace Tour

This is a walk-in tour, with no reservations required. It occurs daily on the hour and lasts for about an hour. A fifteen-minute orientation film covers bourbon's history and ingredients, especially in relation to the Leestown location. Not until the lights go up and your guide opens a disguised door (I won't reveal this secret, either) into a warehouse do you realize your close proximity to the film's subject.

If you visit during the workweek, you'll be able to see the bottling operation in action. The insider's information imparted by your guide may include details about the little horse figurines atop the stoppers on bottles of Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon. Warehouse V, the world's smallest whiskey-aging structure, is another tour highlight.

The distillery grounds are beautifully landscaped, and if the day is fine, you might enjoy a stroll around them. Don't miss the fascinating trompe l'oeil mural painted on a wall across from the gardens and log clubhouse. The perspective shifts as you walk past the painting.

Visitors on a tour walk past a trompe l'oeil mural of a warehouse.

The Post-Prohibition Tour

After Prohibition ended, the demand for now-legal spirits skyrocketed, and the distillery experienced a building boom. On this tour, guides focus on the distillery's architecture and modernization from 1930 to 1950. Much of the tour centers around Colonel Blanton's contributions, including the two-story log clubhouse he had built from disassembled 100-year-old log cabins and the stone mansion that was his home. You'll also see the distillery's only metal-clad warehouse (Warehouse H, with a capacity of 15,000 barrels) and the enormous Warehouse I, which stores an impressive 51,000 barrels. Reservations must be made in advance, since this tour is given only when there is demand.

The Hard-Hat Tour

This reservation-only tour is available only when the distillery is operating. If you are interested in the minutiae of bourbon making, you'll love it. Be prepared to climb up and down a lot of metal stairs and along an enclosed catwalk. If the timing is right, there may be a corn delivery, and you can watch the grain being emptied from the truck. The entire process—from the mash cookers (giant pressure cookers) to the fermentation tanks to the column stills (three stories high)—is on display. Perhaps most interesting is the room where yeast colonies were stored when the distillery kept them on-site. The tanks are still there, as well as gleaming antique distillation equipment and historic photos of the distillery.

The tour wraps up by the riverbank, where plaques on the corner of a building mark the water levels from historic floods. You do not actually have to wear a hard hat, but open-toed shoes are not allowed.

The Ghost Tour

Again, reservations are required for this tour, which is offered Thursday through Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Even if you are a die-hard skeptic, it is terrific fun. From October to March, it takes place after dark, which creates a whole different atmosphere. Paranormal investigators from Lexington have identified at least twenty-seven different spirits (be prepared for almost endless puns on this word), including Colonel Blanton himself. Visitors climb aboard a van that goes to the mansion where he died (the guide will point out the actual room). It's appropriately creepy that the colonel had a spider-web design etched into the glass of the front door.

The SyFy television network's Ghost Hunters filmed a program here and declared it a very haunted site. The good news is that, by all accounts, Buffalo Trace's ghosts are a pretty jolly band of spooks who have lingered because they love the place so much. (What bourbon lover wouldn't want to spend eternity in a distillery?) The tour guide will point out places where there have been “sightings,” including the upper-story window in the abandoned eighteenth-century house near the river, where someone allegedly saw a hand drawing back a curtain from a long-curtainless window in a room that has no floor.

Visitors photograph some elusive spirits on the Ghost Tour.

You might not spot any ghosts on the tour, but you could feel the hairs rising on the back of your neck when the lights are turned out in Warehouse C. In the pitch dark, you realize that several thousand tons of sleeping bourbon are perched over your head. It's very much like the moment in a cave tour when the guide kills the lights, except that the evaporating bourbon makes the warehouse smell oh-so-much better.

 

 

If you want to take in multiple tours in one day, keep in mind that the Hard-Hat Tour is offered in the morning. You could go on that one, have lunch at the distillery's Firehouse Café, and then take the Trace Tour in the afternoon. Thursday through Saturday, you could also take an afternoon tour, go into Frankfort for dinner, and return for a Ghost Tour.

The Firehouse Café (502-783-5673, firehousecafe@ymail.com) is located behind Warehouse C and is open from May to October. Lunch is served Tuesday through Saturday. The building formerly housed the distillery's working fire department and contains a display of equipment, including a bright-red vintage 1964 Ford fire truck. You can order box lunches for parties of ten or more by calling or e-mailing at least twenty-four hours in advance.

The Bourbon

Spirits made at Buffalo Trace have earned more than 200 industry awards, outperforming all other distilleries. Of course, it makes more different brands of bourbon (plus rye and corn-based vodka) than any other distillery, so it has something of a head start. End-of-tour tastings offer only a fraction of its products, but bourbon lovers will not be disappointed. You can sample any two of the following: Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, Rain Vodka, White Dog, and Buffalo Trace Bourbon Cream. Kentucky law allows a maximum of two small samples per person per tasting, so choose carefully.

Master distiller Harlen Wheatley and master distiller emeritus Elmer T. Lee know their craft and are making some very elegant beverages, so any Buffalo Trace brands you come across in stores around the country will be worth trying. Julian Van Winkle III also retains a hand in production, overseeing the distillation, aging, and bottling of the premium Van Winkle bourbons made at Buffalo Trace, based on those his family formulated at the now-closed Stitzel-Weller Distillery in Louisville.

Guide Fred Mozenter offers tastings at tour's end.

Providing complete tasting notes for all the bourbons made here is beyond the scope of this book, and since the distillery is privately held, it does not release information about the exact percentages of the grains used in its mash bills. That said, certain characteristics noted here can help you understand the different flavor profiles.

Buffalo Trace uses two mash bills (grain percentages) in its bourbons made with corn, rye, and malted barley. Other factors, such as aging, mingling, and proof, provide the distinctive flavor profiles of each brand. Mash bill 1 is used for Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, Old Charter, and George T. Stagg. Mash bill 2 contains a higher percentage of rye and is used to make Blanton's, Elmer T. Lee, and Rock Hill Farm bourbons.

Among the wheated bourbons made here (wheat is substituted for rye in the mash bill) are all the bourbons with “Weller” or “Van Winkle” in their names, including W. L. Weller, William Larue Weller, Old Rip Van Winkle, and Pappy Van Winkle.

Although the two bourbons available at the tour tastings—Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare—are both made with the same mash bill and bottled at 90 proof, you will taste a difference. Buffalo Trace is a small-batch bourbon, which in this case means that anywhere from 100 to 125 barrels are chosen for a bottling's mingling, and it is aged between eight and nine years. Eagle Rare is bottled from a single barrel and is aged for ten years (another expression is aged seventeen years). Both exhibit a cinnamon-spicy nose and plenty of caramel and fruit, but you may find a little more sweetness in the middle of the Buffalo Trace, with more nuttiness to the Eagle Rare. Eagle Rare also lingers longer on the palate.

Travel Advice

Buffalo Trace is only a few minutes' drive from downtown Frankfort. It is about an hour from Louisville and forty-five minutes from Lexington. The most direct route from either city is to take the US 127 exit north from I-64 and drive just under five miles into downtown Frankfort. Take a left in front of the Capital Plaza Hotel, which will put you on Wilkinson Boulevard. Drive about a mile, and you will see Buffalo Trace on your left.

It is possible to combine a visit to Buffalo Trace with a visit to the Four Roses or Wild Turkey distillery (or both); each is about half an hour south on US 127. Or you could visit Woodford Reserve, also about thirty minutes from Buffalo Trace via US 60 into Frankfort. But be aware of opening, closing, and tour times to get the most out of your visits.

Nearby Attractions

The attractions, restaurants, and shopping in nearby Frankfort are detailed starting on page 62.

The charming town of Midway (see page 87), with several fine restaurants and shops, is about thirty minutes southeast of Frankfort.

The historic town of Shelbyville is half an hour west of Frankfort on US 60 (or I-64). It is a favorite destination to enjoy browsing the heirloom-quality English and American antique furniture and silver at the Wakefield-Scearce Antiques Gallery (http://www.wakefieldscearce.com). (Yes, you can purchase an authentic sterling silver mint julep cup and even have it engraved, but it will not be inexpensive.) Located in the beautiful red-brick Georgian building that once housed Science Hill, a girls' school that operated from 1825 to 1939, the complex also includes a number of upscale shops and the Science Hill Inn (502-633-2825, http://www.sciencehillinnky.com), serving traditional southern fare in an elegant dining room. Consider spending the morning browsing the shops and having lunch at the inn (you'll probably need a reservation) before heading to Buffalo Trace for an afternoon of distillery touring.

Woodford Reserve Distillery

7855 McCracken Pike

Versailles, KY 40383

859-879-1812

http://www.woodfordreserve.com

 

Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, 12:30–4 p.m. Tours start on the hour beginning at 10 a.m. during the week and 1 p.m. on Sundays. The last tour every day starts at 3 p.m. Closed on major holidays and on Sundays from January through March. There is an admission charge.

Bourbons: Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select, Woodford Reserve Double Oaked, and an annually released limited-edition whiskey in the Master's Collection

Chief Executive: Paul Varga

Master Distiller: Chris Morris

Owner/Parent Company: Brown-Forman Corporation

Tours: The standard Bourbon Discovery Tour ($7) is offered several times daily. Two special tours, the Corn to Cork Tour and the Historic Preservation Tour (each $25), are offered Tuesday through Thursday by reservation and are limited to a handful of visitors.

What's Special:

• The seventy-eight-acre distillery, nestled by the banks of Glenn's Creek, is a National Historic Landmark.
• It has the only stone warehouse in use today for aging bourbon.
• The route to the distillery winds through Kentucky's famous bluegrass horse farms, with bright green pastures populated by grazing Thoroughbreds.
• Whiskey was first distilled on this site in 1812.
• Woodford Reserve is the only triple-distilled bourbon.
• Woodford's three copper pot stills were custom-made by Forsyths of Rothes, Scotland.
• The distillery has a resident chef. Ouita Michel has been nominated for the James Beard Award and is the chef-owner of Holly Hill Inn in nearby Midway.
• A winter holiday lunch buffet is offered in the Dryer House Conference Center from late November through mid-December.
• Several times a year, master distiller Chris Morris conducts a daylong Bourbon Academy, providing an overview of the history and techniques of bourbon making.

History

What is today the Woodford Reserve Distillery traces its roots to a farmer-distiller named Elijah Pepper from South Carolina. Pepper started making whiskey when he arrived in nearby Versailles (the locals pronounce it ver-sales) in 1776. Thanks to Pepper's thriving business, he was one of the few farmers who could pay the infamous post–Revolutionary War tax on alcohol, which ignited Pennsylvania's Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Pepper could also afford to buy 300 acres along the spring-fed Glenn's Creek, a few miles south of Versailles, where he started growing grain and distilling in 1812.

When Pepper died in the early 1830s, his son Oscar inherited the business and built the Old Oscar Pepper Distillery (two stone walls survive from this time). Oscar then made an inspired decision when he hired Dr. James Crow as his distiller. Crow was a Scottish physician and chemist credited with applying standardized scientific techniques to American whiskey making—what we would call “quality control” today. Crow measured the acidity of the distiller's beer produced in the fermenters prior to distillation and used a saccharimeter to track sugar levels throughout the production process. He also measured temperatures at all stages of whiskey making and kept careful records so that he could replicate optimal conditions. But most important, he is credited with being the first to use the sour-mash method, which is still an industry standard. In this technique, a portion of the spent mash from one fermentation is kept back (the “backset”) and used as a starter in the next fermentation. This means that the yeast culture is the same each time, and flavors are consistent (think sourdough bread starter).

As people file into the Visitors Center, distillery cat Elijah heads back to his warehouse home.

Crow also used a grain recipe that was three-quarters corn, and he aged his whiskey in charred oak barrels. Sound familiar? The whiskey produced at Old Oscar Pepper probably tasted more like modern bourbon than any of its predecessors. Whiskey made by Crow was sold as Old Pepper and Old Crow.

Oscar Pepper died in 1867 without a will, so his property passed to his wife. Their son James sued his mother for the distillery and won, but he managed to drive it into bankruptcy. Among his bad business decisions was to sell the popular Old Crow brand to E. H. Taylor (bad for Pepper, but good for Taylor). James then moved to New York City (a member of Louisville's Pendennis Club, he is said to have introduced the old-fashioned cocktail to Manhattan).

By the late 1870s, Pepper was forced to sell the distillery to James Graham, who then sold a portion to Frenchman Leopold Labrot. It was called Labrot & Graham Distillery until it was sold to Brown-Forman in 1940. Ironically, Brown-Forman sold the distillery when bourbon popularity declined in the 1970s, only to buy it back in 1994, when bourbon was back in demand. The company spent millions of dollars on restoration and reopened the picturesque facility that now makes Woodford Reserve.

The Tours

The distillery offers three tours, all of which include the distillery, the warehouse, and the bottling room, but two have some added features. Each begins and ends in the Visitors Center, where tickets are purchased (be sure to retain your ticket, which you'll need to get your end-of-tour samples).

The Visitors Center also contains a small but very informative exhibit on bourbon making, a gift shop, and a counter selling gourmet sandwiches and soft drinks (try Ale-8, a soft drink made in Winchester, Kentucky, that is both sweeter and more gingery than ginger ale). On nice days, you can lunch on the deck, which is furnished with wrought iron tables and chairs and overlooks the distillery. You are also invited to use the rocking chairs on the veranda to sit and savor your sample bourbon and bourbon balls after your tour.

The Bourbon Discovery Tour

This hour-long tour is the one most people take, and it is offered several times a day. It begins with a short history film in the Visitors Center, after which a bus takes the tour group down the hill to the distillery proper. You enter the multilevel distillery on the ground floor, where there are samples of the grains used to make the bourbon. Perhaps as a nod to Dr. Crow's attention to detail, all the corn has come from the same farm in nearby Shelby County since the distillery reopened.

A climb up wide oak steps brings you to the mash cooker and the four 7,500-gallon cypress wood fermenters (there is a small elevator for handicapped accessibility). You can tell which one has been active the least amount of time: it is the one producing millions of tiny bubbles and giving off heat. A batch that is nearly ready has only a few large bubbles and feels tepid when you hold your hand over it. The tour then moves into the distilling room, containing Woodford's three sixteen-foot-tall copper pot stills and the multichamber still safe, which is used to monitor the distillate in each.

After an explanation of Woodford Reserve's unique (to bourbon) triple-distillation process, the tour goes back downstairs to a corner of the room devoted to barrels for a discussion of how aging in charred oak affects flavor. In the background is a wall made from used barrel staves; attached to it is a large, handsome plaque with the names of organizations (mostly resorts, hotels, and restaurants) and individuals who have purchased their own barrels of Woodford Reserve. (For details about how to do this, go to http://www.woodfordreserve.com/Bourbon/PersonalSelection.)

A tour enters the steam-heated stone warehouse.

This is the same area where barrels are filled with finished new whiskey and rolled outside, where gravity pulls them along a narrow track to the warehouse. As your group walks across the property to the warehouse, you may see an elderly, very mellow orange and white tabby cat. Elijah wandered onto the property a few years after the distillery reopened, and he apparently spends a lot of time inhaling the evaporating bourbon.

Only one of the three stone warehouses on the property is used for aging bourbon. It is equipped with steam heat, which allows more exact control of the aging cycles than if it were left to the whims of weather. The other two warehouses have been converted into the bottling plant and the shipping and receiving facility.

The Corn to Cork and the Historic Preservation Tours

Each of these tours lasts about two hours and covers all the information in the Bourbon Discovery Tour, but with a lot more detail. If you are interested in all the nitty-gritty of the distilling process—from the grade of field corn used to the alcohol content of the liquid at each step of production—take the Corn to Cork Tour. It is limited to eight people because it includes a visit to the small quality-control lab. There, your guide will give you a taste of the distiller's beer, then add it to a flask and put it in a miniature still. In a few minutes, clear liquid will start to drip into a beaker, and you'll be able to smell and taste the result. The tour is usually offered at 9:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings.

Enjoying a tasting with friends.

Also offered on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, but starting at 11:30, is the Historic Preservation Tour. It delves more deeply into the history of the site and the people involved in making whiskey there for the past two centuries. Again, this tour is limited to a slightly smaller group than goes on the general tour, and several additional buildings are visited. A walk along Glenn's Creek is one of the highlights.

The Bourbon

Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select is bottled at 90.4 proof. The mash bill is 72 percent corn, 18 percent rye, and 10 percent malted barley. This is the same recipe used for Brown-Forman's Old Forester, produced in Louisville. In fact, the first release of Woodford Reserve in 1996 actually consisted of “honey barrels” of Old Forester selected by the master distiller and mingled. Some select Old Forester is still used today in batching Woodford Reserve, a practice the distillery does not make secret. Woodford Reserve's propriety yeast strain is kept in the Brown-Forman labs in Louisville; yeast is sent to Woodford as needed, frozen in a culture tube, and propagated on-site.

Copper pot stills.

Bourbon cocktails about to be poured.

Distiller's Select is aged an average of seven years and four months. All batches are from several barrels, so some of the bourbon used in a bottling may be as young as six or as old as nine years. In the glass, it has a beautiful dark amber or copper color and a rich caramel-vanilla nose, supported by lots of dark fruit (orange peel, dried apricot) and lots of spiciness. All these aromas blend in the mouth in a complex, rich bourbon with a long, smooth finish. This is what you'll sample at the end of your tour.

The Woodford Reserve Double Oaked (available in the gift shop) was released in 2012. It is Distiller's Select that has been put into a heavily toasted and lightly charred second barrel and allowed to age for an extra six to nine months.

Each year since 2005, Woodford Reserve has released a limited-edition Master's Collection whiskey. These have included a Four-Grain (corn, rye, wheat, barley) Maple Wood Finish and a rye packaged and sold as two 350-milliliter bottles instead of a single 750-milliliter one—one bottle finished in new oak barrels and the other in used oak barrels.

I was lucky enough to preview the planned 2019 Master's Collection release—Chocolate Rye Bourbon. I happened to be on-site one day in 2012 when the mash was being fermented, and Chris Morris was on hand to tell me that the rye used in the mash bill had been double-roasted for a chocolaty flavor. I was treated to a taste of the fermenting mash, which did indeed have a strong resemblance to a chocolate shake.

Travel Advice

Woodford Reserve is about an hour from Louisville (going east on I-64), about fifteen minutes from Frankfort (east on I-64 or south on US 60), and thirty minutes from Lexington (going west on I-64 or north on US 60).

From I-64, take the Frankfort/Versailles exit, which is US 60. Turn south (toward Versailles) and drive about two and a half miles to Grassy Springs Road (KY 3360), where you will see a sign for the distillery. Turn right and follow Grassy Springs as it meanders through the horse farms, until it ends at McCracken Pike. Make a right turn, and the distillery is a few hundred yards on the left.

Old Taylor and Old Crow Distilleries

If you have time, there's some bourbon archaeology not far from Woodford Reserve. As you leave Woodford Reserve, turn right and follow the road for about three miles through the town of Millville. On your left, you will see an abandoned building that looks like a small stone and brick castle. This is the “Castle Distillery” that E. H. Taylor Jr. built in 1887. Taylor also made bourbon at what is now Buffalo Trace, but he has an even more important place in bourbon history.

Holiday decoration at Woodford Reserve.

A typical sight along Grassy Springs Road on the way to Woodford Reserve.

In the 1890s whiskey dealers would purchase barrels of whiskey from distilleries, dilute it with water, “enhance” the flavor with a variety of additives that had no business being in bourbon (would you believe tea?!), and then sell it to an unsuspecting public. Naturally, this outraged Taylor and other distillers, who hated the damage that was being done to bourbon's reputation. Taylor contacted John G. Carlisle, Grover Cleveland's secretary of the treasury, and the two men lobbied Congress to pass a bill to protect whiskey quality. The result was the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, which guaranteed that any whiskey sold in a bottle sealed with a government stamp contained nothing but unadulterated straight whiskey that had aged for at least four years and was 100 proof.

When Taylor bought the Old Crow brand from James Pepper, he distilled it at the Old Crow Distillery, which he built in 1872 and is next door to the Castle. Sadly, no distilling takes place in either facility now. In the winter, when the greenery on the chain-link fence surrounding the Old Taylor property has died back, you can just glimpse the columned pavilion, modeled after a Roman bath, that sheltered the distillery's spring.

Beam Global owns Old Crow and still uses the warehouses to age its product, so you may see some Jim Beam trucks coming and going. Beam also makes an 80-proof Old Crow at its Claremont Distillery, but the only thing about this bourbon that its creator would recognize is its name.

Old Frankfort Pike and Midway

Many visitors to Woodford Reserve spend the morning at the distillery and the afternoon driving through the beautiful Bluegrass countryside. Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort is not far away if you want to visit a second distillery.

Drive back along Grassy Springs Road and turn left onto US 60. After about two miles, you'll see Old Frankfort Pike (KY 1681) on the right. Follow it for thirteen rolling, scenic miles. The route is lined with dry-stacked stone walls and board fencing, with horse pastures just beyond, and it is overhung by a canopy of old trees. The Wallace Station Deli & Bakery (3854 Old Frankfort Pike, Versailles, 859-846-5161, http://www.wallacestation.com) is housed in an old train station on the left side of the road. Its fresh sandwiches, soups, and baked goods are popular not only with tourists but also with horse farm personnel.

The remains of the Old Taylor Distillery in Millville.

View from Grassy Springs Road in early spring on the way to Woodford Reserve.

Horses aren't the only quadrupeds to be seen along Old Frankfort Pike.

Wallace Station.

One of the most unusual museums in the country is less than five miles east along the road from Wallace Station. The Headley-Whitney Museum (4435 Old Frankfort Pike, Lexington, 859-255-6653, http://headley-whitney.org), dedicated to decorative arts, was founded by jewelry designer George W. Headley III and is located on what used to be his family's farm. Exhibits include minutely detailed dollhouses replicating the Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney estate, a Jewel Room housing many of Headley's creations, a Library, and a Shell Grotto.

After a visit to the museum, drive back west past Wallace Station to US 62 (Midway Road). Turn right, and the route will take you into the little town of Midway, where there's a railroad track down the middle of nineteenth-century Main Street, which is lined with shops and restaurants (Bistro La Belle and Heirloom are highly recommended). A few blocks from the town center, you'll find the Holly Hill Inn (426 North Winter Street, 859-846-4732, http://www.hollyhillinn.com), an award-winning restaurant owned by chef Ouita Michel and her husband, Chris.

Also located in Midway are Equus Run Vineyards (1280 Moores Mill Road, 859-846-9463 or 877-905-2675, http://www.equusrunvineyards.com), if you're interested in some non-bourbon libations, and the Scottwood Bed and Breakfast (2004 Leestown Pike, 877-477-0778, http://scottwoodbedandbreakfast.com/), with a house that dates from 1795.

Dollhouse at the Headley-Whitney Museum.

Mask of Bacchus by George Headley.

For more information about Midway, call 859-846-4413 or go to http://meetmeinmidway.com.

Enjoying lunch on the patio of the Holly Hill Inn in Midway.

Barrels and Cooperages

When clear new whiskey comes off its final distillation, it is not yet bourbon. That transformation takes place in brand-new oak barrels made by skilled coopers. (By the way, the word cooper comes from the medieval Latin copa, meaning tun or barrel.) The interiors are burned with an open flame for several seconds to create a charred layer. The new whiskey's alcohol percentage is lowered by adding distilled water, since it cannot go into the barrel at greater than 125 proof. Once the whiskey is in the barrel, it is stored there for several years. During that time, as the whiskey leeches in and out of the cracks in the charred wood, it becomes bourbon and takes on the characteristic amber color and notes of caramel and vanilla. Distillers will tell you that more than half the flavor of bourbon comes from this aging process.

Almost all the barrels used for bourbon made in Kentucky come from two cooperages. Brown-Forman Cooperage is located in Louisville (Brown-Forman is the only distillery in the world that owns its own cooperage). It makes the barrels for Old Forester, Early Times, and Woodford Reserve bourbons, as well as the barrels used at the Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery, which is also owned by Brown-Forman. Kentucky Cooperage in Lebanon, Kentucky, is owned by Independent Stave Company, headquartered in (coincidentally) Lebanon, Missouri. It makes the barrels for virtually all the other bourbon distilleries, as well as custom barrels and casks for microdistillers and barrels for the wine industry.

Here's some barrel trivia: When you are touring a warehouse, look at the heads of paired rivets on a barrel. If they have the letters KY, the barrel was made in Kentucky; MO means it was made in Missouri. (If you see a barrel with BC on the rivets, that doesn't mean it is more than 2,000 years old. Brown-Forman's facility used to be called Bluegrass Cooperage.)

The barrels used for aging bourbon hold fifty-three gallons. Empty, each weighs about 100 pounds; filled with new whiskey, they weigh five times that much. During the first year of aging, evaporation (known as the “angels' share”) results in the loss of as much as 10 percent of the initial volume. The rate of evaporation is about 4 to 6 percent annually for each subsequent year. Since more water than alcohol evaporates (water is the smaller molecule), the alcohol volume in the barrel becomes more concentrated.

Barrels being charred at Brown-Forman Cooperage.

A cooper raising a barrel at Kentucky Cooperage.

Making barrels requires a combination of highly skilled hand craftsmanship and worker-operated machinery. No glue or nails can be used, since they could introduce contaminants and affect the taste of the whiskey. Staves are milled from air-dried oak to precise specifications. The staves are then lightly heated (toasted) and bent to the proper shape. A cooper assembles, or “raises,” a barrel by hand, choosing the staves that best fit together and placing them within two temporary steel hoops that approximate the position of the lowest of the six hoops that will eventually hold the barrel together. An experienced cooper can raise a barrel every few minutes. The barrels then pass along stations where the wood is steamed to soften it, steel nooses are used to pull the staves together tightly, and more temporary hoops are added.

The most dramatic part of the process is the charring. Historically, this was done by filling barrels with straw and setting the straw on fire. Today, charring is done with gas-fired burners that act as customized flamethrowers. There are four levels of char—number 1 (lightest) to number 4 (darkest)—depending on how long the interior of the barrel is burned. Most bourbon makers use a number 3 char. Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, and Willett prefer number 4. After charring, the barrel heads and bottoms are added, as are the permanent hoops. The bunghole is drilled, and the barrels are shipped to their respective distilleries.

You can watch the steps in this process on tours of the two cooperages, where you will be required to use ear and eye protection and wear close-toed shoes. At Brown-Forman, you weave your way through the cooperage floor for a close-up view of the machinery, much of which was converted for barrel making from the factory's original purpose—producing airplane wings during World War II. Tours of the Brown-Forman Cooperage can be arranged only through Mint Julep Tours (to do so, call 502-583-1433 or e-mail Info@MintJulepTours.com). The price includes a very good driving tour of Louisville, with famous landmarks such as Churchill Downs.

At Kentucky Cooperage, visitors are directed to a series of viewing stations. The tours, which are free, begin at 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. Because of the summer heat, the plant doesn't operate during the first two weeks of July (and sometimes on other days, depending on the temperature). Video tours are available on those days. For more information, go to http://www.independentstavecompany.com/tours. To book a tour, call 270-692-4518.

The barrels can be used only once for bourbon, but that doesn't mean the wood is scrapped after the bourbon is dumped. Used barrels are sold to craft brewers, who use them to finish bourbon-scented ales. Most of the whiskey aged in Scotland is resting in used bourbon barrels. That is also the case for many cognacs, tequilas, and rums.

Many distilleries also sell used barrels to individuals. Look around Kentucky, and you'll see recycled bourbon barrels being used to collect rain from downspouts, as litter receptacles, and—sawn in half—as planters. An empty barrel usually sells for $80 to $100. You can also buy your own full barrel, but that's a bit more expensive.

Most distilleries have a personal or private barrel selection program. Hotels, liquor retailers, and restaurants are the usual purchasers, but individuals or groups willing to spend the money can buy a barrel and have it bottled and labeled with their own name or the name of their organization. The procedure varies a little from distillery to distillery, but generally six to ten barrels are chosen by the master distiller, who may be on hand for your selection, and the purchasers taste from each barrel. You can select a single barrel or choose a couple of barrels to be mingled to obtain the flavor profile you want, which depends on the bourbon's brand and expression. The cost can range from $4,000 to $10,000 or more, based on which bourbon you choose and what volume of bourbon is left in the barrel after aging. And yes, the price includes the empty barrel, too.

The rivets indicate that this barrel was made in Kentucky.