Written by Kim
Our ride from Mom’s house in Sparta, TN to Frankfort, KY was about 4 hours. We were heading north so a bit further from home but we don’t mind spending time in the car. Our Audi is very comfy and has treated us well. The ride is very picturesque with lots of hill and cattle farms in TN and similar in Kentucky.
Things changed a bit as we began to drive through the horse farms near Frankfort. The farm houses were palatial with acres and acres of horse filled fenced fields. This area oozes of money from the horse racing industry. Along our way I found a cute little place, Wallace Station Deli & Bakery, for lunch which we highly recommend in Versailles (pronounced Ver sail unlike the same city in France).
We had a 3:30 tour at Buffalo Trace. We were concerned that all of the allotted liquor you could buy would be sold out by that time but we were happy to find they had plenty of stock. The distillery only puts out a few of their brands each day. You never know what you might get. On the day we were there they had Buffalo Trace, Weller Special Reserve (lowest end Weller), Sazerac Rye, Buffalo Trace Bourbon Cream and Wheatley Vodka. We were a little confused with what we were allowed to purchase because we know that some are limited. We learned we could each purchase 12 bottles of any combination but were limited to one bottle of Weller each. Don’t worry we didn’t buy 24 bottles but did get some of each except the Sazerac, some glasses and some Bloody Mary mix and rim salt to go with my new vodka. After our purchase an employee in a golf cart ran Alex to the car to drop off our stash before the tour.
The tour started with the history of the distillery which was very interesting. In 1869, Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, purchased of a small Leestown distillery that he christened O.F.C. (old fired copper) was his first foray into distilling, making an immediate mark on the industry by modernizing, expanding and upgrading the plant. Among his innovations were copper fermentation tanks, state-of-the-art grain equipment, column stills, modernized buildings, a more efficient sour mash technique and a first-of-its-kind steam heating system still used in the barrel warehouses today. Taylor borrowed lots of money for his modernization but could pay back his debt so sold to George T Stagg in 1878. Taylor and Stagg had different philosophies as Stagg wanted to make money at some point so Taylor left and opened what now is Castle & Key down the road.
It’s very cool that throughout the facility there are tracks that are used to move the bourbon barrels around using gravity on raised tracks at times.
As you may know the barrels are a big deal in bourbon making. Every batch must be in a new barrel which is prepared by charring the inside. Buffalo Trace uses all white oak barrels that are medium charred for 55 seconds. This gives bourbon both its color and flavor allowing the liquid to absorb the flavors during maturation in the warehouse or rickhouse. We learned that Buffalo Trace has a whole warehouse where they experiment with different barrels and mash varieties in search of the perfect bourbon which hasn’t been made yet!
Barrels are stored horizontally in the rickhouse. Each warehouse holds 58,000 barrels. Each barrel is 53 gallons which weighs about 500 lbs when full. The position in the warehouse is important because the temperature impacts the evaporation, alcohol content, and flavor. The evaporation, called angel’s share, is mostly water but contains some alcohol so the alcohol content goes up as it ages. The best bourbons like Pappy and Weller are on the bottom floor but Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare are on the middle floors. We also learned that Pappy is actually Weller bourbon that is picked by tasting of the Van Winkle family. If you’re not a bourbon person (like me) this probably makes no sense but for bourbon lovers is a big deal.
In 1897, Albert Blanton joined the company. It was his first job at 16. In 1921 he was promoted to president and worked there for over 50 years. Blanton kept distillery open during prohibition but getting medicinal whisky license. Col. Blanton’s invaluable contributions to the Distillery and the industry as a whole are now honored with Blanton’s Single-Barrel Bourbon. Introduced in 1984, it was the world’s first single-barrel bourbon, a concept that Blanton himself originally utilized for his own private stock and entertaining. I bought Alex his first bottle of Blanton’s nearly 10 years ago on a recommendation of my good friend, Michael Kutner, a bourbon connoisseur. That started Alex’s love of bourbon so it was great that this was our first bourbon tour. We got to see Blanton’s Gold being bottled by hand one bottle at a time.
The tour was good but didn’t show us the mashing, fermenting or distilling. It basically showed us the end of the process from barreling to bottling. But…we did get a nice tasting. The visitor center is very well done with multiple tasting rooms upstairs from the gift shop.
After our tour we checked into our hotel and found some trivia in a pub in the next town over, Midway. The format was a little different than home with 3 rounds of 5 questions you scored 1-5 and texted answers to the host. It was a tough crowd of big regular teams but we held our own and came in 3rd. The winning team, The Evil Geniuses, had a perfect score.
Tomorrow we have one more stop at Woodford Reserve before heading home. Until then….
