Kentucky: Day 1

Two weekends ago Bryan and I took a weekend trip to Kentucky. We stayed right outside of Louisville but we toured two bourbon distilleries on our trip. On our way up Friday we stopped at Woodford Reserve. The drive into the distillery from the interstate was the epitome of Kentucky beauty. Wooded fence line, huge pastures, thoroughbred horses, and barns. Kentucky has barns and ponds everywhere. It's very beautiful and had me wanting to dig a pond ASAP when we got home.

These are pics of the distillery and barrel warehouse. They still hand roll the bourbon filled barrels down what looks like a small railroad track to the warehouse.

The top pic is the huge vat where they are cooking the mash, next is the mash, then the copper stills and the Woodford Reserve logo. Woodford Reserve is the only distillery that runs their bourbon through three stills, if I remember correctly, all the others are double stilled.

This old warehouse held about $40 million worth of bourbon. I especially loved the chippy paint on the shutters of these barred up windows.

The barrels are stamped with the date they were filled. and they are racked up in this warehouse where they age for between 6-9 years.

 And last but not least, our selfie after the tour was done It was very interesting to learn about how bourbon is made and that it is only made in Kentucky. We toured one other distillery and I'll recap that on the next post.

~Tara