Bourbon in Kentucky (and Marco’s house)
September 17, 2011
Kentucky is not only home to bluegrass and horses, it is also the birthplace of most of the bourbon on earth. The Bourbon Trail winds through a number of towns hosting various and sundry distilleries. On a recent trip out this way to give a talk at NKU, I took a side trip to Buffalo Trace where we took a hard hat tour and wondered whether we were seeing a batch of Pappy Van Winkle being brewed up.
Though the tour was really cool, you can’t buy any of the bourbons from the Antique Collection or the Pappy line at the distillery. That sucks!
There are entire buildings full of bourbon on the 130+ acre property. One of these years we need to buy a cask.
My trip just so happened to coincide with the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. We schlepped over to Bardstown and went to the one and only mixology event. The event was hosted by the authors of the Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail book. It was great fun, but the mixology was fairly basic and unsophisticated. No drinks of note were sampled.
Thanks to my friend Marco for hosting me in a tit for tat move. His hospitality was fantastic (he came with me during the bourbon run), and his guest shower involved no plastic.