With more than 45 distilleries included in the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, we knew we would have to narrow down our list of distilleries to visit on a three-day trip. We were traveling with a group of 12 friends, so we decided to make it a road trip in three cars (plenty of room for lots of bottles of bourbon!) with a rental house in Lancaster, Kentucky, as our home base.

Monday was our first full day in Kentucky, and we were excited to begin our bourbon tasting journey with the one distillery everyone agreed we had to visit: Buffalo Trace. Tours of Buffalo Trace are popular, complimentary, include free tastings, and you can purchase hard-to-find bottles daily in the gift shop. We discovered it would have been nearly impossible to get tickets for all 12 of us to tour Buffalo Trace, as they usually sell out within minutes of being posted. However, we found a fun workaround: Kentucky River Tours had a four-hour tour, The Old Taylor Tour, that included a delicious Kentucky BBQ lunch, a narrated boat tour up the Kentucky River AND a Buffalo Trace Old Taylor Tour!

Kentucky River boat tour  © Cynthia Sworen

Kentucky River boat tour  © Cynthia Sworen

We enjoyed our lunch and boarded the boat to learn about the history of Kentucky bourbon. Our guide told us grand tales of how early settlers in the 1780s transported their corn whiskey from Kentucky to sell their surplus in New Orleans. They needed containers to move the whiskey on boats, so they used oak barrels, easy to move by rolling them. But the barrels were often previously used for other purposes and may have had residue from their former contents. Elijah Craig is credited with burning the inside of the barrels to get rid of any residue, which now gives bourbon its distinct flavor. The barrels took a months-long journey up the Kentucky River, which flows north, to the Ohio River which flows south to the Mississippi River, all the way to New Orleans. And when they opened the barrels to taste the whiskey, they found it had turned brown. They probably thought it had gone bad in those barrels, but after one taste, they were delighted by the flavors of vanilla and caramel imparted by the movement on the river all those months in charred barrels! There is some discrepancy as to whether bourbon was named after Bourbon County, Kentucky, in which it originated, or after Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where it was first sold.

Buffalo Trace Distillery © Cynthia Sworen

Buffalo Trace Mural © Cynthia Sworenn

Buffalo Trace Floods Sign © Cynthia Sworen

Buffalo Trace Rare Bottles © Cynthia Sworen

Buffalo Trace Rickhouse © Cynthia Sworen

Buffalo Trace barrel © Cynthia Sworen

Distillery  © Cynthia Sworen

It is a common misconception bourbon must be made in Kentucky. In order to be considered bourbon, some of the requirements are that it must be made in the United States with a mash of at least 51 percent corn; be distilled to no more than 160 proof; be aged in a new, charred oak barrel; and have no artificial coloring or flavoring.

After our boat tour, we had learned a lot about the history of how bourbon was invented, and it was time to tour one of the oldest bourbon distilleries, Buffalo Trace. On the tour we learned about some of the other major players in the bourbon business. Bourbon aficionados will probably recognize the names, as they are now honored with their own brands: Benjamin Harrison Blanton (Blanton’s), Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. (E.H. Taylor), William Larue Weller (W.L. Weller), George T. Stagg (Stagg). We had the opportunity to taste some of Buffalo Trace’s more rare bourbons and tour the historic grounds. We were surprised to see how high the flood waters had risen months earlier. Luckily, none of the bourbon was lost! We ended our tour in the gift shop, where all the men were excited to buy rare bottles they were unable to get back home.

Stay tuned for the rest of our Kentucky bourbon trip.

The Whole Crew  © Cynthia Sworen

— Tracey Cullen, art director