Kentucky

Curious Roadside America

The worst of the snow thankfully remained north of us as we crossed into West Virginia, though we did get a dusting overnight and up to a few inches in some places as we drove through the state over the next few days. We stopped at a few curious places along the way but there wasn't very much for us to see here, our goal being Kentucky which is famous for producing thoroughbred race horses, and bourbon whiskey - and you might have guessed that we are not that keen on horses, Arriving in Kentucky we could tell straight away that we are very much in "The South" now - the welcomes are very warm, the accents pronounced, and everyone says "Y'all" (as in Y'all have a nice day now).

Stopping in Frankfort we toured several distilleries before moving on to Louisville, home of Muhamed Ali, and continuing on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to Bardstown. There are many distilleries on the trail, from the huge producers like Jim Beam who produce over 50% of all bourbon, to the smaller craft distilleries like Limestone Branch who just have a few barrels ageing in the same room as the pot still.

Outside Jim Beam. The Beam name has deep roots in Bourbon.

Bourbon originated from when Kentucky was part of Virginia, and was the frontier to the Wild West. As an incentive to attract settlers to the area, anyone who could build a cabin, plant an acre of corn, and live here for a year was given 400 acres of land to settle on. Many people came, and those who succeeded soon had a surplus of corn, and with nowhere to trade this surplus they turned to making whiskey, and the rest is history. Production was limited to just four licensed distilleries during Prohibition for "medicinal purposes" but is currently enjoying a global boom.


At each distillery that we toured, we learnt something new about how their particular product is made and the history of the distillery - and many are surprisingly interlinked, not least by the Beam family name. The rules for what can be labelled Bourbon are very strict, and although the process for making bourbon is the same across every distillery, the tours are as unique as the brands themselves. We've learnt about the importance of the pure local water which is from limestone bedrock, the mashbill (the unique recipe of grains), the fermenting process using the proprietary yeasts which are closely guarded trade secrets, the first distilling of the brewers beer into low wine spirit, the secondary distillation using a doubler to produce the high wine spirit known as white dog, and the barreling at no more than 160 proof into new, charred white oak barrels.

Newly filled barrels waiting to go for ageing in the rickhouse

Then there is the ageing in wooden rickhouses and how natural temperature variation throughout the seasons push and pull the spirit in and out of the wood to impart flavor and colour, plus the water lost to evaporation during the ageing years - the angels share. Finally there is the dumping of the barrels for batching and the bottling line, some which were completely automated and others all done by hand. Despite the strict rules and essentially the same process, the subtle differences in each step by each distillery produces a wide variation of the finished product, not to mention the different bottles, labels and finishing touches such as hand waxed bottle tops.

Last stop on the trails was a visit to Independent Stave, a cooperage in nearby Lebanon, KY where almost all the barrels used to age bourbon are made. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures there but it was fascinating to see how the barrels are hand raised by the coopers, charred to specification and sealed by hand. These barrels can only be used one time for ageing Bourbon, and once used are often sold to distilleries in Scotland for ageing Scotch Whisky. If you're partial to a wee dram then it is likely to have been aged in a previously used bourbon barrel from Kentucky.

National Corvette Museum

Its not all about bourbon though - Kentucky is also the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln who frequently crops up on our travels and we visited his birthplace and boyhood home which are both part of the National Parks Service. Not far away is the National Corvette Museum, which is located right next to the very plant that produces these classic American muscle cars in Bowling Green, KY. We heard about this museum early into our travels, as inside it a massive sink hole opened up in February this year which swallowed and destroyed eight cars on display. It was well worth visiting though we didn't enjoy the long drive back in the dark in torrential rain and whilst being overtaken by eighteen wheeler trucks at 75 mph !

Yeee-Haaar

We've now moved on into Nashville in the state of Tennessee, well known as the home of Country music. We've already been to the Willie Nelson Museum and Cooters Place - a museum of sorts dedicated to the 1980's tv series "Dukes of Hazzard" and run by Ben Jones who played the character of Cooter the Mechanic. Thanksgiving has been and gone, as now has Black Friday and all the commercial hysteria that goes with it - out of curiosity we did stop by a Walmart at 5pm on Thursday just to see the hoards of people queuing up to get their hands on a bargain TV.

Y'all have a nice day y'all, and as usual please click here for a selection of our latest pictures, which are all from the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.