Carolinas, Georgia & South Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Alex Leviton [157]
“If you have a drink and worry about driving, you don’t have to,” says Hibbs. “Just go next door and check into the jail!” The jail she’s talking about is the Jailer’s Inn, a bed-and-breakfast housed in the Old Nelson County Jail. Here, you can enjoy the pleasures of life as a free man or woman - canopy beds, plush armchairs, antique claw-footed tubs - in the confines of the 1819 building’s 30in-thick walls. Or, for fun, book the black-and-white Jail Cell, with bunk beds and original cinder-block walls. The back building housed prisoners up until 1987. Have your morning coffee in the courtyard where the condemned once swung from the gallows.
When you wake, it’s time to hit the Bourbon Trail. There are seven major distilleries within a 50-mile radius of Bardstown; Hibbs suggests using your time wisely and sticking to a few of her favorites. In Bardstown proper, Heaven Hill caters to visitors with its Bourbon Heritage Center, with displays on bourbon history, an educational film and a tasting bar inside a huge barrel. Here, seventh generation master distiller Craig Beam holds the keys to 16% of the world’s bourbon supply.
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THE KENTUCKY BOURBON FESTIVAL
This annual Bardstown shindig draws whiskey aficionados from all over the world. The weeklong festival (www.kybourbonfestival.com), held each September, includes taste tests from local distilleries, bourbon barrel relay races, liquor-infused cooking demos, and bourbon and cigar dinners. Kids will dig the historic train rides and nighttime ghost tours of old Bardstown. And everyone can get into a competitive round of Kentucky’s state game, cornhole (a sort of beanbag toss).
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When driving up to a distillery, take a deep noseful of the air. Hibbs likes to tell an old Kentucky joke about an out-of-stater catching a whiff of distillery scent and asking, wide-eyed, what the smell was. “Smells like money to me,” the distiller replies. Hibbs herself thinks cooking bourbon smells like roast beef. You be the judge.
To the south, Maker’s Mark has been operating at the same site, near the town of Loretto, since 1805. “You stay where your water is,” explains Hibbs. The distillery sits on a 10-acre limestone spring-fed lake, providing the pure water used in the distilling process. Touring Maker’s Mark is like visiting a small, historic theme park - see the old gristmill, the 1840s master distiller’s house, and the old-fashioned wooden firehouse with an antique fire truck. Watch oatmeal-esque sour mash ferment in huge cypress vats, see whiskey being double-distilled in copper pots and peek at bourbon barrels aging in old wooden warehouses. At the gift shop, you can even stamp your own bottle with the iconic red-wax seal.
From Maker’s Mark, head northeast towards the town of Lawrenceburg. It’s about an hour’s drive, and what a pleasant drive it is. “In the spring you see the dogwoods and the horses frolicking; in the fall you get all the wonderful colors,” Hibbs says. Here, the Four Roses sits on the banks of the Salt River. Check out the unique architecture - red-roofed Spanish Mission-style buildings like these are rarely seen in this neck of the woods. For years, Four Roses was only sold overseas and some labels, like the Platinum, are still only available in Japan. But the company made a triumphant US comeback in 2002; you can now actually have a Four Roses Manhattan in Manhattan for the first time since the 1960s. Take a walking tour of the distillery and have some free sips afterwards in the tasting room. Note that the distillery shuts down in summer, but the gift shop and visitors center remain open. You can also call to arrange a free private tour of the aging warehouse, about an hour away in Cox’s Creek.
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DIXIE HIBBS’S WHISKEY TEA
Whiskey tea is a staple of church picnics and family reunions in the Bluegrass