Carolinas, Georgia & South Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Alex Leviton [158]
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In nearby Versailles (say it “Vur-Sails” or people will look at you funny), spend the night at an antebellum mansion at Storybook Inn. Set amid the emerald pastureland of Horse County, the inn has three charmingly fussy knickknack-filled suites and one rather manlier hunter’s cottage.
In the morning, it’s back to Lawrenceburg to visit the Wild Turkey distillery, which sits on Wild Turkey Hill overlooking the Kentucky River. More industrial and less self-consciously old-fashioned than some of the distilleries, Wild Turkey offers a frills-free tour of the facilities. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to meet master distiller Jimmy Russell, who’s worked here since 1954. Hibbs notes that Wild Turkey is made slightly differently than most bourbons, aged in a heavily charred barrel for extra-deep amber color, with very little water added at the end of the process.
Drive back west an hour or so to catch a tour at Jim Beam, the world’s largest and best-known bourbon distiller. The tour features a video on Beam family history and a sampling of small batch bourbons. Jim Beam ages all its bourbon for at least four years, twice the legal minimum - longer aging produces a deeper, smoother character. Hibbs says you can’t even call it bourbon until it’s aged; until then it’s called “green whiskey.” Kentucky has the “perfect climate” for aging bourbon, Hibbs explains. Hot summers cause the whiskey to expand into the wood of the barrel, where it sucks up toasty, caramelized flavors, to be released when the liquid contracts during the cold winters. The barrels sit, stacked several stories high, in wood and metal “rackhouses” that dot the central Kentucky landscape like massive barns. Unsurprisingly, these facilities are highly flammable, and several distilleries, including Jim Beam and Heaven Hill, have had apocalyptic fires in the past few years.
Most widely available bourbons are aged no longer than eight years, but some ultra-premium labels are aged 14, 16, even 21 years. “Each year it gets a little darker,” says Hibbs, who’s partial to eight- to nine-year-old bourbon herself.
Head back into Bardstown, where Hibbs suggests a private bourbon tasting and dinner at the Chapeze House as a sumptuous end to your bourbon tour. Michael Masters (known only as “the Colonel”) will lead you through a tasting from his collection of more than 100 premium and vintage bourbons. Afterwards, wife Margaret Sue, president of the Kentucky Bourbon Cooking School, will serve a homemade feast in the candlelit dining room of their lavish Federal-style mansion. The Masters are so well-known for their expansive Southern hospitality (the Colonel’s drawl is frequently heard on the Food Network and Fine Living) they’ve earned the title “the Host and Hostess of Kentucky.” The Masters also rent out two dollhouse-like cottages - one pink, one blue - in Bardstown’s historic district.
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Frankfort, the postcard-pretty state capital, sits on the banks of the Kentucky River half an hour north of Versailles. Here, in a little white house with a red striped awning, Ruth Booe invented the love-it-or-hate-it bourbon ball in 1936. For $2 you can tour the Rebecca Ruth factory and taste a sample of the inimitable candy. The sweets shop sells all manner of booze-infused treats, like cognac balls, mint julep candies and Kentucky Irish coffees.
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Emily Matchar
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TRIP INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
From Louisville, take I-65 South for 24 miles and get off at exit 112 for Bardstown. Continue on Hwy 245 for 16 miles.
DO
Four Roses
This Spanish Mission-style distillery produces great bourbon only recently available in the US. 502-839-3436; www.fourroses.us; 1224 Bonds Mills Rd, Lawrenceburg; admission free; 9am-3pm Mon-Sat, closed summer
Heaven Hill
This family-run