Bourbon Trail - Maker's Mark

Several years ago we decided that we can't really appreciate living in bourbon country without the Bourbon Trail. The Bourbon Trail is a trail through Kentucky that leads you through walking tours at all of the great distilleries in the area. The tours are both historically and scientifically informative, and focus on the transformation of bourbon throughout the years and what makes each batch different from the next. Almost all of the tours are free and you get samples and the opportunity to do fun things along the way.

So to begin our tour we started out with a great group of friends and headed to Maker's Mark in Loretto, Ky. It was a drizzly day and we didn't have much else to do. We had been talking about getting the tour started at some point, so we took full advantage of the yuck day.

Even the shutters have little Maker's bottles in them!

We made the drive from Louisville on almost all back roads, through countrysides full of corn and tobacco, cows and horses. Through a small town and even further out. Just when we thought we were completely lost we saw what we knew where bourbon stillhouses on the horizon. The stillhouses are big barns that hold all of the bourbon during the ever-so-important aging period. They have long openings in the sides usually and you can see the bourbon barrels poking out and getting some fresh air.

The Maker's Mark tour was free and started in a guest house. Soon we were taken through the rooms where mash was made and fermented. We learned about the giant cypress barrels that they keep the mash in, and smelled the fermentation and yeast. Imagine walking into a giant loaf of warm bread. Mmmm... delicious. We saw the big copper stills used to turn the mash into moonshine ("white dog", "white lightening", pick your poison...). We saw where it is cut back to make it bearable and then we were shown the barrels.

Mash fermenting in the deep barrels.

Giant buildings just full of barrels and barrels of bourbon as high as your eyes can see. Now imagine you just left your loaf of bread and hopped into an old bottle of bourbon. The smell is overwhelming and warm and delightful (if you like bourbon, that is).  Each barrel is carefully rotated around and moved throughout the different levels of the building, so everything is even. It's a beautiful sight, seeing hundreds and hundreds of barrels of bourbon, waiting to give birth to their honey colored nectar... mmm.

Barrels upon barrels, you have to see the believe!

After we gawked at all of the barrels, doing their breathing... angel sharing and devil's cutting and the like... How about that for some new bourbon lingo. Look it up. We were shown the bottling building and the signature red wax that each bottle is hand dipped into.

We were brought to a small bar to try some of the bourbon we had been seeing all day and some of the 'shine, you know... just for a taste comparison. They also gave us bourbon balls, and if you have never had them, you're missing out!

They give you the option of dipping our own bottles, so James and I jumped in line. They would, however, have let you dip anything you wished in the red wax, as a souvenir from your visit - a hat, a pen, a keychain, etc. Just not your fingers. Don't do that. No! Hot!

James learning the technique.

Dipping the bottle into the red wax.

We stepped right up and learned the special technique (a twist and a slam and that's all I'm saying...) and before you knew it we had our very own hand-dipped bottle of Maker's! It was a great time all-around, and everyone had a good time and learned quite a bit about an important part of our culture - the bourbon biz. But this was just the first step in our Bourbon Trail tour! We opted to visit each distillery on a different day, to avoid having to drive all over creation after bourboning all day. It was definitely an experience we recommend! Even after visiting several of our other stops, each distillery is different and the best part about the experience is being able to see the variations at each place.

You can kind of see... the sign behind us says "Kentucky Champagne"