Bourbon Trail - Woodford Reserve

It's time for your second stop on the Bourbon Trail! Woo! This time we were headed to Woodford Reserve, deep in the Kentucky horse country. James and I visited Woodford on a typically gorgeous Kentucky kind of day. It was like driving through a post card to get there, with the four-board fencing all along the road, horses and magnificent stables lining the roads. The sky was as blue as it could be and the grass was, too (ha! Get it?). It was a perfect day for this tour, on account of having to walk between buildings.

One of the stone still houses on the property.

We started in the visitor's center and learned a little bit about the history of the brand. We soon were set off down the hill, towards the still houses and distillery. We climbed down the stairs to the great stone buildings. We were soon in the distillery. That sweet yeasty bread smell overwhelmed us again as we walked between the fermenting mash.

MMM... take a big whiff!

After seeing the great barrels of mash, we walked through to see the huge copper stills that do the heavy lifting. This is where the bourbon is really made. Just below from the stills, the bourbon was barreled. We even saw where the barrels are charred on the premises. This is one of the things that makes bourbon different from scotch and whiskey. Bourbon requires freshly charred barrels, while scotch and whiskey can re-use barrels several times. The fresh charring is what gives bourbon its signature color and smokey taste.

To give you an idea of scale, the port holes,
that you can see open, were just high enough for me to peek in.

We followed the barrels through the building and down the rails to the still houses, where the barrels age. The rails you can see in the pictures are there to make it easier to roll the barrels from one building to another. In the still house we watched as someone hoisted a barrel off the shelves, opened the bung and poured some of the bourbon into a glass to test. That's fresh! Well, not included the years it had been on the shelf...

After the tour concluded we ended up in the bar/visitor's center again for our free tastes. We had bourbon and bourbon balls and then visited the gift shop.

Would you like some bourbon to help you wash down those bourbon balls?

Since we wanted to do something memorable at each stop on the bourbon trail we decided to buy a bottle of Woodford Reserve for each of us. The gift shop even engraved our initials into our bottles for us!

It was a perfect Kentucky day doing something perfectly Kentucky, and definitely worth the drive.