In honor of the Kentucky Derby I'll share more from our bourbon trail adventures. The second stop was Woodford Reserve. This was the most educational tour of the day, where our guide spoke about the science and process of making bourbon. This quick video does a nice job of simplifying our hour long tour.
The stills are housed in limestone buildings. We love a stone structure and they date back to the 1800s.
The cypress vat on the left had yeast added later in the day. You can see that the one on the right had bubbles that were significantly bigger, hence the yeast was added in the morning. Cool science.
We all got super cool, small ear buds that we could take home, or recycle.
We left the distillery and went to the warehouse.
The stills indicate where the "bung hole" is in the barrel. You can see the mark where the drill went in for tasting.
There was so much in the news a few weeks ago about the bourbon heist in Kentucky. Scott said it was easy moving me out of the storage racks. Not sure how those guys thought they would get away with it, but for 6 years they had folks fooled. This article and this one are good to read for the details. Someone needs to make a Bourbon Heist movie. I wonder if they will sell the recovered bourbon? How cool to label it in a way that shows the fact it was stolen. Name it Recovery perhaps?
There was a small wedding taking place to the right while our tour was going on. They closed the doors for privacy. We were all a little beat at this tour. We hadn't eaten lunch and it was after 1:00 pm. We picked up very tasting sandwiches in the new Welcome Center.
Then we took an inappropriately short bus ride up the hill back to the welcome center to the tasting room.
It was really pretty. The guide was very educational but speaking for myself, I was tired, hungry and thirsty. We tried the bourbon we have at home and it tasted just the same. To drink it straight did leave a burn on my mouth. The double oaked bourbon was my favorite.
Very interesting.
They had a special Derby label. I knew the Wine Source would have it so decided not to ship back on the plane.
Woodford was a gorgeous spot. Somehow I wish we had asked for a private tour. We had others in our group and next time I think I would request private groups. The space was lovely, clean and historic. I would start with this tour first to get the understanding of the process down. We didn't get to taste but we walked away with lots of knowledge.
Happy Derby Day!
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