Before we arrived in Kentucky, one of the things I was most looking forward to was going on tours at multiple distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
The Lexington/Frankfort area seemed to have the highest concentration of large bourbon producers, including Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Buffalo Trace and more, so I expected to spend a lot of time at them during our two weeks in Lexington.
However, after visiting the Buffalo Trace Distillery I decided I wasn’t as interested in touring any of the other distilleries – here’s why.
One day with beautiful weather, Shae and I decided to visit Frankfort for the day, Kentucky’s state capital. We brought our dog Truffles with us as she’d been stuck inside at the hotel the previous day. That meant we only wandered around the grounds of the state Capitol building rather than going on a tour.
After that, we drove over to Buffalo Trace Distillery. We’d checked ahead of time and knew that their whiskey tours were pet-friendly, other than that dogs weren’t allowed in the bottling building towards the end of the tour.
Even though we’d researched its pet-friendliness, we hadn’t checked how much a tour at Buffalo Trace would be. We were therefore pleasantly surprised to discover that the tour was free. Not only was the tour free, but it included a free tasting at the end – double free! We chose The Trace Tour which I think is the main tour and provides a good overview of the distillery. Buffalo Trace runs a number of different tours depending on your interests, so you can find out more information about them here.
The campus of Buffalo Trace Distillery is enormous, far larger than I thought it’d be. They have 100 buildings on 400 acres if that gives any sense of its size.
We had a great tour guide named Fred and he shared all about Buffalo Trace’s history. The distillery is located on land where buffalo once journeyed along trails that were known as traces, hence the name. Buffalo Trace Distillery is a fairly new name though, as in the past it’s been known as the Old Fire Copper (OFC) Distillery and George T. Stagg Distillery.
Buffalo Trace was one of only four distilleries that continued production uninterrupted throughout the Prohibition era. The reason they were allowed to continue production is because they produced bourbon for medicinal purposes only.
Well, it was meant to only be used as medicine. In reality, they filled 6 million prescriptions during Prohibition, suggesting doctors at the time were making it rain bourbon prescriptions.
Thanks to the Jim Beam Devil’s Cut ad, I’d heard of the Angel’s Share before, but it was fascinating learning more about it on the tour. During the time that whiskey is aged in barrels, some of its volume is lost due to evaporation – that’s what’s called the Angel’s Share. As a result, the longer that whiskey is aged, the more gets lost. Our tour guide mentioned that one time they had a barrel that had nothing left in it after a particularly long aging process.
To give you an idea of how much is lost, the tour has the following display:
The top left barrel is how full it is when the aging process begins. The top right shows how much is left after only 4 years of aging. The bottom left is how much is left after 9 years, while the bottom right barrel shows that after 18 years of aging, you might only have about 1/3 of a barrel left.
Buffalo Trace is also home to Warehouse V, thought to be the world’s smallest bonded warehouse.
Inside is one solitary barrel. Buffalo Trace (and its former incarnations) have produced millions of barrels over the last 200+ years. Each millionth barrel is subsequently bottled as a special batch and sold off to raise money for charity.
Currently sitting inside Warehouse V is the 7 millionth barrel of Buffalo Trace bourbon which was filled just over a year before our visit.
As mentioned earlier, the bottling building is the only part of the tour that dogs aren’t allowed in to, so Shae waited outside with Truffles while I went in to check out the process. They were bottling Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon the day we visited.
We got to see the actual bottling process…
…as well as the wax seal being added to the bottles of Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon.
The tour ended with an opportunity to taste a few different products bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery. This included Wheatley Vodka which was surprisingly tasty given that I don’t normally care for neat vodka.
We also got to try White Dog Mash #1, Eagle Rare and Buffalo Trace.
That was washed down with a small shot of Bourbon Cream which was delicious.
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail
I mentioned earlier that going on the tour at Buffalo Trace had spoiled us for the rest of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The main reason for this is money.
If you’ve been following along on our 50 state road trip for a while, you’ll probably know by now that we’re doing the trip on a budget of $100 per day. That includes everything – accommodation, food, drink, gas, activities, cellphone bill, etc. If you’re interested in how that works, be sure to check out our monthly stats series where we share our budget in more detail.
We therefore have to be fairly judicious with how we spend our money which is why we were so pleased that this tour was free. However, the fact that it was free dissuaded me from visiting the other large distilleries as they were all charging $15-$30 per person to go on a tour.
Shae isn’t a bourbon drinker, so touring all these distilleries wasn’t of much interest for her, but she was willing to come along to be my designated driver. Even if she didn’t go on the tour itself, we’d still be paying $15+ per distillery for me to do it.
The thing is, I realized that distilleries are probably a little like craft breweries and wineries. Once you’ve been on one tour, you’ve kinda been on them all. Sure, there are nuances as to how each brewery/distillery/winery produces their drinks, but the general production process is the same at all of them.
Paying $15 or more to learn something similar at each distillery therefore seemed like it would be a bit of a waste of money. Money that could be spent on whiskey itself, rather than just a tour.
While at Buffalo Trace, I remembered that my family had given me money for Christmas and my birthday. I’d set it aside, intending to use it at some point, but not having a clue what to spend it on. I therefore decided to use it to enjoy the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, but minus the trail.
Instead, I used that money to buy a bunch of whiskeys that I couldn’t normally justify spending our regular budget money on. At Buffalo Trace, that meant buying a bottle of Colonel E.H. Taylor Small Batch, along with a bottle of regular Buffalo Trace.
After visiting Forest Giants In A Giant Forest, we stopped quickly at the Jim Beam American Stillhouse which was only a couple of minutes away from Bernheim Forest. They were selling bottles of a limited edition Repeal Batch non-chill filtered bourbon, so I bought one of those.
Then this past weekend we took a quick trip up to Covington. While at Buffalo Trace, our tour guide Fred had mentioned that he also loved New Riff Distilling in Newport which is next to Covington, so we stopped there for a quick drink and I picked up a bottle of their bourbon too.
Final Thoughts
If you want to experience the Kentucky Bourbon Trail on a budget, Buffalo Trace Distillery should definitely be your first port of call. The tour is free, interesting, it’s pet-friendly and you get to try several different liquors at the end. Then use the rest of your budget to buy good whiskey, rather than spending it on expensive tours elsewhere!
Address
Buffalo Trace, 113 Great Buffalo Trace, Frankfort, KY 40601
I think the Buffalo Trail is the one we are going to do.
Great! It’s a lot of fun, so you won’t regret it.
Is is true that Pappy Van Winkle is distilled at Buffalo Trace now?
Yes, that’s right. I think they mentioned that several dozen different brands are made there, one of which is Pappy Van Winkle – you can find out more about it here https://www.buffalotracedistillery.com/craftsmen/vanwinkle
I live in Frankfort and this year my husband and I have been doing same. Took one tour, made list of all distilleries in Ky and are finding them, visiting grounds and gift shops, meeting and talking to people. I do suggest barrel making tour at Lebanon, Ky too!
The barrel making tour sounds fun – I’ll add that to our list for if/when we return to Kentucky.
Its called The Kentucky Cooperage. My husband enjoyed it the best of all trips so far.
Great, thank you!
So glad that the internet gods found your article for me! I’ve been interested in doing the KY Bourbon Trail, and especially Buffalo Trace because they make Sazerac Rye – a nice, affordable rye for manhattans. Now to find the right weekend to take the 2hr drive.
It’ll definitely be worth the trip – hope you enjoy yourself 🙂
Great review – which tour did you do at buffalo trace?
It was The Trace Tour – I’ll add that to the post.