Kentucky Countryside

In light of yesterdays extensive post about the Woodford Reserve distillery, I thought I'd do a quick post with some pictures of the countryside near Versailles, Kentucky. It's beautiful out there and the photos really do not do it justice.

The Woodford Reserve Distillery

Last weekend I took a fun little trip to visit my good friend Margaret (I call her Mags) who  now lives in Lexington, Kentucky. I hadn't seen Mags in over two years! There are few reasons I would willingly venture to Kentucky, but one of them is the pleasure of her company. And I have to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful Lexington and the surrounding horse fields are!

Mags planned everything out for the weekend. A large portion of the planning revolved around Bourbon tours, a quintessential Kentucky experience!

Our first stop on the trip was the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles, Kentucky, which is tragically pronounced VER-SAILS by the locals, as opposed to the French VER-SAYE. But I digress...

Bourbon has been distilled on site since right around the turn of the century in the 1800s, but the main distillery on the property there was built in 1838. It became apparent very quickly why this distillery was one of the distinguished six to be included on the official Kentucky Bourbon Trail. 

As a complete novice to Bourbon, I had no idea what it involved, nor really much about the taste. So this was going to be a diving in head first kind of situation. It fascinated me that something could go from...

                              THIS to THIS

   

But I am getting ahead of myself. 

Let's start at the beginning.

When you first arrive at Woodford Reserve and walk inside their main visitor area, you are directed to a line where you can buy your tour ticket. And with a price tag of only $5, it is well worth it. It even comes with a (albeit small) shot of Bourbon at the end of the tour. 

The waiting area is filled with what feels like a mini museum to Bourbon. There's lots of information on the distillery and how they operate. For example, they have a display showing the difference in color of Bourbon ages. In the photo below, the darker Bourbon on the left represents the oldest, and the one on the far right represents the youngest Bourbon. While we're on that subject, isn't the color of Bourbon so Carameliciously Divine?

In addition to the history of the distillery, there is also some sitting area for you to enjoy your Bourbon or some food following the tour. There are some interesting people. For instance, I learned just how many men could sport a sleeveless shirt. In that poor man's defense, it was 100 degrees outside. 

  

Mags and I were assigned to group 10, lead by Mollyanne, who couldn't possibly be more Kentuckian if she tried. She was sassy, and I liked her. She is seen on the far left of this picture:

As part of the tour, you get a video introduction and history of Woodford Reserve, and a bus ride to the main distillery buildings, which probably would have been quicker to travel by foot...but I think Mags and I were both pumped about the air conditioning on the bus, no matter how brief!

The first building we entered into was the cooking and fermenting room. All the old buildings there are made of limestone and they just look really old fashioned, in the most charming way. Like you suddenly were transported from Kentucky to the United Kingdom! 

The first thing you notice when you walk in the door is the smell...and the heat. This room is reserved for the fermentation process. 

Bourbon is made from three main ingredients: corn, rye, and malted barley. Which just seems so simple it's ridiculous. Also...it makes me wonder why we don't have bourbon in corn-friendly Nebraska!

The grains are cooked in limestone water. If you haven't figured out, Kentucky has a LOT of limestone. 

The mixture is then pumped into the fermentation tangs which are made out of cypress wood. I don't know the exact 

measurement of these, but they are easily 15-feet high and 10-feet wide. 

Yeast is added at this point.

A fun little fact about the yeast: they keep a portion of their yeast stash off-site in case of a fire or natural disaster would destroy it. Every yeast batch tastes different, so they always pull from the same batch for consistency. 

The yeast is also stored in a freezer set to 80-degrees below zero! I'll admit, 80-below sounded pretty nice right about this time during the tour. It was a scorcher.

Once we took the staircase up to the top floor, we were able to see a better view of what was happening inside the tanks. Basically, each tank is at a different point in the fermentation process. Which is evident by how active and "alive" the yeast has made the mixture. It literally looks like it is boiling, but it's just the yeast fermenting the mixture.

 

   

As you can see, Mags approved of the fermentation awesomeness.

From here we moved into the distilling room, where three GIANT copper pots where the alcohol is separated from water. Each copper pot (by the way, this makes me think of the Goonies' "Chester Copperpot") is smaller in size from the previous one as it reduces in size due to the distillation process. The copper pots are unique to Woodford Reserve, and they had them sent from Scotland, of all places!

After the distillation process is complete, the bourbon is poured into white oak barrels that have been charred on the inside. 

Now, for your entertainment, I am going to point out something in this photo. Do you see the barrel in the the middle with the small circle hole in it? That's where the bourbon is poured into the barrel when it is ready to be filled. That's not the entertaining part. Our lovely tour guide, Mollyanne, informed us that the name for that is "the bunghole." Mags and I tried in all our immature glory to stifle our chuckles. I'd like to say that we rose above the childish humor, but we were honestly laughing about it the rest of the weekend. We're cool like that. 

After the bourbon is poured in the bunghole (* stifling chuckle*) it is then taken to a cooled building to mature. 

  

This room was my favorite of all the rooms we toured. Based entirely on the fact that it smelled a bit like what I imagine heaven smells like. Not the bourbon here, but the bourbon-soaked white oak wood. It was just about the most wonderful smell I have ever experienced. The barrels are stacked about 15 columns high in this building and each is stamped with a fill date. The ones in the photo shown above were mainly from the 2003-2004 range. The Master Distiller will periodically come through and drill a small hole in the front of the barrel to taste and see if it is ready for bottling. Sometimes you will see barrels with amber-looking liquid oozing out of them. That isn't the bourbon though, that's the sap from the wood.  After the bourbon has matured enough, it is taken to the bottling facility where each barrel is tested by the Master Distiller to make sure that it matches a long list of tastes and smells that are their standards for good bourbon. The bourbon is tested using an old device called a "spirit thief." It is a long hallow stick made of copper that is dropped into each barrel and pulls out a small amount for tasting. Frankly, I was just impressed with how cool of a name "Spirit Thief" is. I hope somewhere in Kentucky a beautiful bourbon-colored horse goes by the handle "Spirit Thief."

That pretty much concludes the tour. We walked back up to the visitors center and received our complimentary half-shot of bourbon. And I have to admit, I had a completely different perspective on bourbon after that. I noticed the hints of vanilla and caramel that had been mentioned to us. I even thought I could taste a little bit of the oak. The aromas from the buildings we toured were fresh in my memory, and I could smell each of them with a whiff of the shot. And it tasted divine, too. 

And let us take a moment to pray to the god of Bourbon Balls, the most divine of all divine liquor-inspired confections. 

Complimentary?? You mean...I can have more than one?? DON'T MIND IF I DOOOO!

And, of course, our trip would not be complete without a bottle of bourbon that Mags bought and had engraved with out names and the date to commemorate this most-excellent bourbon tour.

If you are a novice to bourbon, I strongly recommend this tour. The guides know literally everything about the bourbon and the process. You can throw the most random question to them and they know the answer. Furthermore, it will give you an appreciation for bourbon that you might not have ever thought you could have. I certainly had no idea how fascinating the process was before this trip and was pleasantly surprised. And, of course, Mags and I spent some quality time further familiarizing ourselves with our specially-engraved Woodford Reserve Bourbon bottle later that night! When in Kentucky...do as the Kentuckians do.