Saturday, February 9, 2019

A Hard Hat Tour of Buffalo Trace Distillery (Kentucky)

I recently took a road trip from Boston to LA, and I made sure to stop in Kentucky to visit one of the bourbon trail distilleries. A friend of mine recommended a tour of Buffalo Trace Distillery - specifically, the hard hat tour.
Buffalo Trace
The hard hat tour is a special tour because it takes you behind the scenes of every step of the production at Buffalo Trace distillery. We started from where the trucks bring in the grains to the cooking process and the fermentation.
Buffalo Trace
Now, I've visited a number of distilleries in the past, but Buffalo Trace was a new experience to me because of the scale of it all. The distillery, which is owned by Sazerac, doesn't just produce whisky for the brand Buffalo Trace but a total of 12 different brands. They make 2.6 million gallons of whiskey each year!

Buffalo Trace
We even got to taste the mash along the way on the tour.

The land and distillery itself was originally George T. Stagg Distillery and it's listed in the National Register of Historic Places and a designated National Historic Landmark. Of course, there has been expansions and additions since then.
Buffalo Trace
In addition to the massive scale production, there's also a smaller pot still, the E.H. Taylor Jr. Microstill where they make their limited Experimental Collection whiskies.
Buffalo Trace
After the tour, we settled for some tasting ... no, we didn't get to try the Pappy Van Winkle (le sigh!)
Buffalo Trace
Each person gets three tastes from the selection which included the below whiskies from the 12 brands they produce and their vodka (yes, the distillery also produces vodka) plus a taste of their bourbon cream liqueur at the end. I've tried these before, but had to opt for Eagle Rare again, of course.
Buffalo Trace
We finished off with some bourbon pecan chocolates.
Buffalo Trace

After touring a few distilleries, most of the time they start to look the same. The hard hat tour was a nice change. The hard hat tour really takes you to parts of the distilleries that you otherwise would never see, and one I would recommend taking when you're on the Bourbon Trail. Be warned, it's quite a bit of walking and some stair climbing. It is, after all, quite a big distillery!


1 comments:

The Thirsty Pig

I want to go on a bourbon factory one of these days. Too bad about the pappy’s. On another note I wish you updated your $1 oyster list.

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