The Bourbon Capital of the World - Part 2

Did you read Part 1?

Getting ready to hike the trails at Bardstown Community Park

We didn't sleep as well at White Acres Campground from Thursday to Friday as we did the prior night, as it was quite a bit warmer, and we missed the rain softly drumming on the roof of Zelda the travel trailer.  When we made it out of bed, we once again did coffee/tea and warmed up breakfast casserole with biscuits, and then it was time to hit the trails!  While there's not a ton of hiking near Bardstown, the Community Park just outside of downtown has a few trails that total around 3 miles or so.  This sounded just right to us on this particular morning, so off we went!

Although it didn't rain on Thursday, the Wednesday evening deluge meant the trails were still pretty soggy, so we did a fair bit of slipping and sliding as we hiked.  Part of the trail system includes one along a ridge that borders the Heaven Hill Distillery, and we were able to see the facility at work - truly, there are so many distilleries in or near Bardstown that the whole town smells like mash most of the time.

We also found some nice mushrooms

Starting the ridgeline section of the trail

Heaven Hill doesn't want you to come to the distillery this way

After about an hour of sweating, mudding, and colliding with around 900 spider webs, we found ourselves back at the truck, ready to head to the RV park to clean up.  On the docket, we had our rescheduled experience at Heaven Hill at 12:30pm, and we wanted to be there right when their on site restaurant, Five Brothers Bar & Kitchen, opened at 11am to grab some pre-tasting lunch.

Like James B. Beam, Heaven Hill produces many different options, including their namesake, Larceny, Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, Bernheim Original, and Rittenhouse Rye.  We browsed the options in the gift shop while waiting for the kitchen to open (they finally had water, but their start was a bit delayed as they caught up on interrupted prep from the day before).  Eventually, we headed upstairs for some grub!

Our appetizer of fried pimento cheese balls (it sounded like a dare, but they were outstanding)

with our cocktails - an old Fashioned for Chris and a whiskey sour for me

Our mains were also great - we split a Cobb salad and grilled cheese/tomato soup combo - and the counter service setup allowed the restaurant to move folks through pretty quickly.  Before too long, we were descending the main staircase and turning right into the visitor center's museum.  The museum exhibits were cool, too; this was easily the best, full service visitor center we've yet seen in a distillery, and we learned all sorts of interesting things about the company and their offerings.

I'm checking out the unique, antique decanters while Chris reads about barrel markings

12:30 finally rolled around, and we met our guide for today's experience, called You Do Bourbon.  The session was a tasting of four rare-ish options in the Heaven Hill lineup, complete with instructions on how to taste, the different ways to drink spirits (neat versus with ice/water), and so on. Since the distillery was combining some of the rescheduled Thursday sessions with the already existing Friday ones, our group was pretty large, and our guide was doing his best to answer all the questions and keep an eye on everyone.  One particular member of our group, who happened to be sitting right next to Chris, was quite the challenge; she was an older lady who wasn't really paying attention and kept posing loud questions at inconvenient times, asking for things that weren't part of our experience, etc.  My favorite moment, however, was when the guide advised us how to use the droppers in front of us to add a few drops of water to our samples, and she pulled the dropper from the bottle and put it right in her mouth!  Thankfully, I have it on good authority they wash and sanitize these items after each group.

Chris recreating her patented move at home.

NO!  BAD OLSEN!

After the tasting, we proceeded next door, where we were allowed to fill our own bottles of the spirits we'd sampled earlier.  

Chris and I were some of the first folks to fill a bottle, and the guide walked us through all the steps

Bottle rinsing and drying...

...filling...

...and capping!

I took over for the labeling part of the process:

That's what's in our bottle!  The "Bottled By:" on ours reads, "Olsen 1 and 2."

Post-experience, we stopped by the gift shop to purchase our bottle (and a t-shirt and a sticker), and we waved goodbye to the hordes at Heaven Hill.  Our next stop would be Heaven Hill's neighbor and fellow sufferer of Thursday water issues, Willett - we wanted to see if we could taste their wares and try one more time to eat the egg salad sandwich we've heard so much about.  Sadly, the kitchen still didn't have water, so no sandwich for us once again.  Chris was able to get a flight of pours from their downstairs bar, but we found the selections pretty uninspiring.  It was a hot afternoon, and we figured the distillery cats had the best idea, so before too long, we headed back to the RV to take a nap.

Meh

There's our six-toed friend from yesterday

Awakening from our nap, we determined that our initial plan to take in the free concert in the Community Park and stay another night didn't sound so great.  This weekend was at the start of the heat dome that hit our part of the country pretty hard, and it was increasingly gross to be out and about.  We decided that instead of sitting in our RV in the AC (cool but loud), it was time to head home and sit in our house in the AC (cool and peaceful).  Before too long, we were packed up and driving east, and we made it home right around 7pm.  We enjoyed what would have been our concert picnic in the shade on our back porch, and we set up our own spirits tasting with the amazing selections we brought home from this adventure.

The next morning, we picked the girls up from their boarding spot, and the whole pack was together again!

The girls say lounging in the AC is the place to be

Chris got little girl snuggles...

...while big girl and I cuddled on the love seat.

Overall, we had a great trip, even with all the cancellations and reschedules, and we'll be back to Bardstown again - we still need to try that egg salad sandwich!

Later!

Amy