The Official Kentucky Visitor's Guide - The Official Kentucky Visitor's Guide 2025
Trails of Tradition
2024-12-14 10:51:10
Kentucky knows its bourbon! The home of the Bourbon Capital of the World boasts more than 45 bourbon distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® and produces 95% of the world’s bourbon. That’s two-and-a-half barrels of bourbon for every person in the state.
On the Urban Bourbon Trail®, order Louisville’s official cocktail, the old fashioned (said to have been invented at the local Pendennis Club in the late 1800s) at one of the city’s many neighborhood whiskey bars. In Frankfort, cruise along the Kentucky River aboard the Bourbon Belle with Kentucky River Tours, the nation’s only boat-based bourbon tour, for an expedition to Buffalo Trace Distillery.
It’s full-on bourbon immersion on The B-Line® with a tour (Bonded, Barrel Proof, Blend — as in your own bourbon) and a tasting at Newport’s New Riff Distilling. Afterward, embark on a one-of-a-kind shopping excursion to Covington’s Revival Vintage Spirits & Bottle Shop or take The B-Line® straight to the speakeasy at Newport’s Pensive Distilling Co. Sip your way through a guided tasting or combine a tour with a dip into the past during bootlegging’s heyday before sampling a flight of Pensive’s bourbons.
On the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, build a delicious cocktail from scratch, customizing it with a gold medal-winning bourbon at Fresh Bourbon. Kentucky’s first Black-owned bourbon distillery offers tasting experiences in its downtown Lexington tasting room.
Enter bourbon distilling hallowed ground with a Behind the Beam Tour, tasting and Kentucky-inspired lunch at Clermont’s James B. Beam Distillery. The theme? Maturation Matters. Your guides? Master Distillers Fred and Freddie Noe. The experience? Priceless.
Compare the taste of Augusta Distillery’s wheated, high rye and traditional bourbons during the River Proof Barrel Experience, then pop the barrel bung and thieve whiskey straight from the cask and into your glass. In Shelbyville, Joyce and Autumn Nethery, the dynamic duo behind Jeptha Creed (Kentucky’s only mother-daughter- owned distillery), have built their ground-to-glass distillery one Bloody Butcher corn kernel at a time — a key ingredient grown on their farm.
Experience grassroots farm-to-bottle distilling on the new Kentucky Moonshine Trail at Regeneration Distilling Co. in downtown Winchester and bonus stop, Mt. Folly Farm, where the grains are grown and the whiskey is aged in tobacco barns.
On the Bullitt County Wine, Whiskey & Ale Trail, peruse vintage advertising signs in the Cox’s Creek Visitor Center before a Four Roses’ Bourbon & The Barrel Tour and guided tasting. Leave with a keepsake signature tasting glass. And while Kentucky is all about the bourbon — it’s got the brews, too.
Follow the West Kentucky Brewery Hop to a baker’s dozen of craft and microbreweries from Owensboro to Paducah, each offering a unique ambience and taproom experience.
Get schooled in Bourbon 101 at Bardstown’s Bourbon Capital Academy with a curriculum covering grains to stave to glass with classes like “The Art of Blending,” “Bourbon: From Soil to Sip” and “Bottled In-Bond: Quality and Clarity.” At Lebanon’s Kentucky Cooperage, learn what Rev. Elijah Craig discovered over 235 years ago as you watch the process in action: that flames licking and charring the insides of oak barrels impart a rich caramel color and luscious mellow smoothness to bourbon.
new Kentucky Distilleries
Eastern Light Distilling, Morehead • Garrard County Distilling Co., Lancaster • Golden Pond Distilleries, Cadiz Heaven’s Door, Pleasureville • Henderson Distilling Co., Henderson • J. Mattingly 1845, Frankfort • Limestone Farms, Georgetown Brothers Wright Distilling, Pike County • Lawrenceburg Bourbon Company, Versailles • Augusta Distillery, Augusta
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