The Other Bourbon Trail

August 30, 2019

12:52 PM

New Riff Distilling

This craft distillery pairs tradition with innovation in producing its bourbon without chill filtration.

Visitors flock to Kentucky every year to travel the famed Bourbon Trail, but with the rising popularity of smaller distilleries, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour is another intriguing opportunity to get to know our native spirit.

According to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, bourbon tourists made a record 1.4 million distillery stops in 2018, which is a whopping 370 percent increase over the last 10 years. The Bourbon Craft Tour had 340,000 distillery stops. The numbers for both the Bourbon Trail and Craft Tour visits are expected to rise this year.

The Craft Tour began in 2012 with about eight distilleries. To be included in the tour, the distilleries are required by the KDA to maintain an inventory of fewer than 10,000 barrels or barrel equivalents of Kentucky-produced distilled beverage spirits each year. By contrast, to be a member of the original Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a distillery must have more than 25,000 barrels.

Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon opened in 2011. Owners Steve Beam and his brother, Paul Beam, are seventh-generation bourbon distillers. Among the founding members of the Craft Tour, they noticed an immediate increase in visitors once the trail was created for the smaller distilleries.

“People come because they are interested in our bourbon and our family history,” Steve Beam said. “But they enjoy our tours because they are personal and small. You can see everything we do all in the same room, so that is quite a change from tours of the large distilleries.”

Beam said that the tour is attracting more younger visitors—in their mid-20s or so—and women in recent years. This demographic expansion is great for the industry.

In addition to the tour and tastings, visitors like to walk the grounds and admire the gardens at Limestone Branch, and Beam said that many like to see the two rescue dogs on the property—fluffy and friendly chow chows named Bosley and Char.

“Every day, we meet people from all over. You just never know who will walk through the door,” he said. “But they are interested in us, and we are just as interested in them. We’re glad to have them.”

Hatfield & Co.

Visitors who tour all 16 distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and collect stamps for each in their passports are rewarded with an official tasting glass. The KDA has a new incentive program for the Craft Tour. Guests earn a collectible challenge coin after visiting all the distilleries in four state regions—northern, central, western and bluegrass. If they tour all 20 distilleries, they will earn a free, custom-designed wooden barrel stave on which to display the coins.

“Taking on this tour—since it is spread out all over the state—is kind of daunting,” said Adam Johnson, senior director of the KDA’s Kentucky Bourbon Trail Experiences. “So we wanted to up the gift. If you finish, you deserve this.”

Johnson said the design of the trail enables visitors to take on one region at a time.

Included in the tour are micro distilleries—those that may not be producing bourbon or, in the case of Casey Jones Distillery in Hopkinsville, producing bourbon that might not yet be ready for consumption. As the bourbon quietly ages in barrels with hopes that it will be ready by the end of the year, Casey Jones sells moonshine that the distillery makes in a square copper pot, just as the owner’s family did generations ago.

Visiting Casey Jones now, while it is still a “young” distillery, is a great introduction for guests, according to owner Peg Hayes. “It gives them even more reason to love distilled spirits,” she said.

Jeptha Creed

In just a few years, the number of craft distilleries has doubled, but the distillers said they don’t feel competition from one another. Instead, there is a camaraderie among them, and they help each other out.

“The saying that ‘the rising tide raises all ships’ is absolutely true,” Hayes said. “Since we are new to this industry, we have been overwhelmed with offers of help from other distilleries.”

At Second Sight Spirits in Ludlow, co-owner Carus Waggoner has been distilling since 2014. He said the other distillers are always ready to lend a hand. One time, Second Sight needed to check the sugar level and proof of a spirit, and friends at New Riff Distilling in nearby Newport let the distillery borrow a $30,000 analysis machine.

Second Sight also ages barrels in a rickhouse owned by another distiller on the tour, Hartfield & Co. in Paris. But it is not always the “little guys” helping one another out. Waggoner said that Bill Samuels Jr. of Maker’s Mark helped get legislation passed so that craft distilleries can serve cocktails on-site. Waggoner acknowledged that this makes a huge difference in Second Sight’s bottom line but probably does not matter as much to the giants of the industry.

“When we asked him why he did this for us, he said that when they were getting started, people from Old Fitzgerald helped them,” Waggoner said. “It is so neat to see that lineage.”

Although the new incentive program just came out this summer, Waggoner said the distillery already has seen an uptick in visitors, including guests from India and a family who did the entire tour in about a week.

A bonus for those who take on the Craft Tour is a 70-page passport to guide them. It is full of information about the distilleries as well as tips on other places to visit and even some cocktail recipes.

“We recognize that the tour is sort of a backbone to seeing Kentucky,” KDA’s Johnson said. “With the bourbon belt in the central part of the state, this Craft Tour takes people to parts of the state they might not be familiar with, letting them see so much along the way.”

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour

NORTHERN REGION

New Riff Distilling

Newport

859.261.7433

newriffdistilling.com

Second Sight Spirits

Ludlow | 859.488.7866

secondsightspirits.com

The Old Pogue Distillery

Maysville

info@oldpogue.com