Driving through Kentucky, you can’t help but become aware that the state drink is bourbon.  There are distilleries everywhere.  Everywhere.  I’m rather fond of whiskey, but had never visited a distillery, so this looked like a good opportunity.  I like Blanton’s bourbon, which is made at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY, so that’s where I went.  It wasn’t hard to tell that I was in the right place… there was a trace of buffalo…

The first distillery was built on this site in 1812 by Harrison Blanton, who gives his name to their fine bourbon.  This is warehouse C, built in 1885 as a store house for aging bourbon, and it’s still in use today.  I could see the barrels through the windows.

The tour wasn’t particularly extensive, but included a movie that gave the group quite a bit of history and an explanation of the distilling and aging process.  Buffalo Trace is the oldest continually operating distillery in the US.  Considering that prohibition lasted for 13 of those years, that’s really saying something, but Buffalo Trace was one of the few distilleries to obtain a license to produce whiskey for “medicinal purposes” at that time.  According to our tour guide, every man, woman, and child in Kentucky was very sick during those years, and consumed several gallons of whiskey each.  Yes.

The process of aging bourbon is rather interesting.  To start, about 53 gallons of “white dog,” the result of distilling, is placed in a charred barrel and moved to warehouse.  Barrels on the top levels, where the temperatures fluctuate frequently, age more quickly, producing a harsher, but less expensive bourbon.  Barrels on the lower levels experience slower temperature variations, and so age slower.  This makes for a better bourbon, but the additional warehousing time also drives up the price.  As you can see in the barrels below, evaporation over time means that there’s less product left at the end of a longer aging process too.

We visited one of the warehouses, which smelled both fragrant and musty at the same time.  I forget how many floors there were above us, but there were enough to make me nervous, considering that each barrel starts the aging process weighing about 500 pounds.

According to Wikipedia… “Production capacity at Buffalo Trace is estimated at about 2,650,000 US gallons (10,000,000 L) of whiskey per year.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Trace_Distillery)

Although there is a bottling plant on site to handle most of the bourbon, the Blanton’s is all bottled by hand.  We saw a truck behind the bottling building bringing in full barrels and taking out the empties.

The full barrels are rolled inside, then filtered and emptied into the storage vats below.

The man on the left is filling and corking the bottles by hand, while the next man in line seals them.  Further down the table, there are people wetting and applying the labels, putting each bottle in a pouch and then a box, and then packing six bottles into shipping containers.  This batch was labeled to go to Japan.

Whether you like the taste of it of not, you have to admit that it’s a lovely looking liquid.

Back at the visitor center, I took a look at a room called the Whiskey Vault, holding a historical collection of bourbons and whiskeys produced by the distillery.  They continue to add samples as new ones are made.

They very wisely keep it locked.

At the end of the tour we were given some free samples to try, and oddly, I wasn’t all that fond of either the Buffalo Trace or the Eagle Rare, both being a bit too bitey for me.  I guess I’ll have to stick to the expensive stuff.  On the other hand, they also introduced the group to a lovely dessert — bourbon cream (similar to Bailey’s Irish Cream) combined with Dr McGillicuddy’s root beer.  Tastes like an awesome root beer float!!

They also had bourbon ice cream and chocolates!

So I didn’t actually see a lot of the operating distillery, but had a good time anyway.  What I saw of the history and process was interesting, the buildings and the setting were lovely, and I was mildly “happy” at the end (hic).  I’m definitely going to try the root beer float again (hic).  Oh dear (hic)…