I gifted a gift card and a trip to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail last year for Christmas and his birthday and we finally got around to using it! I booked us a tour with
Central Kentucky Tours. We cannot say enough good things about our experience with Central Kentucky Tours. We did the Bourbon in the Bluegrass tour and our driver was Donnie. He was just great! Before our tour on Saturday, we took Wyatt's grandma home to southern Indiana on Friday. While we were close, I had the opportunity to finally check out
Dress and Dwell in person! I've been following the cute little boutique online for a while now but it has never worked out to where I could stop in when I've been close. Y'all...it's every bit as cute as I thought it would be and more. After we did a bit of shopping there, we headed across the river and ate dinner at
Feast. It's so good!
We stayed in Harrodsburg, Kentucky that night because our tour picked us up there the next morning. Our tour picked us up at the Beaumont Inn. It was such a beautiful little historic inn! We only had one other couple on our tour for the day and we decided it was really pretty nice to have just a couple of other people with us throughout the day. Each tour at the distilleries had more but during transit and at lunch it was just the four of us. Our first stop of the tour was Woodford Reserve. I think this ended up being my favorite tour of the day. It was the most picturesque of the three we toured.
Stop number two was Buffalo Trace. The tour was so very different than the Woodford Reserve tour but just as interesting! We got to walk through a rick house and tour the Blanton's bottling facility.The tasting at Buffalo Trace was our favorite of the day. I sampled the Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare. Everyone also got to sample their Bourbon Cream. Wyatt tried their White Dog and Eagle Rare. For those not in the know, white dog is what you get after the distillation process before it is aged in oak barrels so it's clear and has much higher alcohol content. After our tour was done at Buffalo Trace, we had lunch in Frankfort at a little sandwich shop called
Gibby's.
Our third and final stop for the day was Four Roses. Four Roses is currently in the middle of an expansion project so our tour there was mostly just walking around the property with a guide. We sampled three different bourbons in their festive little tasting room. Four Roses won for prettiest gift shop and best gift selections. Did you know that the black you see on the buildings and trees near distilleries is actually mold! We learned that during Prohibition a tell tell sign of bootlegging was the mold.
We returned to Harrodburg at the end of the day. Wyatt and I checked out the small town's little main street and downtown area. We did some shopping in an antique shop and then went back to the tavern at the Beaumont Inn, the
Old Owl Tavern. We happened to see the couple who had been on the tour with us and joined them for dinner. We thoroughly enjoyed our day! We decided not to do anything extra on Sunday and just made our way home. With our early return, we were able to get the Christmas tree up and decorated!
