Kentucky Bourbon: Birth to Boom, Day 2 | Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Woodford

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Bardstown, Kentucky audio tour: Kentucky Bourbon: Birth to Boom, Day 2 | Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Woodford

This is a 69.8mi driving tour

It takes an average of 90 mins to complete.

Bardstown, Kentucky

The United States

$14.99

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About the Tour

(Part 2 of a 2-Day Driving Tour)

Continue your incredible tour along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail^®. On Day 2 of this driving tour, you’ll visit Heaven Hill, Four Roses Distillery, and Woodford Reserve Distillery.

The tour starts at Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience, where you’ll learn about the history of the Shapiro Brothers and their storied brands. As you drive, you’ll hear from Brent Elliott, Master Distiller at Four Roses, as he describes their unique ten-recipe approach. After your visit to Four Roses, Chris Morris, Master Distiller Emeritus of Woodford Reserve, will share his passion for making bourbon a world-class spirit as you drive to the historic Woodford Reserve Distillery.

Each leg of the tour gives you a deeper appreciation for the bourbon tradition and the folks who make it special. By the time you end the tour, just outside the town of Millville, you‘ll have learned about bourbon‘s mid-century demise and the people who brought it back with a boom!

During this 90-minute drive, you‘ll have a chance to:

Explore the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience
Travel Kentucky’s iconic Bluegrass Parkway
Unearth the regenerative practices today’s farmers use to supply bourbon’s grains
Explore Four Roses’ unique Spanish-Mission style distillery
Hear about The Derby from a Kentucky horse trainer
Compare Woodford Reserve to cognac as a world-wide spirit
Take in the beauty of Kentucky’s rolling rural countryside

So, buckle up, drive responsibly, and let our tour turn the long, confusing drives between distilleries into an immersive Kentucky Bourbon tour.

Cheers to an adventure you’ll talk about for years to come!

—-
While intended as Part 2/2, this tour also works great as a stand-alone.

Tour Producer

High Proof Tours

6 tours

As Official Partners of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, we craft immersive, phone-guided audio tours throughout the Kentucky Bourbon Trail that Make Your Drive Come Alive.

As you travel between iconic distilleries, you'll hear exclusive interviews, local stories, and deep dives into bourbon history. Our tours will map you a drive that blends adventure with insight to give you a travel experience that’s truly unforgettable.

High Proof Tours was dreamt up by two college buddies, Christopher & Adam. Christopher's an Emmy-Award winning documentary filmmaker with a love of storytelling. Adam's a whiskey geek with a bourbon collection so large that some say if you laid the bottles end-to-end, it'd be taller than the Eiffel Tower. After visiting the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, hearing the incredible stories, experiencing the long drives between distilleries, they saw a need for some better storytelling (and better navigation through some of those back country roads).

Christopher had already been creating tours on VoiceMap for clients - one of which is the globally top-rated driving tour on the platform. So he and Adam put their heads together, connected with the incredible people at the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, interviewed some legendary master distillers, and published their tours.

Cheers to an adventure you‘ll talk about for years to come!

Preview Location

Location 30

The Beginning of the Boom

>> Narrator:
We’ll stay on this winding road all the way into the heart of the next town: Versailles.

As Chris said, few besides Owsley Brown thought a new bourbon brand could work. The bourbon industry was still holding on tight to its baggage from prohibition and from cl... >> Narrator:
We’ll stay on this winding road all the way into the heart of the next town: Versailles.

As Chris said, few besides Owsley Brown thought a new bourbon brand could work. The bourbon industry was still holding on tight to its baggage from prohibition and from clear spirits holding dominance since the 70’s. Culturally, the perception was that whiskey was your grandfather's drink. The market seemed to have flatlined; everyone else was ready to call it.

Then Brown-Forman pulled out the paddles, yelled clear, and applied the shock.

>> Chris Morris, Master Distiller Emeritus:
So Owsley gave us permission to create Woodford Reserve. And I am convinced, 'cause everything points to this, that Woodford Reserve is the beginning of the bourbon renaissance. Some brands had kept the lights on, some brands had abandoned the playing field. And we showed that there was still life in the industry. And very quickly, once this site was open, Four Roses opens a visit experience. There's Wild Turkey, Heaven Hill, not the ones they have today, which are magnificent, but everybody starts opening their doors to the public and people are starting to come. Not very many at first. It's a new concept.

But by 1999, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail is born three years after we opened our visitor experience. Once we've launched Woodford Reserve, new brands start to be introduced. There's been over 500 new Kentucky bourbon brands introduced since Woodford was launched - over 500. And look at how many distillers we have in the Commonwealth. My goodness. And it's because Owsley had this vision and we were able to bring it to life.

And that's the history of Wood Reserve.

>> Narrator:
We’re about to be driving through the home of Wild Turkey Bourbon, a brand known around the world.

Wild Turkey has a rich history steeped in the traditions of Kentucky bourbon making. The story begins in the 1940’s with Thomas McCarthy, a liquor executive who was tasked with sourcing whiskey for a New York wholesaler. One of his sources was the Ripy Brothers Distillery, right here outside of Lawrenceburg. Legend has it that McCarthy brought samples of their whiskey on a wild turkey hunting trip to share with his buddies. Afterward, they kept asking him for more of, “...that wild turkey whiskey.” The name stuck. WIld Turkey bought the Ripy distillery in the 70’s. It’s a great stop if you have time during your stay on the trail and want to learn more about the brand, their history, and about JImmy and Eddie Russell, bourbon’s only father and son co-master distillers. Read More

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Major Landmarks

Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience
Four Roses Distillery
Lawrenceburg
Wild Turkey Distillery Visitor Center
Woodford Reserve Distillery

Getting There

Route Overview

VoiceMap tours follow a route from a set starting point. It’s how we give turn-by-turn directions and tell a story greater than the sum of its parts.

Start location
1311 Gilkey Run Rd, Bardstown, KY 40004, USA
Total distance

112km
Final location
37.80536001, -85.43700228
Distance back to start location

3km

Directions to Starting Point

Our tour starts in the parking lot of the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience.

Our tour has about 10 minutes of introductions and house-keeping before you’ll actually start driving, so park facing the visitor’s center if you can. It’s nice to have the distillery to look at.

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Tips

Places to stop along the way

During our trips along this route, we’ve really enjoyed the meals at Heaven’s to Betsy (in Lawrenceburg).

Doing tours or tastings at all three of the bourbon distilleries along this route makes for a very full day. That said, if you’re not planning to spend a ton of time at each distillery, and you really want to get your Bourbon Trail Passport stamps, you’ll be passing right by the Wild Turkey distillery.

Best time of day

We’d recommend making a morning visit to the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience so that you can start our driving tour by mid- to late- morning. While our tour only has you driving for ~1.5 hours, you’ll want time to experience Four Roses and Woodford Reserve, so the day can go by fast!

Precautions

Do not drink and drive. Do not drive intoxicated. Have a designated driver.

Be careful on these windy back-roads. Go at or below the speed limit.

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“Great app. walk around at your own pace, stop where you want, move on or speed up when you want. Read the script before you go or during the commentary, speed it up or replay it. Repeat the tour whenever you like.”

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