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

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

This is a 70.7mi 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 the Willett Distillery, Four Roses Distillery, and Woodford Reserve Distillery.

The tour starts at Willett, where you’ll learn about their famous pot stills and barrel selects. 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:

Experience Willett Distillery
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 40

Going Beyond Bourbon

>> Narrator:
In a minute or two, this road has a sharp bend to the south. So take it easy, and take in these beautiful Woodford County back roads. Horse country.

The rebirth of bourbon has brought an incredible number of offerings to the thirsty palettes of whiskey geeks. ... >> Narrator:
In a minute or two, this road has a sharp bend to the south. So take it easy, and take in these beautiful Woodford County back roads. Horse country.

The rebirth of bourbon has brought an incredible number of offerings to the thirsty palettes of whiskey geeks. And it’s brought you here, today. A lot of thanks is owed to Woodford Reserve and Brown-Forman. The industry had been focused on its past, mourning its former glory. They came along and goosed it good. Got it excited again.

>> Chris Morris:
And in those early years, some of today's most noted craft distillers from other parts of the country would come and visit us and, and get inspiration from us. So yes, this has been, uh, an inspiration to the craft distillers. And most people don't realize that the craft brewing industry was a reaction to the American brewing industry at the time, being pretty bland. And people certainly service people or people who travel notably in Europe coming back like, man, the bureau over there is really good.

And why don't we have that here? So a reaction to bland, the neat thing is the craft distilling movement is just the opposite. They're doing such a cool job in Kentucky. We love bourbon so much. 'cause again, there's many quotes in those early years. If we could ever make bourbon like they do in Kentucky, we know we've done something. So we were an inspiration from, you know, a flavor standpoint. Can other people do what we do? And I always thought that was great. They were imitating us 'cause we were doing a really good job and they wanted to be like us.

>> Narrator:
So with the Bourbon Boom in full swing, what will the future be for Woodford Reserve? And the bourbon industry in general?

>> Chris Morris:
Well, the brand wants to and intends to go beyond bourbon, as we mentioned with our earlier philosophy of attracting a diverse, a global palette. We focus a lot on cognac. We do, specifically Woodford because, you know, cognac comes from a specific place like, like we do, cognac is made in pot stills, and we have pot stills at our distillery. And so there's a lot of similarities, but certainly in parts of the world, especially Asia, cognac is held to the highest regard over all spirits. And again, if, if you have that, that mindset of flavor profile, as you know, there's also brand building. You have to market and, and promote, but you have to taste good as well. So if we can have a flavor profile that's attractive to that consumer in this market, or this consumer in that market, again, maybe we're gonna, we're gonna get aged rum drinkers in South America to fall in love with Woodford Reserve, which we are by the way. That's why I keep mentioning cognac because it's still is so highly regarded in parts of the world where we aren't we as an industry. And again, that's Asia, you know, that's, that's one of those nuts to crack for bourbon in general. And maybe Woodford will help be the one that helps crack that. Read More

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Major Landmarks

Willett Distillery
Four Roses Distillery
Lawrenceburg
Wild Turkey Distillery Visitor Center
Woodford Reserve Distillery

Getting There

Route Overview

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Start location
1869 Loretto Rd, Bardstown, KY 40004, USA
Total distance

114km
Final location
38.12327493, -84.80777401
Distance back to start location

69km

Directions to Starting Point

Our tour starts in the visitor's parking lot of the Williett Distillery.

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 Toogie’s Table (in Bardstown) and Heaven’s to Betsy (in Lawrenceburg).

Doing tours or tastings at all four 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 following distilleries: Heaven Hill & Wild Turkey.

Best time of day

We’d recommend making a morning visit to Willett 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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