This will be an explore Bardstown day.
The "Stephen Foster Story" broadway-style show ended for the season on August 11th. Most other things around here involve learning about the bourbon industry.
Breakfast at Mammy's Kitchen in downtown Bardstown was quite nice. They let us sneak in a breakfast past their cut-off time.
Next, we went to the Getz Museum of Whiskey History to begin our "Kentucky Bourbon Trail" education. It was a perfect place to start. Key point: Kentucky is big in bourbon and whiskey because of the water (it sits on limestone which filters and sweetens the water).
Then we got more serious by taking a tour at the Heaven Hill Bourbon Heritage Center. We got to sample three premium bourbons and one whiskey. One of the bourbons, William Heavenhill, was aged for 16 years and sells for $225 per bottle ... there's very few of them left.
We learned that "rickhouses" store up to 50,000 barrels and that each barrel weighs about 520 pounds. They mix the brands and ages of barrels stored in a rickhouse to protect against total loss of a particular brand in case of a building disaster. They're typically 7-stories high. They aren't fancy ... no air conditioning. Heaven Hill lost seven rickhouses and a distillery due to fire in November, 1996.
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| Rickhouses at Heaven Hill |
We ended the afternoon with a Walmart shopping trip.
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