Cruise With the Belle of Louisville, Kentucky

Chaz Rough: Welcome everyone to this edition of Looking at Louisville, I am Chaz. Stacey Yates: And I am Stacey. Chaz Rough: And we are going to go on a road trip and you are going to go with us but where are we going? Stacey Yates: Well, we are going to continue our adventure to Bourbon Country. If you remember in the fall Chaz, we took the viewers to the Central Part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail around the Bardstown area. This time we are going to continue on and pick up the remaining four distilleries that make up the legendary Bourbon Trail and the Bluegrass portion of the rail. Chaz Rough: Now, what distilleries are those? Stacey Yates: Those are Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, Woodford Reserve and Wild Turkey. And we’re going to do a little differently this time, if you remember in the fall, we went along with Mint Julep Tours in their Bourbon bus but this time we’re going to show you that you can also do it on your own, so we’re going to take my car and take a little two-day adventure. Chaz Rough: Yeah the Barbie mobile is ready to go so let’s go. Stacey Yates: We’re going to leave from Louisville, the gateway to Bourbon Country. Chaz Rough: All right, let’s go. Stacey Yates: Well, we made it to Four Roses, we know, one, two, three, four. Chaz Rough: And such a beautiful drive from Louisville to get here not less than hour? Stacey Yates: Ready? Chaz Rough: I’m ready. Stacey Yates: Let’s go. John Rhea: The founder of Four Roses Paul Jones, Junior was apparently smitten by a southern bell and intended to ask this young lady to marry him and if her answer was going to be yes, she was aware—Four Roses Bourbon and thus the Bourbon was named Four Roses. Take your finger, I don’t want to put a little bit, right there between your thumb and forefinger and what I want to compare is the smell here and the smell here. Chaz Rough: And now we’re going to go back to the—hang out a little bit, have some dinner. Stacey Yates: Have some dinner, alright. Chaz Rough: Let’s head to the inn and we’ll meet you there. Stacey Yates: Well, let’s go. Give in to way a wonderful meal here on the campus; I guess that is what you call it, right? Stacey Yates: I had a wonderful dinner of a grilled salmon. Chaz Rough: I had the black and salmon. Stacey Yates: And Mark had the tilapia and we started with the spinach which was really hot and bubbly when it came to the table. We had some great deserts. Chaz Rough: Oh wonderful. Stacey Yates: We had their signature which is the Robert E. Lee which is like an angel fruit cake with the citrus enhancement. Of course we had what I think should be their signature, the Bourbon bread pudding with Woodford Reserve Bourbon and Mark had the Derby Pie. Chaz Rough: If you want to interact with—here, remember you can go to Facebook and check us out, you can do a search for Go to Louisville. You can go to twitter, twitter.com/gotolouisville and of course you can always send us an email podcast@gotolouisville.com. Stacey Yates: And for the Bourbon fans that are watching this, we also are at Bourbon Country on Facebook as well. Chaz Rough: So, we’ll see you all tomorrow morning. Stacey Yates: We’ll see you in the morning. Good night. We are here with our good friend, an old friend. Chaz Rough: It is actually one of my friends too. Stacey Yates: That is right. Chaz Rough: We all love each other so much. Stacey Yates: That is great too. This is Chris Morris, if you remember from previous episode, the Master Distiller of Woodford Reserve. We are hoping that you will kind of take us on an abbreviated tour today and just give viewers a taste of what they can expect coming to Woodford, what sets it apart from the distilleries? Chris Morris: We’re going to enter the distillery where we’ll see our fermenters, we’ll see this wonderful pot stills. Then we’re going to exit the distillery and walk along Glen’s Creek and then with a highlights of everybody’s tour is visiting the Warehouse C then hopefully we’re bottling that day and they are going to see bottles being filled and then yes Stacey will end up at the visitors center and everybody gets a little dram of Woodford Reserve. Stacey Yates: Let’s get on. Chris Morris: Okay. Chaz Rough: Well, let’s get started so we’re going this way? Chris Morris: We’re going this way. Chaz Rough: All right. Chris Morris: As we go from fermenter, fermenter on tour, you will see the different stages of fermentation as we’ve developed more alcohol, there is less sugar for the yeast to work on less grain sugar so the whole process is slowing down and then we’ll gradually slow toward, this would be as flat as a mirror and there will be no bubbles on it and that’s when we’ll know it is time to distill, ferment— Chaz Rough: To me when I walk in here, it almost feels like walking into a church. Chris Morris: The Cathedral of Distilleries, certainly here in Kentucky because of these high ceilings and wide center aisle. This is what really sets visually Woodford apart from the other great distilleries on the Bourbon Trail are these copper pots stills. We’re not only are the only Bourbon distillery using only pot stills but we’re historically the only distillery to ever triple distill, it is Bourbon. And another sort of a cathedral and it is Warehouse C. And this warehouse is one of the oldest warehouses used in the commonwealth dates back to the 1890s and it is the only one that is made out of a 100% limestone. This warehouse heats up slowly, cools off slowly and it is just a place where the barrels rest. Well, when you finish your tour in the bottling hall, you’ll never know what you are going to see and this week we happen to be filling our annual Kentucky Derby bar. It is just the perfect way to end your tour before going to the gift shop and do some shopping. So, everybody thank you for coming to visit Woodford Reserve and look forward to your next visit. Stacey Yates: Well, we made it to the Buffalo Trace distillery here in downtown Frankfort, Kentucky and we are with a very special person at this distillery for a couple of reasons, with Freddie Johnson, one of my favorite tour guides ever. Freddie Johnson: Thank you. Chaz Rough: Well Freddie, I have few questions for you. I noticed over here, there is a prescription? Freddie Johnson: Yes. Chaz Rough: I want to talk to you about that and then can we go to beer house? Freddie Johnson: Chaz, that works for me. Chaz Rough: All right, after you. Stacey Yates: Let’s go. Chaz Rough: So Freddie, you are telling me about a prescription that was prescribed during the probation, tell me a little about that. Freddie Johnson: Oh, it is kind of interesting. In order to get your product, you had to go to the doctor and the doctor would write your prescription. That prescription let you have one pint bottle every 10 days, the doctors wrote over 6 million prescriptions— Chaz Rough: Oh yes. Freddie Johnson: This warehouse that we’re stepping into is one of the oldest on the property, it goes back to the beginning of the 1800s, the walls are too thick. It has an earthen floor, it holds right at 24,000 barrels of product. Take a look when the barrels come into this warehouse, they will stay right where you see them for the next three to twenty three years. Okay, so the barrels are going to come here one at a time, we’ll drop the temperature down, we’re going to kill that bourbon, run it through filter and then hand bottling. Chaz Rough: Cheers to Buffalo Trace. Freddie Johnson: Salute. Stacey Yates: Well, we made it to our final stop on this Bluegrass region of Bourbon Country on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and we have a special treat, we are at the Wild Turkey Distillery and we are with the man responsible for all of it, the Master Distiller, Jimmy Russel. Jimmy thanks for having us. Jimmy Russel: Thank you for coming. Glad to have you with us. Hope you enjoy your visiting us today. Stacey Yates: Oh it has been great so far. Jimmy Russel: We’re going to cross the street then we’ll see the actual making over the fermentation, you’ll seethe fermenters reserving for a minute. You’ll see it going through distill, coming out of the distill, going into the doubler, from the doubler after a second distillation and it is going to our—where you’d be seeing quite a brand new chardonnay barrels which we have today. From there it is going to the storage—store for the next six, eight to ten to twelve years. Well, ever staying here in Wild turkey, they have starts out, it’s the same but they are going to— Stacey Yates: Okay, just age different. Jimmy Russel: Different and our product is age and our tastry, it’s one of our products. Stacey Yates: Okay. Jimmy Russel: This is the storage house where the barrels are going to be stored now for the next six, eight to ten to twelve years which or you could go and color your flavors— Every barrel has been dated the day it was put in here. We have to know where all the barrels are all the time because we come on the home land security, there are supervisors. I come to work everyday and taste Bourbon and then go home at night and have a drink. Chaz Rough: This trip has been a truly beautiful learning experience about Bourbon. Stacey Yates: You feel like you know everything you ever want to know about Kentucky Bourbon then. Chaz Rough: Yeas I did. Well if they want more information about the Bourbon Trail, where do they need to go? Stacey Yates: Go to the website, gotolouisville.com or directly if they’re specifically interested in the Bourbon experience, just add bourbon.com. Chaz Rough: Now, if you want to interact with us in this podcast, it is really easy as we always say, send us an email podcast@gotolouisville.com. So, as always. Stacey Yates: You are looking at Louisville, gateway to Bourbon Country. Chaz Rough: See you real soon.