Whether you’re a bourbon connoisseur or a beginner, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail offers tours, tastings, and other experiences that will improve your palette and increase your knowledge. There are 60 distilleries in Kentucky, located in small towns and such cities as Louisville and Lexington. Some are located a mere 8 to 10 miles down the road, while others are 70 miles apart. So deciding which to visit requires a bit of planning. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center in Louisville can help map out a realistic itinerary based on your preferences and time available. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Distilleries
Castle & Key Distillery in Frankfort is a great place to start. This distillery, which features an actual castle, was built in 1887 and put bourbon tourism on the map. Prohibition closed the distillery in 1920, and over the years it fell into disrepair, until it was purchased in 2014 and eventually restored. The new Castle & Key Experience provides guests with an all-inclusive tour and a neat tasting. The experience is flexible, allowing guests to begin the tour whenever they like. And for non-bourbon drinkers, the distillery produces gin and vodka. Tickets are $30.
In Loretto, about an hour and a half south of Louisville, you’ll find Maker’s Mark, a bourbon that’s been around since 1953. With its old letter press and tradition of rotating every barrel by hand and hand-dipping each bottle in red wax, Maker’s Mark likes doing things the old-fashioned way. An hourlong distillery tour, which is mostly outdoors, can be booked online.
Bluegrass Distillers is a craft distiller located in Lexington. The distillery was founded in 2012, though the doors didn’t open until 2015. The three years were spent producing bourbon with complex yet smooth flavors. They recently opened a new distillery in Midway that can visit on the hour-long Grain to Bluegrass Tour.
Suggested Trails
The number of distilleries has grown significantly since 2021, so the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour has merged with the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. This creates endless possibilities within the same experience.
This distilleries are organized into six regions of the state: Northern, Louisville, Central, Lexington, Bardstown, and Western. You can focus your experience in one region or use the online filters to build your own tour. You can search for tasting-only distilleries or those that offer a tour and tasting. If you’ve always wanted to taste bourbon straight out of the cask, select “Barrel Thieving” in the filters. You can also use the filters to find cocktail classes, workshops, and places where you can bottle your own bourbon. Bardstown Bourbon Co. offers a class on blending where each guest gets to create their own bourbon. In “Rare and Reserved” offered by Woodford Reserve Distillery, guests will participate in a premium mixology class.
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Transportation
If you’re looking to enhance your experience, My Old Kentucky Dinner Train offers a 2.5-hour “Bourbon Excursion.” This 32-mile roundtrip train ride in a 1940s vintage dining car includes a gourmet four-course dinner with bourbon pairings. There are also several tour companies that provide a guide and transportation and will design an experience that caters to your preferences. Mint Julep Experiences offers custom tours that can include visits to horse farms, wineries, and historic landmarks, in addition to bourbon distilleries. Central Kentucky Tours specializes in the Lexington region. And if you want a more refined tour, Pegasus Distillery Experiences offers a luxury tour with a chauffeur and white glove service.
