Ep. 60 - Top 10 Historic Places to Visit in Kentucky Bourbon Country

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm Your os Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon with Spring Break right around the corner and the Kentucky Derby coming up and summer plans just about to happen. It felt like this was the perfect time to get together a list of some of the great historic travel destinations in Kentucky. And of course you can go get my book experience in Kentucky Bourbon and that's going to give you the history of bourbon and talk about overall planning advice and tasting advice. And it'll give you the 32 distilleries. And I mentioned something about history on the ones that have a history focus, but I wanted to go a step further in this particular episode. And so I pulled in my good friend Jerry Daniels, who helps me run the official whiskey lore community on Facebook groups.

(00:01:02):
But his main occupation is as the tour guide extraordinaire for Stone Fences tours in Kentucky. And if anybody has the inside scoop, it's going to be Jerry. In fact, Jerry is the guy I go to get all of the information of all these cool new distilleries that are opening up and the ones that have historic backgrounds. And we've done some great travels together as well. So I asked Jerry if he would put together a top 10 list of the best historic places to visit in bourbon country. And because two heads are better than one, I also put together a list of what my top 10 favorite historic places in Kentucky's bourbon country are. And so bourbon lovers settle in cuz we got a whole lot of history to talk about and a whole lot of historic Kentucky to just unveil right before your ears. So let's jump right into my interview with Jerry Daniels of Stone Fences Tours. Jerry, welcome to the show.

Jerry (00:02:01):
Hey Drew, how you doing? Doing good. It's a gloomy day here in central Kentucky. We've had the last two days we've been out on tours and we had 75 degrees in sun yesterday and today we have thunderstorms. So you might pick up on some of those thunderstorms.

Drew (00:02:17):
We have a cool front coming through.

Jerry (00:02:19):
Yeah, we have some. It's like I said, 75 yesterday and Sunny. And then I think next Saturday's supposed to be in the thirties for the highs.

Drew (00:02:26):
Oh man. Yes, exactly. In and out of those barrels. So you do the stone fences tours and we'll talk a little bit about that here during the podcast and we'll also talk about a lot of history and you also do a YouTube channel with Lowell Arnett that is called Behind the Label where you guys do some deep dives into people like Oscar Pepper and the Beam Family and the Wild Turkey, the rips. So that's kind of my resource everyone. When I did my Tom Rippy interview I was like, oh man, I need to go catch up and see what's going on with the Rippy family history. So you were my research for that. So thank you very much for that.

Jerry (00:03:16):
Oh, you're welcome. Now that that's when we first started, we wanted to do my wife and I were both history. We graduated history degrees. My wife teaches us history, so we always wanted to do it from a history perspective. So I come up, we researched for three years just on the history of some of these families and finding locations, not necessarily just the distilleries but locations, home sites and all that stuff. And about each of these different families or individuals like Colonel Taylor. So we come up with these tours we call bourbon Barrons that takes you through the history of each of these families and we'll visit the sites in order to give you that flow of that family or individual and hopefully give you a better understanding of these places and who put this distillery here, how it got here, who put it here, how it's still here. So yeah, that's our goal.

Drew (00:04:09):
And it's exciting cuz there's a lot of distilleries that are coming back online or we're starting to hear about a lot of old brands that are being reinvigorated or brought to back to the shelves. And so that makes a lot of fun in terms of looking at the shelves. But then also the idea of once you're going out on these tours and you're trying to figure out places to go, there's some really cool spots that are starting to open back up. So we're going to probably talk about a couple of those while we are doing what I had planned today, which is to do a top 10 historic places to visit in Kentucky and to make this really interesting, I thought, why not? Rather than you pulling our resources and coming up with a list, I would come up with a top 10 list and you would come up with a top 10 list and we will walk through and figure out from number 10 to number one, trading off what we think the best distilleries are to visit or places are to visit. We're not really just locked into distilleries. We can dig in a little deeper and have some locations cuz there's a lot of historic locations around that are associated with people in the distilling industry, the bourbon industry and so much more. So are you ready to get our little countdown kicked off?

Jerry (00:05:39):
I think so. I started out probably about 20 and <laugh> hard, but I have think a top 10. Yeah, 10. It was tough. It's not easy.

Drew (00:05:50):
I think the ranking for me was one of the harder parts of it because I'm like, man, can I put that ahead of something because there's a lot of diversity in my list. And so it's thinking, yeah, does that really go ahead of something else? So you could probably swap some of mine around a little bit, but I tried to be as faithful to that. And then at the end, we'll probably if you don't cover some of the ones that I left off my list and vice versa, we might throw some of those out there as well. Cuz there's definitely more than just 10 historic places in Kentucky to go

Jerry (00:06:25):
More than 20.

Drew (00:06:28):
Yes, yes. So I'm going to start off and I'm doing a, for fantasy football fans out there, we're going to do kind of a snake draft kind of thing here where I'm going to start off with my number 10. Jerry's going to do his number 10, he'll do his number nine. Then we'll go back to me and I'll do my number nine. And I guess in the case of where something is going to come up in, if I reveal something that's further up in your list, then we can chat about it and you can say, ah, that's coming for me somewhere down the line. Or if you wanna reveal the number of where it's at, we can do that as well because I know we're going to have at least a couple of these that are going to cross over. But what's fun about this, I'm the outsider coming into Kentucky and these are the places that I've kind of discovered on my own. And you are in the area and you take people to these places and you've had a chance to investigate them and get a little deeper knowledge of them and probably have some places I don't know about potentially. You do a lot

Jerry (00:07:31):
Of research, you've done a lot of research, I think your

Drew (00:07:34):
Stuff and you've taken me to a couple of interesting places and we've

Jerry (00:07:38):
Had some interesting stops. Yes,

Drew (00:07:40):
We have. So I'm going to actually start off my list with one of those places that it ends up at number 10 at the bottom of this list, mainly because I haven't been there since they've started actually doing tours. They have a renovation tour that's going on. And so the place is the old SteelHouse Distillery, which used to be the t w Samuel's and Son's Distillery. So it's got a heritage all the way back to 1844. And we know the Samuel's family of course morphed into Maker's Mark or moved into Maker's Mark, which that was a tough one actually, I did not put that on my list and maybe we'll talk about that as well in a little bit. But once the Maker's Mark family moved there's a lot of history around that as well. But we went together and I thought that was really cool cuz you took me around there and we gotta see the old bottling hall, which is fascinating to look at you. Maybe you've seen it since the last time I've seen it. They have they started renovating in there or is it still They,

Jerry (00:08:54):
Yeah, have started. They do have a micro still, I think they're still waiting on their DSP to start.

Drew (00:09:01):
Okay.

Jerry (00:09:02):
So I said from last I talked to 'em, they don't have that yet. I've been there probably a couple times since then, but I did see their micro still that they were using and they've got a Steeler now, so that's different than probably the last time you were there. So they are going to distill right off the bat. I don't want they open up, but I mean it's a great place. Like I said, the bottling line, it just looks like this place was flip was switching, it was just shut down. It's what it looks like when you go in the bottling line. You're going into the lab, you're going into the steam engine room. Yeah, wall still there.

Drew (00:09:33):
The lab was it was a dusty mess. <laugh>, when we went in there, everything was still the bottle old bottles were still there. You really felt like you were stepping into a place that time had forgotten.

Jerry (00:09:48):
And Adam Inman has done the restoration tours. He does a great job with the history. He came from Green River, which is also historical and he does a good job there. It's restoration tours. I'm excited when they actually get starting producing at least some white spears so they can maybe do a cocktail when you take that tour. But from what I understand they're going to do kind of a progressive tasting on the tour, which is cool Will it Does that. Oh nice. Yeah. So you start off with a pore and you carry that with you and you'll have stops on the way where you get a chance to try more products or That's pretty similar to what they're going to do at Samuels. Okay. And they're going to build those cottages out there for you to be able to stay. It's in the perfect location in between all the bars, town distilleries and Jim Bean. Yeah. So I mean it's like, as they say, location, location, location and history.

Drew (00:10:42):
Those warehouses are really cool to see pictures of those. I guess some of them have been in use maybe by Heaven Hill I think had had Heaven

Jerry (00:10:53):
Hill owns, I think there's nine Heaven Hill on seven and Maker's Mark held on the two of 'em, I think cause of the history of the property. So these, yeah,

Drew (00:11:02):
Yeah. But they're these tall, they're, I also wanna call 'em barns, but then they have this it's like a

Jerry (00:11:10):
Goda

Drew (00:11:10):
Style that stands up on top and it runs the length of the building. Fascinating. So that's definitely one I want to get back out and see again after they've really started working things out. And it's cool to hear that they're going to start distilling out there as well.

Jerry (00:11:26):
Yeah. Rick and Ryan, I guess you haven't met them yet. They weren't there, but I mean they have a lot of plans. They've done this kind of stuff before turning these sides in the venues. Not necessarily distilling, but I just think it's just a location. Like I said, the history goes back to 1844 runs all the way through prohibition. I think the site there now was built after Prohibition. They're built it by the train tracks then. So what you're seeing is a post post-prohibition build, but still the so-called, you see the train tracks, they bought the little terminal out there, they're buying that the stop. And I just think it's such you've got a airfield there where you can fly your small planes into. So I think that it's definitely, I mean go check it out now. I think it's cool to go see it now and then once they get open I think it'll be a great stop for anybody traveling the trail.

Drew (00:12:24):
Yeah. One of my favorite stories about t w Samuels was that he was the high sheriff for Bardstown and that he actually was involved in getting his stuck cousins Frank and Jesse James to lay down their arms at the end of the Civil War. Well,

Jerry (00:12:43):
And it's funny, you can see the house of Ruben James who married or Ruben Samuels. Who marries Ada James. Okay. So Frank and Jesse's mother, the house is right there that you can see from the distillery.

Drew (00:12:55):
Very nice. All right, so give me your number 10.

Jerry (00:12:59):
Surprisingly, I mean my number 10 is old steel house.

Drew (00:13:05):
Yeah. Mine instinct alike, right?

Jerry (00:13:07):
Yeah. Now that was my, that's my number 10. It's the first half of the Samuel's family. Yeah. So I mean it's just everything there is history. Like I said I just couldn't leave it off the list. There was no way I, like I said, I love going there. I love being able to meet 'em right after they bought it and hear their stories and what they were planning on doing. They found a old bottle laying around the distillery and they actually took sips of it, have no idea what the bottle

Drew (00:13:39):
Was. Oh my goodness.

Jerry (00:13:41):
But they did take a sip of it that day. We were there.

Drew (00:13:45):
No telling what's in that.

Jerry (00:13:47):
That's un telling. Yes. They took small sips. So

Drew (00:13:50):
There're still alive. But

Jerry (00:13:51):
Yeah, definitely a top 10 list. And once they get producing and then with the restaurant they're going to have there and everything, I think it's a definite stop whenever you come in if you're in <inaudible>.

Drew (00:14:04):
Yeah, definitely. I think that's part of the reason we probably both put it at number 10 because we see a lot of potential there and it's like, okay, we are at the beginning now, but we can see you climbing the list, so. So let's jump into your number nine.

Jerry (00:14:21):
Let's see my list here. My number nine is one you've never seen.

Drew (00:14:25):
Okay.

Jerry (00:14:27):
We talked about going there. A lot of people don't know about it. It's part of the craft bourbon trail. Okay. A small operation, but historic family back on the historic side. And that's the Pogue family.

Drew (00:14:43):
Okay.

Jerry (00:14:44):
Yeah, you've talked about the old po distillery up in May. Oh

Drew (00:14:47):
My goodness, actually that's one that should be on my list. I did finally get out there.

Jerry (00:14:52):
Oh, you did make it. Okay. Okay.

Drew (00:14:54):
I did make it. I went,

Jerry (00:14:55):
Oh, you got a didn't. That's right. You did tell me that. That's

Drew (00:14:58):
Right. Yeah, yeah. No, the family wasn't there. Well one family member was mowing. But yeah, no, I got a chance to do the tour, walk through the house and drive that crazy driveway. <laugh>

Jerry (00:15:11):
Overlooking the Ohio River, I mean, yeah, cool location. The house was from their original family. I mean they were able to buy it back and they built the distillery up on the hill by the house. And the distiller, original distiller was down by the river. There's a lot of stories from it. I mean, you talking about going all the way back to 1876 with the family and they're all named Henry. Yeah. So Henry pos first, second, third I, it was one that started in 1876 and it ran up to a prohibition and it was odd, the stories behind it, the first two pos were actually killed at the distillery, which is kind of a haunting story. And the third after prohibition did not bring it back, those stories. And he just didn't have the will to bring it back. But Pogue number four and number five finally got together and decided to bring it back. And they've been around for a while. Yeah. I mean they've been around over a decade for a little small craft distillery. And John runs it pretty much as their distiller and was a great guy to talk to. He'll take you in the house, talk about the history, but definitely one that you want to go, he'll check out and just feel the history of the house and just the family and great view, but very small, small compared to some of these other ones.

Drew (00:16:29):
Well and it's interesting because you get to look out over the Ohio River and then imagine, and they have pictures there of where the old distillery was down by the railroad tracks and you're like, how did they put this huge distillery in that small little strip of land that's right along the Ohio River? It's fascinating. And I guess that that was around to what, the 1940s or so before they tore that down?

Jerry (00:16:58):
It stopped production 52 I think. 52.

Drew (00:17:00):
Okay. They

Jerry (00:17:01):
Produced, yeah, but it remind you a little bit of a castle key and oak crow. Cause they're in those little slices of land there between the creek and the road and just narrow little narrow path that they had there. But they had the river there so they had a little extra compared to Wa Castle Key O Taylor. But O Taylor ran the trains train tracks to his, so yeah.

Drew (00:17:29):
Well, and now you're making me sad that I didn't put this on my list. I could maybe adopt this as my number nine, but yeah, I mean the ties into George Remus as well. There is, and it's, it's near Maysville, which was Limestone Landing, which was the place where it's supposed that bourbon may have gotten its name because at one time that was Bourbon County and that barrels may have been stamped from that location, cuz that was a pretty major port as major ports would go during the days of the frontier. But I mean that was a big stop off place for barrels of whiskey or anything else coming down or going out.

Jerry (00:18:13):
I mean, especially when you're talking about central Kentucky whiskey. I mean a lot of that whiskey went to Maysville. Most of the rest went to Louisville. But a lot of that from central Kentucky went through Maysville and then smoothly they stamped it Old Bourbon County whiskey. So I'll let people debate on

Drew (00:18:29):
The name. We need pictures. Yes, <laugh>. All right. My number nine is actually a place that I bumped into when I was going to go to the log still distillery. And I got there late. And so I drove over to Dan Crossing where they have some bed and breakfasts and I was going to take some pictures of the log still distillery in New Hope Yosemite area. And some of the people that were sitting on the front porch said what are you doing? And I said, I'm taking pictures of the distillery, I'm a podcaster. And I'd done a story about Log still distillery and the damp family and all of that. So I hadn't had a chance to see since they've done the renovations and the tasting room and all of that out there. And so they said well, why don't you come into the bed and breakfast and tell us a little bit more.

(00:19:32):
So actually the guests invited me in to this bed and breakfast the homestead and started showing me around this historic home. And if you're going to stay somewhere in the area, that's actually a really cool spot because they really deck that house out as a bed and breakfast. And there's a lot of the history of the dance family and that distillery. You can see the historic photos of the distillery and the family members all along the walls when you're walking in with the staircase and all of that. And just, they did a really, really nice job on it. And for me, it's a great jumping off point if you listen to my podcast episode about the Dan family and New Hope and how this town had been lost at Prohibition but actually had been a town thriving with 11 distilleries at one time at the turn of the 19th to 20th century.

(00:20:35):
A fun place to drive around and use your imagination and see the church and see all the names Mattingly and Dan that are and Miles that are all listed on the stained glass within the church. And so there's a lot of this history that's there, but it's like you gotta know it. You have to know that history in a way. And so anybody else would drive through that town and have absolutely no idea that this was a thriving sensor of distilling where the l and n railroad came through and there were multiple stops along the way, stopping at different distilleries and now you're down to log still. Distillery has taken over the old Yosemite distillery where they produced Yellowstone and there was cold, cold Spring was right across the way from there. And you can still see the Cold Spring's still there but the distillery's gone and the train tracks are still there.

(00:21:41):
And there was a train depot down there. I haven't seen what they've done with the train depot, but I know that that's a floodplain. So there's not a lot that they can do with it. But they are dressing all that up and then they've added an amphitheater to it. So to me they, it's kind of a destination spot that if you can do jump offs to Maker's Mark and to limestone branch over in Lebanon, Loredo House, you can drive to Bardstown. It's not terribly far from there as well or over to New Haven. And you can go see the Railroad Museum where they talk about the l and n railroad and all the history behind that. So for me, this is kind of a cool destination spot with its own history, but then the history surrounding it just makes a great jump off point. Yeah.

Jerry (00:22:39):
Yeah. Now they're kind of my old pole for you. I had them just right outside my top 10. I love it down there. We went, I know Lo and I went down there and met Wally and Charles when they were still in the Quonset huts. They were working outta the Quonset huts down there and Charles was so great. He took us on a side by side all over the property, went to his old home, which is one of those beautiful homes. They've got fixed up now that you can stay in. Got to see y'all of it kind of before they started. I mean really the only thing there, there now is the water tower. The Kwanza Hus is cool. I was actually there last week at Longdale.

(00:23:21):
So they use part of the Kwanza huts in their tasting room. So all their buildings are going to have that circular ceiling to 'em from material, from the quant huts, even the steel room that they're building. It's a, it's about complete. When we were down there, the new large steel room so they'll have that. They already have the firm Iners dropped in and they were just waiting on the steel. They said they should go through the TTB and make sure everything's good and they should be producing sometime later in the year. But they've got the taster in, like you said, they've got the amp, which is drawing some pretty big names for music. I know on Fridays and Saturdays you can go down there. If you do the four o'clock tour you can hang out. Cause at five o'clock they turn it into a bar.

(00:24:05):
And then during the summer and stuff, they'll have live music on at the amp. They have live music inside right now. Yeah. So definitely with the houses, the old homes that are there for BMBs and they're going to build more cottages and stuff there. So definitely a place you could start. And like I said, maker's markets closed, limestone branches closed, independent Steve Coopers that you can do tours at is very close. And like I said, not far from Marshtown. Also, I think a great way to end your tour if you're doing it, especially on a Friday, Saturday. It's a cool way to do it. And just historic family and they've still got all this tie in with the beams also. So definitely a great stop. And I think a place that once they get it going kind of old, once it gets up going, I think it's a definite stop for people traveling the trail

Drew (00:24:59):
And a destination. And that's cool to hear that old SteelHouse is doing the same thing in terms of lodging and the rest. Cuz it gives you a unique opportunity to stay someplace historic and mm-hmm Experience the history around as well. Okay. So moving on to number eight, I think this is a place you and I both appreciate and it's not really something that has an official tour to it. In fact, you probably just kind of see it from the outside, but maybe if you go over and chat with David Meyer over at Glen's Creek, you might get a chance to see a little bit more of it, which is the old Crow Ruins over at Glen's Creek Distilling. And I

Jerry (00:25:44):
Don't know if you could read my pad. Yeah, you probably can't. Number eight. Yeah. Glens Creek

Drew (00:25:52):
<laugh>. There you go. Yeah, I mean it's a cool place to stop just to see this distillery that we still kind of questioned. What the date it was built? Was it

Jerry (00:26:06):
60 or seventies?

Drew (00:26:08):
Yeah, 1860s, 1870s. It's one of those places that when I got a chance to step inside it and see the old fermentors and all that stuff, I mean it's got Ivy growing all over it and Inside is definitely not finished. That was something that David, when he bought the property, was thinking about doing. But it was a bigger challenge than was, I think he was going to do a Kickstarter campaign or something. And I think we're talking millions to get that place. Yes, yes. Renovated.

Jerry (00:26:45):
We're talking similar to that other distillery just down the road from it, I would say price wise to redo it.

Drew (00:26:49):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's a really cool place to see and to know that Colonel Lee h Taylor had a hand in the design of that as well as, I mean that's just a fantastic area to go to. And what I love is the drive down Long Glens Creek on McCracken Pike where, and I know it's been closed for a little while, but it turns into almost a single track road they have in Scotland where you have to watch the traffic coming from Frankfurt and back and forth. But I mean it really does make you feel like you're kind of sliding back in time or that you're going to an area for me and traveling in Scotland, it kind of gives that feel as you're on the way to this distillery and then mm-hmm

(00:27:42):
Definitely take the time and do the tour at Lens Creek, which isn't necessarily a tour, it's more of a talk through, but you get to see what they're doing there. The first time I was there, whoever was doing the tour said yeah, we would like it if we could just run the Jolly Roger flag up on a pole outside the distillery cuz they're kind of the rebels. They're doing things the way they want to do them rather than doing them the way everybody else is doing them. So it's a very interesting experience at Glens Creek. It

Jerry (00:28:22):
Is different it it's different. I mean, yeah, I love it. The old Crow distillery, I take people, even if we're just down on that road, I'll take people just to drive by and just see the distillery, but it's definitely worth going in their product. They're is OCD number five and I tell a lot of people it stands for Old Cranky Dave and they'll say that too. You fit in well with them with height wise. I go in there and I feel so short when you go in there and talk to Dave or John or Stewart, the shortest 1 6 4 and he played football UK so Wow. He a small guy, Stewart standing there, seven foot played in the NBA and for the Pacers and all that. So it's a interesting group and they're all very sarcastic. I tell people if you want a little sarcasm with your bourbon, definitely they will do if you give a heads up and let 'em know if you got a group. They do, they have offered before a tour other runs with you. Yeah. That's something, not something you see on their schedule. Yeah yeah. Like I said, most of the stuff is a tasting kind of talk through when Dave got it. Cause like I said, there's a date when it was built. They'll tell you 1870s and they're probably right on that. I think we actually saw a date at the spring Springhouse, we were able to walk the grounds and check out the Springhouse and saw a date of 1870s on the Springhouse.

Drew (00:29:48):
I think I'm the facade actually. It says 1872 doesn't it

Jerry (00:29:53):
On the, you're talking about on the building itself? Yeah, the steel rebuilding I think. No, it actually says 1835.

Drew (00:29:59):
Oh

Jerry (00:30:00):
Does it actually goes back to, it goes when Crow started with Old Officer

Drew (00:30:05):
Pepper. Okay.

Jerry (00:30:06):
Yeah, it says actually 1835 on the building. So that's when he started with Pepper. So Okay. So yeah, that's not the date either, but I mean when it's one of those went through, it got shut down there in Prohibition. Of course it was one of those at National Distillers bought up just like the sister distillery right next to it and bought them too during that time. And I think it closed in 87. So it sat there for a long time before David come in with a partner. Now it's just David owns it, but I think it was 2013 and he came in. So they've been there nine years now

Drew (00:30:42):
And they're the old bottling house.

Jerry (00:30:45):
They are. And they've got the building next to 'em. I know they're starting to put their barrels in that now so they don't use probably a 10th of the complex but it's just a cool side to sea. And when you go there, it's one of those craft distillery tours. You know, go to the big boys, you're getting tastings of three or four items when you go there. You're getting tastings of a lot of different types of products, but you'll get some rum and vodka and they have the stories behind these and they're just odd guys.

Drew (00:31:18):
Well the

Jerry (00:31:19):
Fun entertaining tours

Drew (00:31:22):
There, well the OCD is actually number five is in reference to the old Crow distillery, number five fermentor because they had taken some yeast from there some wild yeast and thought, well maybe this is somewhat close to what may have been used in here cuz we've lost the old crow yeast. And so nobody really knows what that was like. But anyway, so

Jerry (00:31:51):
I think the CARTO veto is actually veto veto, it's hard to say but it was actually the head of one of the production manager I think would come by, stop by there from the Oak Crow distillery when it was last running. And he actually brought the mash bill and everything into the guy. So they're actually producing that same mash bill that would've been produced back, I think before they shut down.

Drew (00:32:19):
So as a much higher proof, I think than they probably released old.

Jerry (00:32:22):
Yeah, there's no watering down any of their products.

Drew (00:32:27):
They can be stout at times. Actually I have one of his it was the Stave and barrel that I still have a bottle of that and I drink it with what was it? Lint chili chocolates. And all of a sudden it brings a coconut flavor out of his whiskey, which is okay. Fascinating. So they are a little pairing tip.

Jerry (00:32:51):
And actually it's small. They've the steels and all the stuff they've make. Yeah, they've made all that, everything in that place by themselves. So it's a interesting place to go. Like I said, very different. They're not on the trail, they don't want to be <laugh>, I said they're out there on their own. But it's a fun place to take people. You just have to prepare first.

Drew (00:33:14):
When you take people out. Would you be able to, on one of your tours, potentially sync up with doing an old Crow walkthrough?

Jerry (00:33:25):
I think so, yeah. I think, yeah, as long as you catch Dave in a good move. Yeah, that might be a small window, but I think we could do that.

Drew (00:33:31):
Yeah, <laugh>. All right, so we know what your number eight is. So what is your number Seven?

Jerry (00:33:36):
All right, let's turn the page here. I've got 'em all written down here. So number seven is kind of one that's close to my heart. It's not a distillery, but I had to put it on here. We were just there a couple nights ago on Thursday night. So it is the Rip Mansion.

Drew (00:33:52):
Ah, okay. Very nice. I'm glad you got that in there. Yes.

Jerry (00:33:55):
Yeah, I had to put it in there somewhere. Just a place we've been working with now for four years. So a lot of people don't know who the rips are. You say Rippy and bourbon, over half the people. I have no idea. So the Rippy family, as a Irish family came here in the 1830s, settled in around the Lawrenceburg area it was called. They actually named it Tyrone down by the river. But people may be familiar with Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Four rows is wild Turkey. And they settled on the river. It was really the ch change, the first one that came here. He kind of got into it late in life just with some partners involved, a distillery down on the river. And actually the very next year they sold it to his son. And his son became pretty legendary in distilling industry around that time.

(00:34:46):
His son was, he had two sons, both of 'em actually got into distilling tb. Rippy was the one that kind of dove headfirst into it. Bought that distillery from his dad down the river. That would've been they called tb Rippy distiller, they call it different names. And he bought that and he actually built another whole distillery beside it on the river clover bottom. So he had two distilleries he had his hands and many other distilleries where he would buy and sell kind of a little bit like Taylor a little bit. And the house, the mansion that we were talking about is actually on Main Street in Orangeburg. And it was built in 1888. At the peak of his time, he was considered the largest independent sour master distiller in the world at the time. So he was one of those that had money like Taylor and didn't have money and didn't have money. So it was that back and forth. He took his losses. But he owned, if you're talking about Lawrenceburg, you can't talk about it without mentioning the Rippy names. There's a lot of other family names there too that they were linked to and were partners with. And they built a house in 1888 and he died tv Rip died early 19 hundreds. But his sons actually, he had a hall, I guess when you were stealing somehow you'd have 10 sons, not as many daughters at the time when you were a distiller

Drew (00:36:11):
Something in the water, three or four

Jerry (00:36:14):
Son in the water, three or four of the sons purchased the distillery overlooking the Kentucky River up on a hill and called up Riper Brother's Distillery. And the other three went and ran the distillery called the Old Hoffman Distillery in Burg. So the sons were pretty successful and they ran the TV Brothers Distillery through Prohibition and then opened it back up after Prohibition sold it in the forties, actually ran it into the sixties, actually hired Jimmy Russell. Huh? The last rip he did. And so that distillery went through some different name changes, but eventually became Wild Turkey Distillery. Nice. So that is their length. They are the, there's still Rick houses from that distillery, from the Ripper Brothers distiller still on the property. So there's that link. And the house itself Mrs. Rippy t's wife, she lived there until the late forties. So she was in her nineties when she passed away. So the family had it until 65 and it went through a different few different ownerships. And then 2000 10, 2, 2 great grandsons of TB Ripe bought the house at Foreclosure, rough shape, lot of work. They're both retired attorneys getting older, late seventies, early eighties. But they know their family history, they know their bourbon history. You interviewed Tom Tommy. Yeah, the fourth and they know their history and they've been working on this house since 2010. Just the two of

Drew (00:37:44):
'em. Yeah.

Jerry (00:37:45):
Oh wow. Their money going into it. And you've been in there, I mean, they've repaired their first four, it was in awful shape when they got it. Just so much water damage and all that. And you're talking about 11,000 square foot mansion with mahogany stairs and beautiful detailed in the door hinges, I mean along the fireplaces and everything else, but beautiful all throughout the house. And they've been restoring this. And the bottom floor is pretty close to being renovated, but the upper two levels have not been touched. And there's

Drew (00:38:16):
An Atic area too, which I said there's the attic area as well that we got up crazy. There is crazy stairwells getting up there,

Jerry (00:38:26):
Especially out on the tower, one of the stairs to the tower. But it's just a great place. And we started bourbon events there in 2019 to raise money just for the renovation and maintenance of the house. And 2020 was a little rough but we we're back at it again. We just had Chris Morris from with a reserve there. I know you're talking about doing a potential one there. So. Yep. We have speakers there. It's called Bourbon Sessions at the re mansion. And we have large master distillers like Chris Morrison, large distillers. We have small craft distillers like Steven Bean from Limestone, we have historians like yourself, and we've had Michael Veach and Fred Minick and all that. And we have podcasters also. Yeah, so we've had Chad and Sarah from Bourn Night and we got the Bourbon Life guys coming and Brian Har from Sipping Corn. And so it's not just history but whole. Hopefully we give you a little bit of everything in the bourbon industry, so great fun. Great.

Drew (00:39:28):
Yeah, little tasting too. So

Jerry (00:39:31):
Little tasting. We do tastings. They've got a bar, so they've got a cash bar there, so. So yeah, definitely tastings to go along with their speakers, but we, it's a great time to have a bourbon mansion, which there's not too many of those that you can go in and walk around and tour in the state. So it's just great family and just a great place. So yeah, I had to put it on my list. Hope, hopefully see people out there when they get a chance to in Kentucky, just look for that. And like I said, we've got a good lineup for this year and hopefully keep getting people. Nobody really seems to say no when you ask 'em for

Drew (00:40:06):
That. Yeah, that's great. So, mm-hmm. Moving on to number seven on my list is Yes is a place that I think is the perfect place to start your bourbon journey when you come into Kentucky. It's in Louisville, it is the Frazier History Museum. And the idea here is to head up to the third floor. This is where the Kentucky Bourbon Trail starts. It's right on Whiskey Row. And if you go to the third floor, you can get your kickstart into the history of bourbon by that going to first of all the room that they have set up that has all the historic bottles in it, which is really cool. And then when you go out, there's this big long table that is an interactive table that has basically an encyclopedia of bourbon history with distillers bottles stories. And so you can just go around and touch the table and pull up the stories that you wanna read about.

(00:41:19):
And it's a really, really cool experience. And then you can tour the rest of it and learn a little bit about bourbon and the background of bourbon and see some modern bottles there as well of some different whiskeys. In fact that that little area that you walk into that has all the bottles, I believe they tried to at one point have every bottle that was out represented. But of course there's so much whiskey coming out and so many different variations of whiskey that I don't think there's any way that they could pull that off. But like I say, to me, that's just a really great place if you're going to get your feet wet first before you head out and head to some other places, is to start off at the Frazier.

Jerry (00:42:08):
Oh, that's definitely, definitely with Steven Yates. I've gotta incorporate into a little bit bigger overall number on mine when I'll talk about it. But Steven Yas is awesome. He, he'll take you on the torch there. He's passionate about it, you can tell he loves it. Drew brought him some pre-prohibition Taylor to drink and he was pretty excited to try that, just to say. But no, he's passionate about that, so it's a great place to start. They do tastings there. You can get your first tasting right there. You can wet your whistle right there if you want. Yeah. So it's definitely on the list. It's on just a little bit bigger category. I've got it listed with, so, but it's on my list.

Drew (00:42:48):
Oh, okay. All right. So then we'll jump to my number six, which is mm-hmm. Another place to stay. And this is a place to stay in Bardstown, which if you're going to go to Kentucky and check out Whiskey, Bardstown is definitely a great central location with a lot of different distilleries that you can go visit. And the place that I suggest you go is Talbot Tavern, which is always a tongue twister for me built in 1779 claims. It's the world's oldest bourbon bar. It does. The building actually predates the name Bardstown. It was, do you, you know what the name Bardstown was before it was Bardstown?

Jerry (00:43:34):
That I do not

Drew (00:43:35):
Know. Okay. It was Salem. Salem. Oh, okay. Salem, Kentucky. It

Jerry (00:43:41):
Doesn't have a ring

Drew (00:43:43):
That

Jerry (00:43:44):
It doesn't have the ring to. No,

Drew (00:43:46):
No, actually it would've been Salem, Virginia, because that was 1779. There was no Kentucky at that time. It was in Kentucky County. Well,

Jerry (00:43:58):
Interesting fact. The Bard family actually, there's actually a family descendants from the Bard family that have a distillery out in Western Kentucky, which is kind of

Drew (00:44:07):
Interesting in a schoolhouse of all

Jerry (00:44:09):
Things. In a schoolhouse. Yes.

Drew (00:44:10):
Yeah. So for people who used to say, when I go on the bourbon trail and oh, look at that, Ozi Tyler, which is now Green River is way out there. Why would I drive all that way out there just for this one distillery? Well, Bard's Distillery is right down the road from there in Greenville, Kentucky. So not too far away. But yeah, so this goes back to 1779. It started as the Hines Hotel. It used to be the Western most stagecoach stop in America. And I think the reason why was that was because right across the street from it, or almost across the street from it, is one of the four original diocese of the Catholic church, the Bardstown Basilica was there. And that's an interesting piece of history to realize that the Catholic Church felt that Bardstown Kentucky was one of the four most important places to establish their headquarters, their regional headquarters.

(00:45:25):
And that's because when you look at all those distillers names, a lot of them were Catholic. And that's why and that's why that area tried to hold out against Prohibition probably more than anybody else. And why it opened up quicker than a lot of different places in Kentucky where the Catholics wanted to make alcohol much more freely available. But I, I've stayed at Tal Tavern, I would say there's two things you can do there. One is you can go to the bar and they have a great selection of whiskeys for you to try there. And you can build your own flights, which is really cool. Don't do the mistake I made though. It's really inexpensive. I won't wanna say really inexpensive, but it's inexpensive for a Saturday night in a particular set of rooms. Well these are the rooms that are right over the bar, so you're going to hear music till 2:00 AM So that's probably the reason that those are a little bit less expensive than some of the other

Jerry (00:46:34):
Rooms. Well, 15 hundreds, they should be thick walls,

Drew (00:46:37):
You would think. But yeah, no, I ended up going, I think it was about 1230. I said I'm just going to go back downstairs cuz if I'm going to listen to the music, I might as well be in the room where the music is going on. So I,

Jerry (00:46:51):
I'll think that part of the bar is actually a little bit newer than 1779 isn't it? I think it was an add-on maybe. Yeah, the original. I think so. So yeah, we take people there all the time when we're Bardstown and we're doing lunch, we're doing a old tablet just a great food. Get your reservation if you're going. Yeah don't just show up cause they are busy. But definitely do a reservation, great food to eat and great stop. Like I said, you got a bar there so if you got a little extra time you can check out the bar while you're there. Yeah, definitely, definitely a lot of history

Drew (00:47:28):
There. Chance to be in history, chance to stay around history, which is kind of a cool thing. Okay, so that's my number six. What is your number six?

Jerry (00:47:38):
Well my number six is one you said you left off and it's one of only two that are on the actual bourbon trail. The large bourbon trail. And I did do Maker's Mark. And the reason I did it not be besides the Samuel's family is that distilling on that site went all the way back to 1805.

Drew (00:47:57):
Yeah,

Jerry (00:47:58):
Berks. And it was the Berk Spring Distillery. Berks Spring. So started as the meal and they think he started about 1805 Distill. So the Berks family ran that distillery all the way through Prohibition and sold it right at Prohibition and opened back up and actually ran all the way till 51. So I mean there was a long, long history of distilling on that side. And then Bill Samuel Sr, who had kind of lost old Samuel's distillery finally decided on what type of bourbon he wanted to do and he found a place to do it and bought the site in 1953 and started producing the very next year and had the first Maker's Mark in 58. So I think Maker's Mark between that and the Samuel's family. But there's one particular Samuel's that a lot of people don't know about that I think they owe to her a lot of bourbon what it is today. And that's Margie, Margie Samuel, she might have made as much impact in the bourbon history as any female has. Bill made what was in the bottle, Margie did everything else. She come up the name, the bottle, the shape of the bottle, the label on the bottle, the red wax, all of this stuff. When you look at the bottle you're looking at Margie Samuels. So I just think throwing her in there with Bill, good combination in the bottle, outside the bottle. I mean just, it's hard to beat that. Yeah.

Drew (00:49:29):
And she baked the bread because when they were trying to, when they were trying to figure out what the mash bill was going to be, rather than making a bunch of different types of whiskeys, they just made bread and saw what it would be like. So that was a really interesting way to experiment and figure out what you're going to do. So yeah, no, when you go through on the tour, it's cool that they actually let you see where they're doing the labels and printing the labels. You might actually even walk out with a label as well. I think my thing about that distillery is it was the first distillery I went on a tour at and I haven't been back since and now all the questions rise up in my head of are any of the old Berk strings distillery buildings still being used?

Jerry (00:50:23):
I know they have the one building where you could ride up to it, you could walk up to it or you ride up to it on your horse. So I dunno if it was an old gate or what it was, it's the one little kind of stone building there on the property. I would say that definitely goes back past when Bill boughted it. Other than that, I think what most of the Steelers did back in the day when Boughted a distillery, pretty much they raised the distillery and built new. Yeah. So you see that at a lot of places. But yeah, I don't think there's a whole lot left from it. I just think it's kind of like the dance with all that history at the location. I just see it at that location. The history beforehand and the history with the Samuels, they say when you have salmon, they talk about six generations.

(00:51:17):
It's actually more than six generations of Samuels that they were producing before ttw. Yeah. So that one goes back, they go back as far as the beans do when you're talking about historic families in bourbon. So yeah, that's mine. Plus it's one of the most beautiful distillers you'll ever see. So in Kentucky at least you're just gorgeous gorgeous go in there and people, there's different things you can do, but you can dip your own bottle so they have all that for you now. So it's a cool experience. But yeah, it makes it on my list mostly because all the history from and now. So

Drew (00:51:57):
Yeah I enjoyed the fact, and I don't know if they still do this or not, but when I got there early on a Sunday morning, they had bourbon coffee for me to drink before I went on my tour. So that's a good way to start Wake the little, wake you up and yeah, get your bourbon as well. So yeah definitely one that I a afterwards I'm like, oh man, that really could have squeezed on the list too. But it's tough 10 is really tough.

Jerry (00:52:28):
And I said it's one of only two that I have on there that's actually on the Bourbon Trail. So yeah, every wants to see that the still is on the Bourbon Trail, but it's one of only two. Yeah. So I guess onto the next one, number five

Drew (00:52:40):
Or you're on to number five? Yep.

Jerry (00:52:42):
All right. Mine number five is not one spot but Whiskey Row.

Drew (00:52:49):
Okay.

Jerry (00:52:49):
So I include all of that and I know technically it's just the 100 block of Main Street, but I include that street down through there as far as it goes for a few blocks. But Whiskey Row, it's it's just a cool place to go when you're in Louisville now you've got, oh Forester sitting there and on that same block and just know back in the day it was all, everything on the block was dealt with whiskey. It may not have been distillery, but there were storm barrels there, they had their offices there and all the names were there for Brown, you had Pappy, ed Weller. So all of these names were located on that street. And today you can go down through there and like I said, it's a little farther than what they actually called Whiskey Gro, but you can walk from Peerless to the Frazier to mixtures to Evan Williams, to Old Forester, to Angels Envy with,

Drew (00:53:43):
And even get your Louisville Slugger in between

Jerry (00:53:47):
Little Slugger and Muhammad Ali and Museum, which is a great place to see too. So yeah, to me it's definitely give yourself a couple days when you go to take all that in but definitely someplace you want to go and visit and there's just history all around you them, they were able to save the facades of those buildings, which is awesome. You're talking about buildings that went back to the 1850s. So I mean it's kind of cool when you talk about Louisville Whiskey Rose comes to me, the first thing that comes up in my

Drew (00:54:17):
Mind. Yeah,

Jerry (00:54:18):
Just all those names and businesses that were there. And today you can walk along and do that and stop at Dock Pros and get you some great barbecue or it is a place to go and just hang out. You got, not necessarily on the block, but you've got all the historic hotels down through there, the Gold House and Seal Block and Old brand, the Brown Hotels. So you got all those right there. So definitely to me, historic wise and today just a place, if you're going on the Bourbon Trail doll, you definitely can't miss that.

Drew (00:54:52):
Yeah, it's very I mean, you honestly could park yourself at Bardstown and spend three or four days. You could park yourself in Louisville, you could spend a week and that is a great spot to jump off again. Or I stayed in old Louisville in a Airbnb and then just take a taxi up or Uber up or whatever you wanna do. Cuz it's all not really that distant and so it doesn't cost a lot for you to jump up and down or the buses run through there as well. But yeah, just walking Whiskey Row from one end to the other is vacation in and of itself, so. Mm-hmm. Awesome. All right. That is your number five. My number five is number five. Number five, Buffalo Traces Bourbon Pompe, which is a place that you actually got tickets for and invited me along, which was fantastic cuz it's great to go to a place like that with somebody else who's a lover of history as well. But basically they were doing some renovations at the old fashioned copper. I go with old fashioned copper, some call it old fire copper at the old fashioned copper distilling, building, building. And as they were tearing up the concrete floors, all of a sudden they started to realize that there was a distillery sitting underneath this concrete floor. So was it Nick? Larry Kinte? Yeah.

Jerry (00:56:41):
Good friend of mine. Nick. Larry Quinte, the bourbon archeologist. Yes. He has a dream job

Drew (00:56:46):
Came in. Yeah, exactly. So here's a guy who comes in and helps them brush away the dust and pull away without damaging anything underneath. And they found these two old copper, two or three old copper line fermenters that were put there around 1883 and now they're using them again. And so you can go on this tour and have an opportunity to see this area that, I guess they're basically going to leave it that way where it looks like it's still being excavated and they're not going to do any finishing off of it, they're just going to leave it like it is.

Jerry (00:57:29):
They've got one firm in right now that's lined with copper that they're using and making product out of. Okay. I heard it's going to be cheap, but when they release it,

Drew (00:57:41):
I bet anything for Buffalo Trace is cheap and it definitely won't, won't be on allocation, he says sarcastically.

Jerry (00:57:49):
No, not at all. But it's cool that they're doing it though. I mean it's just cool that they're doing that with that, that's using history and bringing it back. So it is. I cool to see that. They do a great job of talking to history on that. And you learned a lot about Taylor on that tour too, which I love.

Drew (00:58:07):
Yeah, I think the other really cool thing is that you can see the lines between where the 1873 distillery was that was there and then there was a fire and then they rebuilt the distillery. There was also a flood there. And I think what's fascinating is seeing that they said the flood waters from the Kentucky River actually came up to those windows, which is hard to believe cuz it's high up on a bluff. And you would think there's no way that the Kentucky River would've swelled that much to reach all the way up because it's quite a distance down. But yeah, I mean there's just so many cool and fascinating things about that distillery. And so it's a free tour, but you have to make sure that you get reservations for it well in advance

Jerry (00:58:54):
With reservations. Yes. So if anybody's looking to get reservation on Buffalo trays Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month, you gotta get online at 9:00 AM for the following months. Wow. Schedule and usually their schedule's gone an hour and a half for the whole month. So you to, if you want to get a buffalo trace, get on at 9:00 AM first Tuesday of the month for the following month to get your tickets with everything with the pandemic. That's what they've kind of went to. And the group sizes are smaller. They don't do the tours as often before they're on Saturdays. They do 'em every 15 minutes. Everything right now is still kind of on the hour. Yeah, they do some half hours in there but definitely, definitely a place to see. Yeah, like I said getting hear Nick's stories on that. And he's actually working for Buffalo Trace now. Oh

Drew (00:59:42):
Is he? Okay.

Jerry (00:59:44):
Yeah, he's kinda like what Michael Veach used to do with his history of the distilleries and stuff. Can't, trying to think what distillery Michael Veach worked for back in the day. That's how he started and started doing their history of that. So he's kind of working that like I said, he, he's got a great job and did a awesome job with that. So definitely, definitely a place to say. Definitely.

Drew (01:00:06):
Yeah. All right. My number four isn't place that you were at just yesterday actually. And I think it's one of those places that is a must for anybody who is a fan of bourbon history. If they're going to the area which is Woodford Reserve, which is hard

Jerry (01:00:26):
To believe. That's my number four.

Drew (01:00:28):
It is your number four. Okay.

Jerry (01:00:30):
It's my number

Drew (01:00:31):
Four. Very nice. Yeah, so we are very close on this couple things swapped out. But yeah, Woodford Reserve to me the history there Elijah Pepper, was it 18, 18 12 I think when he was distilling somewhere in that area and then at the established around there and then when he passed away in 1838, his son Oscar Pepper took it over and he built the distillery that you now see in terms of where the actual stills are placed. So you have all that history and then Labro and Graham after that the tie-in with James Z Pepper and then James Z Pepper and Taylor of course having a relationship for a short time there as well. And then you move on and you go further up into history and now rebuilt or built up in when Chris Morris and Wes Henderson helped bring Woodford Reserve back and that was what, 25 years ago. And so you've got all that going on. Plus they were the ones that brought Potstills back to Kentucky. And

Jerry (01:01:53):
I think it's the most iconic shot on the bourbon trail. It is when you walk into that Displacer room is see those three, I mean that is the shot as they would say.

Drew (01:02:03):
And I think the thing that blew my mind in when I did that tour was how pristine that distillery is When you see Old Crow and you see the ruins and then you realize that that's actually was newer then this area where these three pot stills are sitting it helps you appreciate that the work they did to renovate and get that going again cuz I guess it's that set empty for a while too between when it was given up and then Woodford Reserve came in or when Brown Foreman came in and purchased it. And there's parts of that distillery after talking to Chris Morris on the podcast that I would love to go see cuz apparently there's still some the cabin Elijah

Jerry (01:02:53):
Still there

Drew (01:02:54):
On the hill. There's still on the hill. So yeah, lots of history you don't see at Woodford Reserve. And the drive in is wonderful with the horse farms around and everything. It's just a wonderful place to go.

Jerry (01:03:07):
Especially being based outta Lexington. It's probably our number one Buffalo Trace of course. But if you're talking about Bourbon Trail Distillery is number one requested distillery on the bourbon trail when you're talking about Lexing. Yeah and like I said, the history goes back, a lot of people don't know the pepper name, that's another name they may not know as much unless they've been to Lexington and seen the James Z Pepper distillery. But going back to 1838, he's the guy that made the smart decision to hire James Crow. And that's a pretty good decision in the 1830s and cause old Oscar Pepper and Old Crow back in the 18 hundreds were the bourbons to have they were the best of the best at that time. So their history all the way up to James and Colonel Taylor being his guardian and losing the distillery. And then Taylor loses the distillery <laugh>, it swapped hands like three times in two years before the brogram ended up with it.

(01:04:06):
And I tell people all the time on the tour, so when they go on the steel house, which is built on since the 1838, but if you look above the door there's this big millstone and if you're able to see, it's a little bit harder these days for me to see it, but it says old Oscar Pepper distillery. Wow. And you look at the smoke stacks and you see the l and g from the LeBron Grand. So <laugh> definitely a lot of history there. Like I said, the cabin is still there. I'd love to get in the cabin, keep begging for them to let me go see the cabin.

Drew (01:04:37):
Maybe we'll have to tag team them.

Jerry (01:04:40):
Yes, yes. They still haven't figure out what they even want to do with the cabin, so I'm hoping they do something wrong with it. But you walk down there, you walk into the steel room and then you walk into the, they've got the two rick houses there, which are limestone, beautiful rick houses that are so cool that you don't see hard anywhere else at all. So I mean it is history and if you get the right guide you even get a lot more history on the tours. There's a couple guides there that are so great feeding that information and it's a lot of people want to go there. They've got the cocktail bar across the street now so you know can go there and just hang out and it's another different one that's tough to get into. That's one you wanna plan ahead on to get into. Cause just the amount of people coming there. We were there yesterday let's see, was it yesterday? I'm trying to think. Had the tour yesterday? No, the day before we were there on Friday. It was nice out and it was packed. Wow. But a great tour. Great, great. It's on my list too. It's number four. So we

Drew (01:05:45):
<laugh> sync eye to, we didn't sync these list stuff ahead of the time. This is totally coincidence. Yeah, well good. That must mean these really are where they're supposed to be, so So that's number four. Number three for you,

Jerry (01:06:06):
For me. Well it is just all we're doing is adding onto to the story for number four. I got the pepper distiller. Okay. Here in Lexington.

Drew (01:06:14):
So

Jerry (01:06:14):
We talked about James and James lost that distillery, his family distillery and it didn't take him too long to recover. Cause within two years he's building the distillery in Lexington. And James you talk about his relationship with Colonel Taylor was very similar to Colonel Taylor. He was another one that pushed for the bottle on Bond act. He was the one that went everywhere and checked out methods. He was in New York a lot hanging out with Rockefeller and Morgan and all them. So his wife was big into the horse industry. So they were big into horses. Thoroughbreds had a couple thoroughbred farms in Lexington. So he was a interesting gentleman. James was there's a couple rumors about how he got the distillery. You've probably heard the one where he sued his mother to get the control of the distillery. Yeah. Cause it wasn't actually to him at old Oscar Pepper Distillery but I love the site there.

(01:07:13):
When you go there, it's, he originally built in 1979. It burnt and rebuilt and got through prohibition. It had been shut down. But in 1934 somehow it burnt again right after Prohibition opened and they rebuilt it. So everything there is from 1934 the distillery and everything it's a site that was pretty much in Lexington, left empty for 50 years. Most productions stopped there in 58. I think they did still have some barrels on site, bald lanes and stuff like that. But production stopped in 58. So it's set there and set there. It was a graffiti field, it was a place you really probably didn't want to go down to. It was on the industrial area is where all the distilleries back in the day were located. And when you were talking about in Lexington, there were multiple distilleries down that street. It's called Manchester Street.

(01:08:12):
And today 50 years. And really it wasn't really nobody in that location until 2008 when Barrel House Distillery, a small craft distillery came in there along with the break room, which is a bar. They settled in there in 2008 and today and 2022 is probably the place to go to in Lexington. You talk about a place that has two distilleries with a third one coming, two breweries with a cider house Goodfellas Pizza, rickhouse Pub Cracker Boom ice cream, which is Lexington's Ice Cream Coffee Shop, battle AEs. You can drink beer and throw AEs. Just all

Drew (01:08:54):
These, that doesn't sound, that doesn't like a good combination.

Jerry (01:08:58):
Oh no. It's scary but popular. And then you have two music venues just across the street and down the street from it where you have live music. You go down there on a Friday, Saturday night and there's no place to park. I mean it's just the place to go. But it's historic. It was originally the Henry Clay Distillery is located there and that's the side he bought in 1879 and built his distillery. And like I said, the Pepper family, he actually died in 1906, so he was only 56 and he actually fell and broke his leg. And in New York on some As, and I don't know exactly what I mean, the scientist and the doctor and all this. And he told could set up staph infection or some kind of clots or something like that that killed him. But he died. He was only 56 and his wife sold the distillery.

(01:09:50):
And it was one of those that went through different ownerships and like I said, finally shut down him 58. But it's the site, the it's, it's been brought back now like I said, with the distillery there, with Barrelhouse coming in into the actual barrelhouse of the distillery. The break room bar is in the break room of the distillery. So they didn't have to worry about making up names. And then Amir Pay come in and I already had the brand the James Z Pepper brand and finally decided after most bake to buy the distillery and is producing old pepper whiskey there

Drew (01:10:26):
With great looking bottles. I love their bottles with the old 1776 labels on them. That's really cool.

Jerry (01:10:32):
Yeah, they've got those And then they've got the tall ones now that they have their O Pepper in. I don't know if you've seen those. A lot of their rise, they've been producing some rise. So they're doing that switch over from sourcing to their product now? Yes. So they're, so you're starting to see their product, their bourbon is actually supposed to be out sometime this year release of their first bourbon that's actually theirs, not mgp, but a great place to go. And you can do it at the end of the tour and just hang out there and do some stuff, check out the breweries and in different places. But you're walking, everything you're walking in there is historical. Yeah. So mean, just one of my favorite places out there to go. And being from Lexington, working out at Lexington is just a place that we think people should definitely check out if they're here. Even if they're not necessarily going to those particular distilleries. You could just go there every evening and have a great time.

Drew (01:11:24):
So I'm so glad you added that them on because it's one of my favorite distillery tours. It's one where when I'm in town, I'll just go take it again because I enjoy the history aspect. They are deep into the history on the tour. And then getting to see that historic facility and what they've done to it was my number 11. It actually was on my list and then it got bumped and it's like, ah, I don't wanna bump it, but I feel like I have to. So yeah, that definitely would've been on my list. But

Jerry (01:11:57):
That may be the Lexton was talking to, been around it all time. We actually originate our urban tours from the distillery. Oh

Drew (01:12:04):
Do you?

Jerry (01:12:04):
Okay. Yeah, we actually originate pick up and when we do just pick up some of our scheduled tours, we do it there. So we figure it's a great place to drop people off of them. Yeah.

Drew (01:12:14):
All right. So onto my number three. It would be interesting to see if this one hit your list or not. And actually I'm kind of combining this with something else and maybe that's not fair, but I just feel like you should that they were once together. And so I wanna treat them like they are still together, which is the Oscar Getz Whiskey History Museum in Bardstown. And the combination with the Barton Distillery. And the reason being that Oscar Getz was a man who worked in the whiskey industry. He got back into the whiskey industry after prohibition. He was actually sourcing whiskey from the Tom Moore distillery and sold it as Old Barton. And then as he decided that it was time when Tom Moore was up for sale that he would buy it. And so he bought the distillery and he was just, he's like me, he's a pack rat for things that he's really interested in.

(01:13:23):
So he collected every little bourbon trinket he could find bottles or whatever paraphernalia you might come up with that'd be left over from an old distillery. And apparently he completely annoyed his wife Emma, who said, you gotta do something with this collection. It's taken up the entire house. And so he decided to take a part of the distillery, turn it into a visitor's center and museum. And if you go to the Barton Distillery now, that is the visitor's center that you're walking into that had all of this stuff that is now over at the Oscar Getz Museum because apparently there was still stuff being collected and it got to be so much that they had to take it offsite and move it somewhere else. So that's the part of the reason why I'm thinking there's that combination of these two together that you can't have one really without the other.

(01:14:22):
And Barton is one of my favorite distillery tours in Kentucky, so it would be hard for me not to put them on the list. Plus it is a historic distillery. There's, there's not much of the old historic distillery that you can still see. It's kind of like a foundation of the original distillery that's still there and part of a facade, but still really cool. And they do a great job over at the Oscar Getz Museum with all of the different old whiskey bottles that they have in there. And tell 'em the story of some of the old bootleggers and moonshiners and stuff that was going on during prohibition. And so it's like you have the Frazier, which is probably the more slick version of history. And then you got the more down in the dirt version of history over at Oscar Getz. So to me it's the perfect way to, if you're in Bardstown, you can't make it to Louisville. Well here's a great place to start off your whiskey history experience.

Jerry (01:15:30):
Yeah, I think it is too. It was actually number 12 on mine,

Drew (01:15:33):
So was it Okay.

Jerry (01:15:35):
Yes, yes. Cause I just think, like I said, it's a great place to start cuz you get a lot of Bardstown bourbon history there. They do have the prohibition exhibit there too, which is very cool. Just a lot about Bardstown, just Marshtown history in general is in the building. So great place. But they're very eager there to have people in and talk history with them. And Barton's to me is very underrated because of its sister distillery. Great to me old tour. And there's been distilling on that site for quite a long time and some well-known names in Bardstown when you talking about Mad and Moore and Willett and all them around that time were associated with that area. And Tom Moore with the Springs, they gave one of my favorite tours I've ever taken, which they haven't started back up yet, which was a state tour, which I gave it to you in Golf Cart, which was only five or six people could do it. And it was a ama to me, one of the best tours I've ever taken. And getting to see everything from the spring to taking your own bottle of 140 proof bourbon out of the barrel with the char and everything home with ya. So

Drew (01:16:44):
Yeah, you gave away the secret. We were told not to tell that <laugh>

Jerry (01:16:48):
Get people to take it. Yeah, yeah. Hoping they'll start doing it again. I did too. Yeah. I mean I love that tour and they do have a lot of history there, which, like I said, there's not a lot from that distillery back, but the history is there. Definitely. Yeah. So I, yeah, definitely could see that. I debated on, I had on my at number 12 on mine own. So yeah, definitely worth being on

Drew (01:17:10):
The way. Absolutely love that tour. And I've told people, in fact in my book I write about the estate tour and say, take that one if you can. It only ran at 11 o'clock in the morning but it was the only tour I'd ever gone on where the tour guide said, how much time do you have? And I thought, oh yeah, this is great. Okay, fantastic. So I was actually there on the day when the Warehouse collapsed. Yeah, they give you a BG hole cork that they stamp with your date on the way that they stamp it on in the format that they use on their barrels. And so that's my keepsake from that is that I can prove that I was there the day that warehouse collapsed. Cause it happened like three minutes before our tour started. So yeah. That you still did the tour. We still did the tour because they didn't know about it until we were up in the main facility on the third floor in the upper floor learning about all the different variations of 1792 whiskey when all of a sudden somebody came up and whispered in our guide's ear and he said, oh well we're, we're going to take you over to the world's biggest bourbon barrel, but we can't take you any anywhere beyond that because something has happened.

Jerry (01:18:33):
No warehouse coming. Yeah, I saw no warehouse.

Drew (01:18:36):
Yeah. Trip. Yeah. Well we were actually standing in one of the warehouses when we saw the fire marshal go by. And I said to him, I said, is it normal to have the fire marshal coming through here? And he said, no, not really. So we knew something was up, but we weren't quite sure exactly what it was. And that was my first tour of the day and my next tour was at Willett. And so when I got to Willett, somebody said, did you hear what happened to Barton? And so it was at Willett that I found out that the warehouse collapsed. And then I went to the Evan Williams or the Bourbon Heritage Heaven Hill bourbon heritage. And somebody asked me there about it and I said, oh yeah, yeah, I was there. I went to Jack Daniels on the way home and somebody there said, did you hear what happened up at the bar? I was like,

Jerry (01:19:19):
Yeah, no trap,

Drew (01:19:21):
<laugh> word word gets around. So anyway, but yeah. Mm-hmm. Very, very cool. All right. Onto my number two. I'm thinking this is mm-hmm Thinking this is on your list somewhere and you've only got two spots left. So if you do have it on your list, then we're real close on this one. Castle and Key

(01:19:47):
Castle and Key, it's on my list. Castle and Key is the old Taylor Distillery built in 1887 as a showpiece with an idea of creating a distillery that had almost a Scottish castle kind of a feel to it. It was abandoned in 17 nine or in 17. In 1972. You can tell I've been doing history research in the 17 hundreds lately. National Distillers had it, same as with Old Crow, just kind of left it there, let the weeds grow up all over it. And then I forget the year, but probably what, around 20, 20 15 or so maybe? Or a little earlier than that.

Jerry (01:20:37):
Yeah. Cause they're going to have, I think their bourbon's going to be five years old.

Drew (01:20:41):
So

Jerry (01:20:41):
That would've been, they started production 27. So about that, yeah, mid 2018.

Drew (01:20:46):
So group came in, bought it and decided to renovate it. And when I drove by the first time in 2018 you saw it, but it wasn't open to the public at that time and they were still doing a lot of the renovations to it. And I kept hearing these things about, wow, this has ended up being a lot more expensive than what they really anticipated it was going to be. Oh it's, yeah,

Jerry (01:21:15):
At least eight figures. Yeah. I mean what they put into it, it was just two guys. Yeah, I mean two guys <laugh> that

Drew (01:21:23):
Put that into it and then knowing that, you know, have to wait for your whiskey to age before you're really going to be able to, so when I did the tour early on they were promoting their gin because of course they could make gin right at the beginning. But doing the Castle and Key Tour, I suggest doing the longest tour that they have available or the biggest tour they have available. Cuz you get to go out to warehouse B at, which is the longest warehouse at 534 feet in the world. So I understand that's

Jerry (01:21:53):
Only on a private tour

Drew (01:21:55):
Now. Oh is that No. Oh really?

Jerry (01:21:58):
Yeah, they're going to just private three private tours on a Friday to where you can see the Warehouse. Everything else is going to be starting toward the end of the month. It's going to be open campus tours. So they're actually going to have people stationed at different locations and you can go up and they'll give you information about certain areas. You can actually get a they'll have a couple people stationed at the production at the Castle and it's like a 30 minute walkthrough of the production. But everything else, they'll have people stationed around the property and you can, can just get you a $10 ticket and go there and do all of

Drew (01:22:36):
That and wander. Oh

Jerry (01:22:36):
That's, you do the private tour, which is like I said, only three time slots on a Friday. It's only a day they're doing Wow. It's a little bit more expensive. Like 50 bucks to do

Drew (01:22:44):
That one. Yeah, I think I paid like 35 to do the old one. Yeah,

Jerry (01:22:50):
It was like 30 bucks. And the one they've been doing now that they recently been doing was 20 and it's a half an hour shorter cause this is an hour and a half their atory. And they stopped taking it down to the warehouse on that on particular tour. So that's about the only way you can get down there now is with that private

Drew (01:23:07):
Tour and then the sunken garden. Can you go see the Sunken Garden now? You

Jerry (01:23:11):
Can still get to that and

Drew (01:23:12):
Everything. Yes. Okay. So that's cool to see. And then just walking along those old buildings there and seeing the distiller, but inside is really the coolest part of it. How they've tried to retain those old fermenters that they had in there from the national distillers days. And it still has that brick look inside when you're walking through and it just has a completely different feel to it than any other distillery that I've been to. And you can get the vision that Taylor had in designing this thing and it'd be fun to see old pictures but unfortunately, I don't know. Have you seen any old photographs of what it looked like inside

Jerry (01:23:58):
Of you talking about

Drew (01:24:00):
The casts and key of the distillers distiller? Yeah

Jerry (01:24:03):
There's some pictures. They actually have moving rotating pictures on a screen there on the counter where you can see some very old pictures from back in the day. You can see the people standing outside the station dressed, dressed up in their man, dressed in their suit and ties and women in their nice dresses at the time with their cocktails standing outside the station here, having a good time partying around the spring. So yeah, they've got all those photos when you go in there, which I think is kind very cool to check out. So it's an amazing stop. So I've got it a little bit higher on mine too.

Drew (01:24:47):
I started to think that. Okay, so what is your number two?

Jerry (01:24:53):
Well, four and three for me were the Pepper family. Yeah. So two and one is Colonel and what he did. Buffalo Trays the hardest distillery to get into by far the most people, I think they had 300,000 people last year. Like I said, you've gotta do that, get your tickets on that Tuesday or get with a tour company that has been able to get some tickets. Cause all their tours are free and they offer multiple different tours. But how can you know that campus and you know, think of names with that campus, you think of EA failure, you think a stag, you think of Blanton, you think of Elmer t Lee. And today you think of Freddie Johnson and if you're lucky enough to get a tour there, especially historical tour with Freddie Johnson, you will not get a better tour of any distillery in the state. I mean, he is in the Bourbon Hall of Fame Freddy is third generation there. His grandparents, his grand dad worked with Blanton and managed the warehouses and his dad worked with ERT Lee and he's got all these stories. It's just the campus itself. There's still remnants from the Taylor with the, where the old steel house and all that stuff was down there on the river and the warehouses from the eight 1880s.

(01:26:17):
Not as, to me it's not as, I guess it's pretty, or maybe a capsule key or Woodford or even Maker's Mark. But it just has something to it. The brick and the different type of warehouses there. You've got the metal warehouse of Blains and there's just something to it that seems rustic and just has that cool vibe to it when you're there and you know you've got the allocated brands that everybody's there for. But I'm there for the history and just hoping to get to see Freddy maybe even if he is not even your tour guy, just to get a talk game is definitely worth it. And I can see why it's the most visited distillery in Kentucky. It has everything. It has great products, great, great history. They'll get the barbecue stand open back up here soon so you can grab your nice sandwich there at the firehouse sub sandwich place. And yeah, I mean usually they have the ground so you can walk around a little bit of it and yeah, to me it's just everything about that is history. Everything about

Drew (01:27:26):
It was hard for me when I was just putting it down to the Bourbon Pompei tour because there's some cool places to walk around. Going in the warehouses of course is very cool. And I love that when you get a tour guide who really focuses in on the warehouses and knows a lot of the history. I haven't had Freddy as a guide yet, but I've had some really good guides there. And then to kind of wander yourself, I've wandered over to the Elmer t Lee Clubhouse and walked the little grounds over there as well with the white buffalo. And it's a very picturesque spot. You can see the water tower off in the distance and it's just really, really, as you say, it's not necessarily beautiful in terms of that they've gone through and tried to make this something stunning. It's just got so much character to it that it's beautiful in its character and just a joy to walk around and snap pictures of. It's hard to take a bad picture there except for maybe some telephone lines running in front of where you're trying to snap a picture. But

Jerry (01:28:36):
Yeah, it was tough. And you got Albert Blanton's house up on the hill, which if you did their ghost tours, you got to check that out. And I mean they offered such a wide variety. You won't get a full production tour on any particular tour. The Hard Hat tour would be the closest. Right. But I mean you can go there five or six times and get something completely different. Yeah. Something completely different than what you got before. Yeah. To me it is just a place that you got if you're going on. It was our first tour we did when we started researching for the bourbon tour. And we were lucky enough to have Freddy on the first tour and we just thought every tour was like that. They're not necessarily, yeah,

Drew (01:29:22):
It

Jerry (01:29:22):
Was a high bar he set, but he's in the Bourbon Hall of Fame as a tour guide. The only one. Yeah, that's in the Bourbon Hall of Fame.

Drew (01:29:29):
That's crazy. Yeah.

Jerry (01:29:31):
So yeah, it's always near and dear to us. It's what everybody wants to see and I understand why they want to see it and yeah, it's hard to believe but it's number two hard.

Drew (01:29:42):
Yeah, I have to redo my book because so much has changed since the pandemic and I hope things shift back and we get back to a point cuz the Buffalo Tracy used to be able to just walk up and go, I mean sometimes you sure

Jerry (01:29:57):
Did. If you ever Tour County, you send email in they, they'd tell me how big a group was the time you had and nine times outta 10, unless they had a big group at that time. Yeah, you were getting in. If you were just an individual coming up you could walk in. You may not get a tour right at that moment, but you were get a, if you wanted to wait there long, you would get a tour. And they always had Buffalo trays and Eagle Air on the shelf. That's not as much now is one of those allocated ones. But yeah, I'm hoping they do too. It's, it's got all the new tastings rooms now, which they didn't have before. So they have a lot more space gift shop. It's probably three times bigger than it was before. But definitely, definitely a place. Definitely a place checkout.

Drew (01:30:40):
Yeah. Okay. So both of our number ones have sort of been spoiled because both of them have been mentioned before. So I can guess what yours is. I don't know if you can guess what mine is but mine was on your list, but I didn't make a mention of the fact that it was coming up. So mainly because it was number one and people would've figured it out at some point or another. So your number two is, or you're number one and number one? Yes, sorry.

Jerry (01:31:13):
It is cast on key. Cast on Key. And it just joined the Craft bourbon Trail. They just joined, they were one of four that just joined the trail. The bourbon is coming out in probably the next mile. Okay. So excited about that. They've had their arrive releases now for a little while. I was able to get one of their untold stories. So they work with the Kentucky Black Bourbon Guild to talk about African American influence in the distilling in industry. And they put out, it was a half rye theirs and a half bourbon in their, so it was the first bourbon of there's analog. Oh, okay. So I was able toag bottle that. I was excited about that. And of course I bought the ride soon as they come out. But it was Colonel, you couldn't top it no matter what he did. He did what he did before with Oak Crow and the Hermitage there.

(01:32:03):
That was out of Frankfurt and Ffc and what he did there to build a distillery in the 1880s with the idea of bourbon tourism. Yeah. 120 years before bourbon tourism ever really took off. Today is bourbon tourism to build it like that and to make it look like that. I mean just every inch of that property is gorgeous. And what the West Murray and Will Arvin have done to restore it and the money they've put into it, like I said, it's telling. And then now they brought in John Loftus, who's a Kentuckian who went to New York, became famous for rooftop gardens. They brought him in to do the landscaping. I mean there's nothing about it that is not topnotch and just history everywhere you turn. And I think once they get the bourbon, and as long as that bourbon is good it will be become one of the most visited distilleries in the whole state. I mean, it's only a few minutes from Wither Reserve.

Drew (01:33:05):
Yeah.

Jerry (01:33:06):
And people, you, the wow factor when we take guests there cause it sit close to the road and when you come around that turn and there's the castle just pops out at you and then you drive on down and drive past it, supposedly the longest Rick house in the world and just see all that. I mean, we get more wows from that distillery than any distillery. So I, to me, tourism wows it I think yeah would be, it'll be competing with Buffalo Trace and Woodford for most of it is a distillery in the state here soon. We've promoted it quite a bit. We've been there on how much, especially over the last year and all that. And we've done some events there, went to some of the events and seen the whole property. Like I said, seeing that warehouse when you're standing at one end and the other doors open, it looks like a pinhole at the other end with barrels in it and just the drive down through there, like you said, it's, it's a gorgeous drive down through there with everything with, when you're talking about old Oscar Pepper, old Taylor and Oak Crow all within just a few minutes each other.

(01:34:15):
It's just, yeah, you can make a historical day outta that very easily. But yeah, absolutely. It was hard for me not to put it number one. So that is my number one.

Drew (01:34:24):
Well I gotta say that it was actually my number one because what was my number two? I decided to expand a little bit and when I expanded it out okay, it became my number one. Can you guess what my number one might be?

Jerry (01:34:42):
I'm looking at my list. I'm trying to think what you expanded. There's a lot of things there. A lot of things. But you expanded on it.

Drew (01:34:51):
So I,

Jerry (01:34:52):
I'm, I'm at

Drew (01:34:52):
Aloft, so it changed from a distillery to a place. So I was originally going to have my number two be Old Forester, but I ended up saying, you know what, whiskey Row is just too cool to Okay. Not have <laugh> as a whole entity. So yeah, I

Jerry (01:35:14):
Couldn't separate it either. I

Drew (01:35:15):
Couldn't, yeah, I mean because you have, not only do you, I am a fool for Richards Sonian Romanesque architecture, which is the architecture that you see across the Midwest in towns like Cincinnati and Louisville and it, it's just that gorgeous architecture is all the way along that entire street including the old Forester building, including Victors. And I mean it, it's beautiful to look at first of all then as you're walking down the street, you have historic signs that are all devoted to different aspects of bourbon history. You're walking past places where Distillers were walking up and down and distillery owners were walking up and down during the heyday of bourbon whiskey in the 19th century. And so mm-hmm You throw all that in, even

Jerry (01:36:09):
Evan Williams. Yeah. Oh you're walking down down the street where Evan Williams would've had his distillers

Drew (01:36:15):
Ex Ex, exactly. Yeah, I understand. So you got all that then you've got Doc Crow's is one of my favorite places to go. You can get your half pores of certain whiskeys that maybe are a little too pricey for you to normally try. Proof on Maine is down there. I love both of those spots. And then you got, as you said, angels Envy, old Forester, Evan Williams, victors and Kentucky Peerless. So you've got a nice long walk there that you can go and enjoy a whole lot of different whiskey. You've got Old Forrester is one of my favorite, actually old Forrester is my favorite distillery to visit because it has everything in it. You have a Cooperage on site, which is not something that you get to do see anywhere else unless you go to Kentucky Cooperage down in Lebanon. So we add that in, they got a bottling line, it's just a really cool building.

(01:37:11):
And it's the building they were in 1882, so you, you're getting that. It doesn't look like it did in 1882 inside, but you're getting kind of that feel of I'm back where this all was being established and built. So that's cool. And then as you keep going, you've got the Seal Bach Hotel, which we went to last time we were up there and all the history Al Capone and f Scott Fitzgerald and George Remus and the rest. So you got the prohibition history there and it's a beautiful hotel to walk around as well. And then you got, like you say, Muhammad Ali Museum is there and I mean just there's so much to do on that one. Really cool. There is street there that

Jerry (01:38:00):
It's multi-day, you're not doing it a multi day. So it's just to do that street. Yeah,

Drew (01:38:05):
Absolutely. So when you say Whiskey Row, it's like I say, it's hard for me not to stick it at number one.

Jerry (01:38:13):
Oh I definitely understand. If it went for a family named Pepper and a guy named Taylor, it probably would've been

Drew (01:38:19):
<laugh>. Well, like I say castle and Key was my number one until I put all those together. Well let's talk about some of our honorable, honorable mentions because as we say, there were some left off the list. And I would start with, first of all talking about cemeteries cuz people may not think about traveling to cemeteries. But we went to the Frankfurt Cemetery, which I thought was really cool to go up and see where graveside is. And of course we got to crack open the bottle of Old Taylor and Herbi whiskey and you're looking over the bend in the Kentucky River where the state capital is and where the old Hermitage distillery used to be that was owned by Taylor. So it's kind of a bit of reminiscing about the man and seeing the area that he used to run his business. So for me, Frankfurt Distillery Kfi and Louisville I've not been to yet, so it's hard for me to say. But I

Jerry (01:39:26):
Love And Louisville, I mean, yeah, you've got all the beam majority of the beans and just mean a lot

Drew (01:39:32):
Of George Garver Brown I history in there. Yeah.

Jerry (01:39:36):
The cemetery has also the Pepper family and all that in there, but Cave Hill is just, it's just a gorgeous cemetery no matter what. And then just all those names that you see. Yeah, definitely worth it. But yeah, it's definitely cool to see in the Frankfurt Cemetery. Cause LeBron grammar in there too in that cemetery. But seeing Taylor's grave, which it's not a small marker he has there and overlooking where the Herman Ditch would've sat in front of the Capitol. And definitely it's a cool thing to, if you're going to Frankfurt to kind of, you're at Buffalo Trace, take a little drive up there real quick, walk past the Daniel Boone grave and check it out.

Drew (01:40:21):
Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so give me gimme one of your honorable mentions.

Jerry (01:40:27):
Stitch the Weller.

Drew (01:40:28):
Yep. On my list too. Whisper

Jerry (01:40:29):
In a little. Yep, yep. So definitely when you're talking about Pappy and those products there, and it's still a cool place to go. Now it's a non-producing distillery. This they're just doing are they doing bottling there? I know they have the warehouses for storming, but I'm not sure if they do bottling there or not. I don't remember them mentioning it. Yeah,

Drew (01:40:53):
I know they had a cooperage over there, like a repair cooperage that you can actually go over and see the little building. They don't really tell you much about it and then you can do your tastings and stuff like that. Yeah, Diagio came in and basically turned it into a museum.

Jerry (01:41:09):
They did like a distillery museum with all those resting barrels and those rick houses. But the rest of it is a museum. So I love going there when I'm in Louisville it's one of my favorite stops to, like I said, it's not a producing distillery, but I mean it's just a great place to go. And you're, you're walking into the property that Pappy walked around on and started all of his career and his working for Weller and just buying that was, that's a post-prohibition one too, wasn't it? Right after prohibition when that was built also.

Drew (01:41:47):
Yeah. And it says Old Fitzgerald on the smokestack when I was out there. Does this still say that?

Jerry (01:41:53):
Yes, it

Drew (01:41:54):
Does. Does it? Okay.

Jerry (01:41:55):
It sure does.

Drew (01:41:56):
Yep, it does. It's just

Jerry (01:41:57):
Heaven Hill can't make 'em take it off.

Drew (01:42:01):
I think it's actually as it was described to me, that that's actually stones that are in there that are those colors. So it'd be really, really hard to cover that up without painting the entire smoke stack another color. But

Jerry (01:42:18):
Yeah, I think it's one a lot of people don't really know a whole lot about. It's on the bourbon trail, but I think it's one of those that people just don't really know a whole lot about. Yeah, definitely. It's out on the west side of little, definitely one you're on a checkout.

Drew (01:42:31):
Well it's a chance to taste Bladen Bow and I w Harper too, because those are two of the brands that they kind of promote out there. And I was amazed when I went there. That was on my very first tour around Kentucky and the woman who did our tasting, I thought was one of the best tastings in terms of explaining and giving you a place to put your notes down and everything. And then when she was done, she said, well, this is my first week of doing tours. I'm like, man, they really prep these people. Well if this is her first week, if she's already one of the better people that I've seen on the trail in terms of doing tastings. So yeah, it's always been one of those places. It's interesting cuz it's one of the only, in fact, the only distillery I know of that you have to go through a security gate to get into. You have to check in before go.

Jerry (01:43:22):
Yeah, there's a gate at Bartons, but they never really stop you. Yeah,

Drew (01:43:27):
They

Jerry (01:43:27):
Just kinda wave you on through. Come on, you may stop the truck drivers, but yeah, they kind of wave you on through. But yeah, I know. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's a cool, yeah, it's one I would say on my list, it probably would've been number 13, but definitely a place to check out if you're in

Drew (01:43:43):
Louisville now, if you're a real history geek. The next one for me is and I say real history geek because you're basically going to be going out to look at nothing, almost nothing, which is the site of the old Petersburg Distillery which is west of the Louis or the Cincinnati airport on the Ohio River. And it was this massive distillery that I guess once the whiskey trust came in, they shut it down and then just tore it apart and the distiller's house is still there. But if you look at the spot where the distillery used to be, it's just a big field with nothing else there. And you kind of have to use your imagination. But there are other little spots around town that were in existence at that time, so you know, have to use your imagination. But the way I found out about it was going to Boone County Distillery because that's their whole history started in that area.

(01:44:51):
And so I kind of put that together with Boones County Distillery. I think when you driving up I 75 and you see the sign for Boone County, if you're like me, the first time I saw it I was like, oh, there's a distillery. And then I just keep on driving cuz I wasn't familiar with the name. And then once you get there you're kinda like, wait, this is in a warehouse park. What's this what it is? Yeah, what's this going to be like? But when you walk in, it's a really cool distillery with I mean here is craft distillery distilling in a nutshell where you basically go from milling of grain all the way through to the aging in the warehouse. So it's very cool. And the bottling line as well is there. And then add the history on top of it. So that's a fun one for me. Yeah. So

Jerry (01:45:41):
Cool. Yeah.

(01:45:44):
One I think of is, it's not really historic. There's not a historic side. It's more about the story. It is also northern Kentucky. It's the Neely family. Oh yeah. They're from Eastern Kentucky like I am. And they're moonshiners from many of generations. And they tell that story when you're there more generations than even the beams. And we're involved in Moonshining and it's kind of cool. Like I said, the family's from Eastern Kentucky and they're up in Sparta, so they're out there on close to the river and it's just kind of a modern looking rustic distillery. They're fairly young here and they're making product, their products out now. They're bourbon and all that. They're actually making absence, which is kind of different for distilleries, but they're building also another one down at Red River Gorge. Okay. Should be open this year.

Drew (01:46:40):
Well that's where they're going to do their moonshine I think, right?

Jerry (01:46:44):
Yes. Down there. Yes. Yeah, down Red River Gorge. Yes. And I'm excited when they get it down there and kind of put it back to where they're from. But yeah, the story, just the moon shining story is pretty big here, especially eastern Kentucky where I'm from. And so them still putting that out there and all that history, I like that. But nothing with the sides at all. But

Drew (01:47:11):
Yeah, it's right by the Kentucky Speedway and have they've got an old pot still in there, which is really cool to see. And Royce Neely, who started the distillery, his illicit whiskey still is in there as well above the counter. So you can see where he was using to distill while he was going at the University of Kentucky, I guess hanging out or whatever he was doing there. So yeah that's definitely a fun one. I say if you're going to take your kids to that distillery, you may cover their ears at certain points during the video <laugh> when they're describing the knees and the Allens. And you see different things.

Jerry (01:48:02):
If you're from Eastern Kentucky, there might have been a chance your family was involved in a feud. So yeah,

Drew (01:48:07):
Back in the day, it's one of the few tours I've been on where you see guns while you're there in the display case. Yeah. They also triple still, which is interesting because that's an Irish technique that I can't think of anybody else in Kentucky that does that other than Woodford Reserve. And theirs isn't really a true triple distill because it's blended. What they triple distill is blended afterwards. So so interesting that they've incorporated that into their, plus they do a sweep mash process, which there's not a lot of distillers that are doing that while Wilderness Trail. And I

Jerry (01:48:46):
Think there's only four on the states that do it.

Drew (01:48:48):
Kentucky Bureaus,

Jerry (01:48:48):
I think Peerless does it. Yeah. Wilderness Trail kind of is the distillery if you're talking about Sweet Mash. And then I think Castle Key's been doing some

Drew (01:48:57):
Of it lately. Okay. Okay. Add one to the

Jerry (01:49:00):
List. I think there's only four on those days to even do it

Drew (01:49:04):
Anywhere else that we just really need to know about that that we missed.

Jerry (01:49:08):
Well it's hard to come here and not go to Jim Bean. I know it's a post-prohibition. Yeah bill there. But there was a distillery before there, the Barb Barber Distillery. And so there is a lot of history there. The family itself and everything. I think it's definitely one you need to go check out for the history. And like I said, there was distilling on the property beforehand cause the beam got outta distilling during prohibition. Jim Beam got into KA business. Yeah, <laugh>. Yeah.

Drew (01:49:41):
Dose so well before. Yeah.

Jerry (01:49:44):
And you can actually see that distillery from before though. It's actually out outside of Bars Town and Heaven Hill owns it. They have their Rick houses there. Oh wow. You can see the remnants of the, what would've been the beam and heart distillery. So I guess that would've be their second distillery that they had. So it would've been started by David m and Jim worked there with his brother-in-law and actually Carl Beam, what a oh, not Carl Park. Park would've worked there also. Yeah, he would've been answer Stiller. So you actually, you can't get close to it cause they've got fencing all the way around everything there, but you can actually see it when you get out. Yeah,

Drew (01:50:22):
I felt weird leaving the beams off, but then I thought, well, I could throw a limestone branch in as part of my dance crossing entry because they are two families that intermingled and they have a lot of the history over there at Limestone branch. That family line, in fact, I find it interesting and someday, I guess I need to morph them together, is to take that family tree that they show at limestone branch and the family tree that they show over at the Jim Beam American Stillhouse and then see where they connect.

Jerry (01:51:01):
Oh, I can let's see. I might be able to do, it's been a while since I've done this. So you got Jacob, David, so that's your straight line. Yeah. And then it's separated after that. Your third generation was three guys. Most people know the one that started with David M, but it actually went to Joseph Elbe was that third generation, and then fourth was minor case.

Drew (01:51:28):
Okay. And minor case

Jerry (01:51:30):
Case would've been

Drew (01:51:32):
Limestone branch.

Jerry (01:51:32):
He would've been a first cousin, Jim Bean. So then it went from there to Guss. And that was really so that would've been, what was that fifth? Yeah, right down the fifth generation there with Guss. And then Steven and Paul's brother or father. Jimmy was not, I guess he worked at some distilleries, but it wasn't like a master distiller, but he played on a bourbon baseball league baseball team.

Drew (01:51:57):
<laugh>. Okay.

Jerry (01:51:59):
Yeah. So that's how they traced their line from interesting. From the top down. So yeah, it would've been the Joseph Elbe. Like I said, most people know the David m Beam. That's where you get Jim Beam and Jerry and that line. And even on the other side you would've had Jack Beam, that would've been the third brother and he's the one that started early times Distillery. Yeah.

Drew (01:52:26):
Okay. So we got a lot of these out of the way. I think I hit most of my list. The only other place I was going to mention was going to see the grist mill location in Georgetown where Elijah Craig's old grist mill would've been. But there's nothing there. And the sign's actually incorrect. Yeah,

Jerry (01:52:44):
Roy Green. Yeah,

Drew (01:52:45):
Because the sign says that this is where he originated the sour mash process. Really? Who put that sign up there? I mean, I was expecting it to be wrong because it said he is. He's the guy who started charring Oak. Oak barrels, which is the theory that everybody hears. But instead it was the sour mash process. So

Jerry (01:53:08):
You're in Georgetown, everything's, everything's going. Go to Elijah Craig. Just like when you go to Louisville, everything's going to say Evan Williams did this

Drew (01:53:15):
First. <laugh> this first.

Jerry (01:53:17):
Yeah. Just depends on where you're at. Which one did it first? Well,

Drew (01:53:21):
Let's talk about when people are ready to start planning out and going on tours and interacting with stone fences, tours. First of all, how far in advance should somebody consider getting in contact with you to set up distillery tours? Especially?

Jerry (01:53:39):
I would say definitely a month out. And if you're looking at in the fall, I would even go farther out. Okay. Cause September, October, and we're going to have a Breeders Cup here back in Lexington first week in November. Those are the busiest times of the year for the distilleries. Main reason here in central Kentucky is that you have Kingman the, well, you have UK football starting in September. You have Keyland and runs through all October, and then you have the Breeder's Cup and then you have all your bourbon festivals. Majority of your big bourbon festivals are in the fall and most of 'em fall in September and October. So I mean, that is the busiest time of the year. So I mean, if you're wanting to plan something in the fall, I start playing as soon as possible. Any time, probably at least April's busy with keener running.

(01:54:27):
And then the first week of May with Derby, there are always busy times around here. Those you want to have a little notice cause they're looking at dates in May already running into the Derby. We're like Woodfords are a booked, sold out for the days and some of these distillers are already sold out and we're just in the, we're two months away. So the more advanced plan you can get, and we can get into some distilleries but some of those may just end up tasting. So I mean, yeah, plan ahead. If you're coming in, like I said, April or May here September, October 1st part of November, especially this year. Cause there will be nothing available if you wait till September to try to book a tour

Drew (01:55:14):
Here.

Jerry (01:55:14):
So in central Kentucky at that time,

Drew (01:55:16):
So do you offer packages like here are three distilleries that I would suggest that you go to? Or do you leave it up to the person to decide what places they want to go and suggest them to you?

Jerry (01:55:29):
We have our scheduled tours that you can get on our Stone Fit tours.com website. I'm actually starting to, I've got all the way through May in there and I'm actually starting to put in September through early November schedules right now. But you can also, if you're have particular set that you would like we also do custom tours, custom bourbon tours and those will work with you on, you may not necessarily always get the three that you want, so we ask you to give us a list of maybe four to five just because of availability to get into 'em. But we'll do our best to get into those. Like I said, we have a few insights, again, into some of the places that are pretty big on the bourbon trail, but all the more notice the best on that, especially this year, last year things started to open up.

(01:56:20):
I think this year everything will be kind of running full board and people are getting out, people are planning. We've already got people that in December were booking tours for June. So very nice. So that's different than the last year when they call week ahead of time, Hey, you got room to do, or can you do this or do that? And nobody was really planning anything last year. This year I would say definitely want to plan. It's still somewhat limited on the amount of tours distilleries do. I think mostly because they don't have the guides they had before pandemic, they lost a lot of those guides so they don't do 'em as often. They don't still don't do as big a tours as they used to do. The tours are still a little bit smaller than what they used to do. So definitely plan ahead give a call and if you're going to do it with the tour company, give 'em a call. When you're set on that date, go ahead and give 'em a call. Yes. Yeah. That's the best way to do it.

Drew (01:57:17):
Fantastic. I know this isn't the last time you'll be on the show cuz you are a great person to chat history with. And this was a lot of fun cuz we covered a lot of ground in two hours and I think we gave people a lot of food for thought for some really cool places. And it was fun seeing that our lists were fairly similar. I mean they were

Jerry (01:57:42):
Very similar really. They were. Yeah. Yeah. I think we probably hit on what, probably at least eight of the 10 I would say. Somewhere on our list abs. I think so. I think I had old pog and you might have had a log still and we could easily swap those I think.

Drew (01:57:58):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well thank you Jerry for being on and taking up your time today to walk through these and brainstorm the list and tell some history along the way as well. And I look forward to seeing you up at the bourbon sessions at some point and checking out some more historical places up in Kentucky as they keep unveiling themselves.

Jerry (01:58:23):
Yeah, there's a few I've kind of gotten into already that are coming out. We might be able to able to check those out and we always go back and it's always go back and even if you've done a tour two or three years later, go back and do that tour again cause everything's changed so much. Might get a completely different experience. So yeah. Yeah, we, we've been hope to have you back here soon, back in the place where Bourbon started and where it's at the best. And come see me some of these great distilleries here and yeah, like I said, hopefully have you as a host for a bourbon session. We can work out of time too, so it'll be awesome. Fantastic.

Drew (01:58:59):
Thank you very much Jerry.

Jerry (01:59:01):
Thank you.

Drew (01:59:02):
I hope that was super helpful for you. And if you wanna learn more about Stone Fences tours, just head to stone fences tours.com or you can head to whiskey lord.com/interviews to grab show notes, transcripts, and any pertinent links from this and all of my past interviews. And don't forget, you can also join Jerry and all of your whiskey history loving friends on the official whiskey lore community Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/whiskey lore. If you wanna keep up with all things whiskey lore, including my big journey to Ireland that is coming up in June, sign up for Whiskey Lores weekly newsletter, find it at whiskey-lore.com/members. I'm your O TRUE Hennish. And until next time, cheers and SL of a whiskey lords of production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.