Lexington Area: Woodford Reserve |  Bulliet | Wild Turkey | Four Roses | Buffalo Trace

Woodford Reserve was our second tour of the trip and highly recommended. The distillery is spread across two sides of a county road, with the visitors center and parking lot on one side and the gift shop and production facilities on the other. The visitors center is what can only be described as having the perfect Kentucky man cave decor.  It is elegant and rustic. 

This is definitely a place where you want to do the tour or else you aren’t going to see much. Unlike other facilities that intermingle gift shops/tasting rooms with production facilities, these were distinctly separated and the tour was well worth the price. After boarding a bus in the visitors center, you are driven across the street and down the hill (totally walkable) to the production facility. You are shoulder to shoulder with the employees as they pump the mash into giant wooden tanks, run the copper stills, and plug holes in the filled barres before sending them rolling on tracks to the barrel house to age. The tour makes its way along the barrel tracks to the barrel storage house and you walk past the bottling facility (not allowed in due to food manufacturing limitations), before boarding the bus again to drive up the hill to do a tasting.  Woodford’s tasting was among the more generous pours, with a full ounce of each bourbon variety. Being newer bourbon drinkers, Woodford stood out because the 4 varieties that we tried were legitimately different. From viscosity to flavor, this tasting was truly a journey. 

It should be noted that there are some viral social media videos of dogs on the Woodford tour, but this isn’t actually a dog friendly distillery. Additionally, you are truly within the production of the bourbon, and I really wouldn’t consider this to be the most dog friendly locations even if they were ok with a dog being on the tour. We kept Fred and Kora in the RV for this one. 

Bulliet: This is our go to bourbon these days and we made this our first stop on the trail. We did not do any tours, but they have a nice patio to enjoy with the dogs. Faux grass on the deck, games, and a well appointed gift shop round out the experience. We really enjoyed the manhattan and old fashioned prepared with your choice of Bulliet products.  The visitors center is small, but the gift shop is packed with lots of interesting branded items, unique bottles, and the ability to customize the label for your own bottle of bourbon. The production facility is detached from the visitors center and tours are bussed. We opted against a tour because we were with Fred and Kora and there was no indication that they allowed dogs, but the patio area was very welcoming to the pups. 

Wild Turkey: Following Bulliet, we made the 40 minute drive to Wild Turkey. Once again, we were with the pups so we did not do a tour, but took turns going through the visitors center and gift shop. Though not as extensive as Bulliet in terms of a gift and bottle shop, Wild Turkey was an awesome building and patio area. The second floor boasted floor to ceiling windows and a cocktail bar while downstairs led out to a patio that overlooks the Kentucky River. The dogs enjoyed sitting under massive (big ass) fans while enjoying the view. Similar to Bulliet, the tours would take you through buildings a shuttle ride away from the visitors center, but with the dogs we opted to avoid tours. 

Four Roses: We got there late and just wanted to see it, so we only had around 30 minutes to walk around the grounds, gift shop, and visitors center. The gift shop was massive and very nicely laid out with a wrap around porch / patio surrounding the visitors center & tasting room. Unfortunately, time did not allow us to have a drink, but this was a very dog friendly location, with employees going out of their way to come outside and let us know that we could bring the dogs inside when they realized that we were taking turns walking around. 

Overall, we enjoyed all 3 locations that we visited. Without the dogs, a tour would have been nice and we probably would have opted for Bulliet as our tour location simply because we drink that Bourbon more than the others. With that being said, simply visit the distilleries, trying a drink, and enjoying the facilities make for a great day without the need to do a formal tour. 

Buffalo Trace 

This is a 100% dog approved location

Buffalo trace is a VERY dog friendly location. In fact, it is one of the only distilleries that specifically mentions that they are dog friendly and they are not joking. 

The tour and tasting is 100% free. This is both a blessing and a curse. Because it is free, people sign up as soon as tickets become available, even if they do not intend to go on the tour. As a result, it is nearly impossible to get tickets in advance. Pro Tip - check the website the day of the tour. We couldn’t get tickets ahead of time, signed up for the wait list and were told that nothing was available, but the day of the tour, there were dozens of free tickets available and we got on a tour! 

This is a fully dog friendly facility and they can even join you on the tour / tasting (with the exception of food production areas like bottling). With that being said, know your dog. We left Fred in the air conditioned RV instead of taking him on the tour because he is a grumpy old man and there is a lot of walking. Kora was up for the challenge and loved getting to go into all of the buildings and join us on the tour. 

After the tour, the complimentary tasting was enjoyable and the dog friendly gift shop was massive with a rotation of “rare” bottles available each day. We aren’t talking about impossible to find, but harder to find bottles such as Eagle Rare are available on rotation each day. 

Louisville Area: Jim Beam | Angel's Envy | Old Forester 

Once we left the Lexington area, this got much closer. In fact, you can hit 8-10 distilleries by walking a few miles in downtown Louisville. We visited Angel’s Envy and Old Forester while in the downtown area following our Louisville Slugger Museum tour. These were legitimately just visits and we didn’t tour them or do much of anything. We didn’t even buy a bottle but since we were collecting different Christmas ornaments from distillers that had them, we figured “while in Kentucky”. Being in the downtown area, you lose a lot of the charm that you get when being on a campus with multiple buildings, gardens, and barrel houses. This isn’t to say that there is a problem with a downtown distillery, it just feels less like a destination than some of the larger facilities that are off the beaten path so we didn’t feel as invented in touring or spending a lot of time there. 

Jim Beam was a different case. It was a short drive from downtown Louisville (only 10 minutes from the KOA), and it was a really nice campus. It is oddly intermingled with a community, including houses and a church, but the distillery buildings were reminiscent of the Mila Kunis commercials. Although we didn’t do a formal tour, it is nice to walk around the grounds, gardens, and different buildings. There is a lot of history detailed and a well appointed gift shop and tasting room. Just outside of the gift shop is a restaurant that closes at 5pm, so we didn’t end up eating, but the food looked incredible. If they were open a bit later or if we timed it for lunch, we definitely would have eaten there. 

Out there: Makers Mark

Makers Mark is pretty far out there and was around 1.5 hours from Woodford Reserve. If you read nothing else about Makers Mark, read this - There is no food or gas near Makers Mark. If you want food or gas, get it when you see it because you probably won’t see it again. There is a restaurant on site but it has limited days / hours. 

Unfortunately, the distillery was closed for annual cleaning for our trip so it wasn’t worth doing a tour, but the grounds are very nice and the gift shop was open. We didn’t spend a lot of time there besides a short walk and a visit to the gift shop. The grounds were immaculate and the builders were all kept to a common theme. In some ways it felt like a scaled down version of Jack Daniels, but if we missed it, we wouldn’t have been disappointed and it didn’t feel worth the drive. 

Our real reason for going was that we wanted to dip a bottle in the wax and after doing that, we headed out pretty quickly. It was definitely nice, but we could have gone either way with going there.