Take the BT tour and try to get Freddy as your tour guide. Older guy, his dad was a long time warehouse manager. He is a walking talking bourbon history museum. While WT is pretty blah (the plant is just massive from an operations standpoint) you might get a little lucky. Our guide was Jimmy Russell's grandson. He had some neat stories about Jimmy and Booker Noe. About 20 years ago my dad did a tour and Jimmy was his guide.

We are heading to Nashville for the Vanderbilt football game. Think it's worth it to wake up early and make the drive up there for just a day? We were thinking of going to buffalo trace and another near it or four roses.

Second the recommendation for getting Freddy. He's the best guide.

We're going to do it. Flying in Wednesday night, getting up early Thursday to hit up as many as we can, then stay in Louisville that night. Too close to the trail not to try and take advantage of it.

Woodford isn't the best bourbon, but they give a damn good tour and it's beautiful land that they are on. Huge horse farms, rolling hills - really is a great place to visit

Double Oaked is pretty good when they give you a taste for free.

Thanks all, for the input. BT, woodford and 4 roses on day 2, Makers, Willett and maybe one of the others on Day 3. Any cool place to stay in the Makers/Willet region, or should we just head back in to Louisville?

You should head back to Lousiville IMO

You could stay in Bowling Green and check out the Corvette museum, Mammoth Cave, or Lost River Cave.

If you go to Bowling Green, you can actually tour the Corvette plant. It's a neat tour. You walk the entire line, takes about 3 hours. You need reservations so plan that one ahead.

Anyone tried 1835 Texas Bourbon??

I went cheap on my lunch break. Old Grandad BIB and Old Fitzgerald.

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Anyone tried 1835 Texas Bourbon??

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I had it a year ago and liked it for the price (I think it was low 20s) Bottle looks cool, so thats a plus

Should be interesting

Neat: The Story of Bourbon

Thanks!

This might be a little upsetting for some. Just saw this tweet:

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@SkusRecentEats: Buffalo Trace reports that finding this year's Stagg will be "harder than ever." 84% of the original 128 barrels was lost to evaporation.

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Holy cow! Did they age the barrels uncorked?

If that's true, at 55 gal/barrel, you are looking at about 1120 gallons to bottle or roughly 5500-5600 bottles. That doesn't sound right at all.

53 gallons

I saw that some barrels only have 1-2 gallons left in them

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I saw that some barrels only have 1-2 gallons left in them

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that was one helluva tasting party for this years batch

In other news, a fifth of BT has jumped in price from $17.99 to $28.99. Elijah Craig "small batch" remains the best value bourbon on the shelf.

Some barrel supplier is getting sued.

I heard that rumor about Stagg months ago. You would think they'd try to bring secondary prices down somehow, but every move the bourbon industry makes is driving them up. Sad.

It's just crazy the factors causing all of this. Anything aged is going up in cost or up the shelf into other branded bottles. So much for trying to score the full Antique run this year.

I got back Sunday from a fantastic Bourbon trail experience. A few notes if anyone is interested:

- Louisville Slugger and Churchill Downs - fantastic tours. Highly recommend both if you are into either sport at all.

- At at the Brown Restaurant Thursday night. The Hot Brown was fantastic (they created it). The rest of the food was ok, but overpriced. FYI - had several Van Winkles on the menu...out of all of them.

- Visited BT and Woodford on day 2. Both were fantastic. at BT, met Fred, one of the tasters. He had just finished trying the Van Winkle 23. BT is a definite must on a trip like this. They aren't on the "bourbon Trail" because it would cost them 6 figures to be in the "association" and they didn't think it was worth it. Oh, and BT had a sweet product called Bourbon Cream which is great if you like Amraula/Bailieys/etc.

- Woodford's opportunity to get your own barrel is very cool. Cost was something like $10k, which worked out ot be something like $55 a bottle, which isn't all that far off. Neat option for someday.

- Stayed in Lexington that night, and ate nowhere special, but a local diner. Very gracious folks in KY all the way around

- day 3 Dad wanted to see as many distilleries as we could. Started at 4 Roses distillery. Not a bad tour, but not as great as the others. No bottleling at that facility. Then to Makers. Got to dip our bottles, which of course was cool. Neat option here is to sign up to be a Makers ambassador. Clearly a marketing ploy like the Tenessee Squires, but there was a set of ambassadors there that had gotten their golden ticket saying their bottle was ready. They got the VIP treatment and a bottle with thier name on it.

- Next we headed to Heaven Hill/Bourbon museum. This was the most expensive tour ($20/person) but we also got to try Elijah Craig 23, Larceny, William Heaven Hill small batch and Heaven hill select stock, which were the highest end bourbons on the tours. Not really much of a tour, but cool history and I didn't realize this group plus Jim Beam make up 50% of the bourbon market. Probably worth it.

- We squeezed in Willet to end the day. Obviously much smaller, but really neat family vibe. Here we tasted one of the best we had the entire trip (although a rye) - Willet Sraight Rye rare release. Made me curious about their more aged bourbons (which were $150+ a bottle)

- Drove right past Jim Beam on the way to Louisville, so checked out the grounds. Great photo ops, but we didn't tour.

We had 24 different bourbons in the 2.5 days. Nothing super out of the ordinary or really high end since most came from tours. We did a rough rating throughout the trip and surprised that Town Branch was near the top. Dad liked Makers Cask strength. I also put Eagle Rare up there, amoung others. Few had heard of the Texas bourbons (I didn't actively bring it up, Dad always told people we were from Texas), but the Woodford guys told us the Garrison guys spent a lot of time studying their operations.

tl,dr - Highly recommend the tour. Take your old man if you want good quality time. Worth a spot on your bucket list.

Bourbon is quickly becoming not worth the buy. There are many scotches and the one Irish whiskey I've tried (Redbreast 12) that are better than all of the bourbons I've ever tried especially for the prices they are running. I can get Redbreast for $45 at Total Wine and there isn't a bourbon Ive had that is in remotely the same class at that price.

...and just how many Stagg or store barrel picks from Weller, Four Roses, or Smooth Ambler do you have on your shelf? Redbreast 12 Cask Strength is the best one they make, and Green Spot is around $50. I'm just saying you need to try more stuff before making those bold statements.

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Bourbon is quickly becoming not worth the buy. There are many scotches and the one Irish whiskey I've tried (Redbreast 12) that are better than all of the bourbons I've ever tried especially for the prices they are running. I can get Redbreast for $45 at Total Wine and there isn't a bourbon Ive had that is in remotely the same class at that price.

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Glad to hear y'all enjoyed the trip.

Sounds like an awesome trip! Always good to have a nice boys trip.

Sad to hear about the lack of Stagg. That was the only BTAC that I got last year and it is one of the best on my shelf.

I was near Miami for business this week. Found a place called Swine in Coral Gables with Pappy. Had a glass of the ORVW, it was quite delicious.

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I was just browsing the delta sky club website and saw that their bar menu included Pappy. Don't know what year it is. Will be flying through SEA next month, might have to check it out.
https://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta-www/pdfs/sky-club/dsc-the-bar1.pdf

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Flew through SEA yesterday and they didn't have the Pappy as advertised

What are you enjoying this win with?

Rock Hill Farms neat, here

Just might polish off my last bit of Stagg Jr.

Started on a DVD about 2 hours behind. Been drinking Smooth Ambler Old Scout. Just watched the last snap and will start to one sip of my '13 GTS.