One day in September I got a hair up my ass to head to Kentucky for a short bike tour. I floated the idea to my best friend Shia and he seemed pretty down to do it. The plan was we’d fly into Louisville (pr. “loo-a-voll”), and then set off on a pretty mild bourbon tour between Louisville and Versailles (pr. like if you didn’t speak French). The plan worked out and I just got back and we both honestly had a great time. Here are some highlights:

Day 1

We both arrived the night before and stayed in an Econolodge in Louisville. We watched the Presidential town hall debate deal while we unpacked out bikes and put them together. The next day we headed out to Bardstown, a short 35 mile ride and getting us near to two big bourbon distilleries: Heaven Hill and Maker’s Mark. But we planned to do those the next day.

On the way, we ran into Jim Beam and decided to get off the highway and check out the tour. There wasn’t much of a tour, more of a do-it-yourself sort of thing, but that was ok with us and we did get to taste a couple other brands of bourbon. They were the “fancy” ones and were pretty high proofs, which probably accounted for their bad flavor. But hey, it was free.

We got back on the highway, which had an ample shoulder (”mercy lane”), but what we found is that nearly every road in the state has “rumble strips” (a strip of lines cut into the shoulder causing your car to vibrate if you happen to drift out of the lane) that greatly reduce the shoulder and are pretty impossible to ride on. The road had way too many big trucks and when we saw one of the Four Roses distillery, we decided to check it out. Unfortunately it was closed and you had to reserve a tour, but it did allow us an alternate route to skip most of the highway. And with that, we made it to just outside of Bardstown and camped for the night at some make-shift RV park.

Day 2

We had breakfast at Mammy’s in the historic downtown district of Bardstown and then headed out on a nice rolling country road to Heaven Hill. Bardstown has so many distilleries nearby that the air outside constantly smells like sweet mash — it was pretty amazing!

Heaven Hill actually had moved their distilling to Louisville, since the only one burned down, but we got to see the great big warehouses where the bourbon was put into barrels to age. The tour was nice and personalized and the tasting was education and good. Again we got to try some premium brands, one of which sells for $150 a bottle! Much better than the Jim Beam.

From there it was only a short 15 mile or so ride to Maker’s Mark. The scenery was perfect and it was a nice sunny day. We saw our first giant pro-life sign and a latent Hillary for President lawn sign right after. Politically, we noticed that Kentucky seemed rather evenly divided. But it’s hard to tell since most people didn’t put out presidential signs at all — only local races were well represented, but what we did see, seemed to be pretty even.

Maker’s Mark was a good tour with a complete process of distilling to storing to bottling. We started to notice that while bourbon production started in the region at around the same time by a variety of individuals, each distillery had some sort of claim to fame, whether it was the “oldest”, the most “independent”, the one who still does it the “old fashioned way” or what have you. Maker’s was good in that we got to taste the sour mash and got to compare the un-barreled shine to the finished product during the tasting.

From there it was a short, yet hill ride to Springfield to stay for the night. Shia was hurting a bit the second day and was having problems with his rack, but we made it and learned quickly that duct tape is your friend.

Day 3

The third day, Shia wanted to take it easy so we set out towards Harrodsburg. No distillery stops were planned and in fact by the time we got to Harrodsburg, Shia was doing fine and wanted to push on so the next day’s ride wouldn’t be as long. We chose a half-way point and heading up to Lawrenceburg, taking a big highway, but one that had a nice wide shoulder.

Day 4

This day we heading out to Versailles. This was another ideal ride through rolling terrain. Kentucky really is a beautiful place to ride and we stopped and had lunch in Versailles. It was quite early, so we actually had breakfast and then headed to Woodford Reserve along a very scenic and popular stretch of road. This was the only road that we say other cyclists and it was in fact detailed in my book on Kentucky backroads. We were the only tourers however.

Arriving at Woodford we soon found that it was quite a production. Shia had read that it was the “best” tour of the distilleries, and while it was certainly the “fanciest” it lacked some of the personalization of the other tours and honestly, but then, the tours started looking the same: Start with a short highly-produced film, then go see some distilling and how they do it uniquely, then some barrels, maybe some bottling, then a tasting.

We actually had to pay $5 for this tour and the tasting was rather a joke where we just stood in line to get our bourbon sloshed in a cheap plastic shot glass (that we could keep!). Also, we soon realized that Woodford Reserved is probably the most corportate of the bourbons, being owned by the same company as Jack Daniels and the “reserve” being the mixing of the bourbon they made there with a “honey barrel” of unknown origin from somewhere in Louisville (maybe).

They did have a cat, however, and he was nice and fat and cute.

Then we headed down the road to Frankfort (Capitol City!). Probably the high light of this town was stopping at a liquor store/bar and hanging with the locals while they watched the UK Wildcats game. The pours at this bar were triples and it was nice to actually get a little buzz from some bourbon rather than just a taste…

Day 5

Shia was nervous about the last day’s ride, which would be the long haul back to Louisville from Frankfort, but he had trained a bit on the ride, so the 67 miles proved to be fairly easy and only really sucked once we got outside of Louisville where urban sprawl was the norm and the roads were busy. But we made it back to the Econolodge and had a nice long relaxing night and next day waiting for our flights.
And that’s it! Check out this slideshow of all the pictures: