CerebralDebris

Note: This is a continuation of the previous blog post.

We awake bright and early (for Charlotte and I, at least … so 8:45am) and find that the heavy cloud cover from the previous day has lifted, and the sky is clear and blue. This means it’s going to be a bit warmer out, which is good, because we end up spending quite a bit of time outdoors, as it turns out.

We grab breakfast with Gabe and Brett — Starbucks again, and then head off on the fairly lengthy drive to the Maker’s Mark distillery. This takes us west out of Lexington, a drive which will continue until we’re south of Louisville, which is kind of nice since it shaves a bit of time off the trip home. Also, we get to drive through some very pretty country on a nice fall day. Not bad!

We eventually leave the Bluegrass Parkway and turn onto rural route 555, which is also pretty and takes us past a weird combination of golf courses, gigantic mansions, and trailer homes. I guess when you go where the land is cheap, you find all sorts of people willing to take advantage of that fact. On our way to the distillery we start seeing signs for “Historic Lincoln Birthplace” and decide that we might as well stop. This turns out to be a minor detour in terms of actual distance, but eats up close to an hour of our time, which is a good thing since we otherwise would’ve been incredibly early for the first distillery tour.

The “Lincoln” in question turns out not to be Abraham, but Abraham’s mother and father, who were born and lived within a mile of each other out here in roughly the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. The Lincoln family log cabin has been reconstructed on its actual spot, while the Hanks family cabin (Abe’s mom) is original, but was picked up and moved in order to create the historic site. We stop in at the gift shop and pay the $2 per head to tour the grounds, then wander around. The Lincoln cabin is one big room with a small and inaccessible upstairs section. The Hanks cabin is practically a mansion by contrast, having four defined rooms downstairs and a big sewing room upstairs. Both cabins are decorated with period antiques. Both are also freezing, dank, dim, and depressing. As Brett put it succinctly after a few minutes in the Lincoln cabin: “Okay … this would suck!”

We spend some time checking out the cabins and the grounds, which butt right up against a golf course upon which a bunch of guys are driving their golf carts in a most hazardous fashion. This proves amusing, as do the remains of what appears to once have been a well, but is now a creepy stone cavern with a spring at its base. Done exploring, we head back off toward Maker’s Mark.

We eventually arrive at the distillery, which is somewhat larger and a bit more industrial-looking than Woodford Reserve, but still pretty quaint and picturesque. We hang out in what used to be the owners’ house, which has now been turned into the central tour location, waiting for things to get started. Eventually we’re herded together and begin our tour. It’s similar to the Woodford Reserve tour, albeit in somewhat larger numbers. Where Woodford has three fermenting vats and stores about 5000 barrels, Maker’s has something like 36 fermenting vats and stores a correspondingly higher number of barrels. They’re still “small batch” though, because they only bottle using 160 barrels at a time. Oddly, given that it has so many more barrels, their aging warehouse doesn’t smell as good as Woodford’s. Maybe the stone walls do a better job of trapping in the scent?

At the end of the tour we get to do a tasting, which includes a small glass of Maker’s and a bourbon ball, but also includes something interesting: a small glass of “White Dog” (aka: White Lightning, aka: un-aged whiskey). It has an odd, ferment-y smell … like a combination of corn and yeast with an alcohol finish. On the tongue it lacks much flavor, and burns a bit more than the aged product. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it compared to the finished version!

Gabe and Brett buy a small bottle of Maker’s to hand-dip in wax at the gift shop. Charlotte and I go for a full 750 ML bottle, which has a horrible label featuring the founder’s face on it, but is otherwise identical to a regular maker’s bottle. Gabe dunks theirs, Charlotte dunks ours, many pictures are taken, and I buy a bourbon-dipped cigar that I will probably forget to smoke until it is dried out and revolting. WOO!

We finished up our tour by visiting the Maker’s Mark cafe, where we acquired various bourbon-barbecue sandwiches, along with some sides and drinks. Pretty tasty for cheap cafe food. Charlotte and I each bought a bourbon cookie for the road, and I decided to eat mine while driving fifty-five on a twisty rural route. This caused a bit of a problem when we came up over a hill and I had a moment of indecision when faced with a fork in the road, finally decided to slam on the breaks and screech around to the left, still hanging precariously on to my cookie with one hand and turning the wheel with the other, all the while bumping over potholes and road debris, since we were now on a median rather than on the expected road surface. Ah, road trips.

Eventually we found our way to 65 north, and spent the next three hours or so making our way home. Our trip to Kentucky was over, but it will remain forever in our hearts. And our livers … at least, until that bottle of Maker’s is gone.

» Links: Lexington Trip Day 2 Pics