Louisville, Kentucky

Today is our last here, we are off to Boston at an unearthly hour tomorrow morning, one of those very early flights where you wonder if it makes any sense to go to bed at all!

The city has horse statues everywhere 

and lots of fountains, 

 I only captured a few.

Yesterday we took a guided city tour on a trolley bus, it was very informative, the best part was the sights of all those beautiful old Victorian mansions, more here than in any other city in the USA.

I started out in the gym this morning and after lunch we took the Evan Williams Bourbon experience.

It is an hour plus tour of the downtown distillery with an interesting history lesson on the development of Bourbon from the initial establishment of the first distillery through prohibition to the present day.

 The first few rooms detailed those early days with a movie depiction of the events.

 This room contained Evan Williams original still.

 Here we were shown the entire process of the making of Bourbon. 

 A couple of interesting points, it must contain a minimum of 51% corn in order to be called Bourbon,

 all the corn comes from local farmers in a 70 mile radius and the corn is never genetically modified, kudos to them.

 Above the mash is bubbling away as the yeast ferments the mixture.

 We were invited to smell the liquor in this barrel, aged to date about seven years.

 The following pics show a recreation of Whisky Row as it looked back "in the day".

With a faithful representation  of the apothecary shop and the many cure-alls that were sold, each one containing alcohol!

 Last but not least was the tasting room where we sampled three different Bourbons, the first two were premium sipping Bourbons.

  A "Single Barrel" liquor, sweet and potent with caramel and vanilla flavors predominating, my personal favorite.

The back label has a handwritten notation of the date it was barreled, barrel # and bottling date.

I purchased this for youngest DS who is a bit of a Bourbon connoisseur, do you think he might spare a nip for me?!

Next a newer development called "Larceny", a combination of premium barrels, more butterscotch but I missed the caramel and vanilla, and it did not appeal to my taste buds as much.

And finally Evan Williams Black Label a less expensive one meant to be used for mixed drinks. A Bourbon ball finished off the tasting room experience then on to the shopping bit!

Our family likes spicy foods so this hot sauce looked interesting, and they had a Bourbon flavored maple syrup as well as Bourbon apple butter, apple barbecue sauce and some jams and mustards, lots to choose from.

I almost forgot something for me, Bourbon balls and Bourbon Pecan Brittle, yummy!

 If you visit Louisville this would be an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so the people at Evan Williams are friendly and well versed in the products.