I am not as seasoned a bourbon drinker as Our Tommy, but on my recent visit to Kentucky I made time to visit two distilleries: Woodford Reserve and Wild Turkey.
Woodford Reserve makes only one product, and it is excellent and expensive. Their tour costs $5 if you're old enough to drink and is free for the underage crowd. The reason for the price difference is that there are samples offered at the end of the tour, which render many guests on the tour unable to refrain from purchasing their fine product in the gift shop. In order to maintain the consistency of their product, Woodford Reserve Bourbon is blended from a variety of barrels, and distilled water is added to bring it down to proof - when it comes out of the barrels it is too strong to be sold as Kentucky Bourbon.
Wild Turkey makes a variety of products, and all their bourbon is barrel proofed. Coming out of the barrel ready to go leads to a much stronger end-product. The tour-guide-lady said it gives it more flavor, but when I tasted it - even the Wild Turkey Rare Breed, their high-end product - I found that the additional burnt wood flavor overshadowed the sugary vanilla and caramels. I couldn't find them, even when I added a ton of ice and let it melt for a while. Oh, their tour was free, I had to buy a bottle to taste it. I also wanted to try the liqueur they make, but couldn't really afford two bottles as I was buying an awesome brown hoodie with turkey tracks up the sleeve.
I noticed that between the tours, people on the Woodford Reserve tour dressed up kind of snooty, whereas on the Wild Turkey tour, pretty much everyone was in jeans and there were a lot of kids along. The WT tour was free to everyone, and the only free samples were this insanely good fudge made with bourbon in it. Oh, yeah, there was bourbon candy on the WR tour, too.
So, since exploring those two bourbons, I have made a third bourbon purchase, and one Tommy failed to mention: Buffalo Trace, located just outside of Frankfort, Kentucky. Buffalo Trace is lighter in color than either WT or WR, and lies closer to WR on the smoothness scale. It is a nice, drinkable, less expensive top-shelf bourbon, which I took to a knitting event to share, along with a bag of ice and a bottle of diet coke. To my surprise, pretty much all the ladies had some, and only one of them felt the need to mix it.
I really enjoyed the tours I went on, and will probably go back to Kentucky for a few days this fall to take in the rest of the Kentucky Bourbon Heritage Trail. Although I lived in Kentucky for six years, I never even considered going on a distillery tour until I was there this trip and nearly drove off a bridge in the middle of the night, taking a shortcut from Versailles to Lawrenceburg. I'm pretty glad I have glasses for night driving now.
Starting to ramble; time to stop.