For our final day on the Bourbon Trail (for this trip), we stared out in the morning at the Kentucky Horse Park. We had stopped at Town Branch Distillery in the afternoon the day before (Saturday) and all of the tours for the rest of the day were sold out. . . sigh. So we made a reservation for the earliest tour on Sunday, which wasn't until 1 pm. Given that we had some time to kill in the morning and had already paid for Sunday's admission, the Horse Park was a great way to pass the time. The Horse Park Campground has a checkout time of noon, so we asked if we could get an extension considering our bourbon tour wasn't until 1 pm. The campground registration worker said it was a no-go, so we had to leave our sites by noon. Luckily, the Horse Park itself was not busy on the cold and rainy Sunday, so the workers there let us park the RVs in the back of their parking lot while we did our final distillery tour in town.
Once we had the RVs parked in the back parking lot, we made our way to the first show. The Hall of Champions Show was at 10 am, so we walked there first, walking through some of the other barns on the way. We saw 3 champions - two harness racing champs (Mr. Muscleman, a trotter Harness Racer and Western Dreamer, a Harness Racing Triple Crown winning Pacer) and one regular racing thoroughbred, Funny Cide, the 2003 Kentucky Derby Winner. Then we went to another arena to watch the parade of horse breeds. We only had enough time to watch about half of that show before we had to leave for our distillery tour. On our way back to the parking lot, we stopped by the grave site for Man O War and some of his sons and daughters. The museum at the Horse Park has a wonderful section on Man O War - I was especially touched by the story of how Man O War died only one month after the death of his longtime caretaker. Before we left for the tour, we ate a quick lunch in the RV and then drove into Lexington to the Town Branch Distillery.
At Town Branch, we checked in and waited for our tour to begin. We had a charismatic tour guide who was quite funny. Town Branch is also a beer brewery, so we were given a tour of those facilities as well. At the start of the tour, each person received four wooden tokens that we could later exchange for samples at the tastings. We were given several beer, bourbon, and rum options to chose from. On the tour, the guide made jokes about "bourbon trail zombies" who had been on so many tours we could recite much of the information from memory - yeah, that was us. "51% corn, a new white-oak barrel with a #4 char!" But the guide did a good job of keeping it light and telling us a few new things. The beer tasting room was fun and I tried an IPA, while Ken tried a German-style Kolsch. One of our friends tried an experimental citrus beer (she's a fan of Blue Moon, so we thought she'd like it, but she didn't really care for it). In the bourbon tasting room, we could try a 2-3 year old rum, an 8 year rum, a rye whiskey, a regular bourbon, and a hot coffee-bourbon-cream drink (basically a shot of espresso with bourbon and cream). It was a coffee lover's dream. Our tour guide was quite entertaining and made several jokes about formerly being in the seminary. We though he was joking at first, but then realized he was telling the truth. He had previously been in the seminary and left, and was now working at a bourbon distillery. Take a listen to his "sermon" about how bourbon distilling works.
After finishing up the tour, we headed back to the Horse Park to pick up the RVs and head home. By the way, many thanks to our friends the Hahns for driving us around in their truck for these two trips. We don't tow a car with our motorhome, so they saved us from having to rent a car both trips!
Since we began this Kentucky Bourbon Trail journey, they have started a Craft Distillery Trail and added more distilleries to the official trail. We now need to go back to Louisville to visit Angel's Envy Distillery and a number of the smaller craft distilleries across the state. We can't wait for Part III of our trip!
