Craft distilleries
As the popularity of bourbon has grown, smaller craft distilleries have entered the picture, giving visitors a more intimate experience. Their growth is such that the distillers association added a branch to the Bourbon Trail for them: the Kentucky Craft Tour.
The eight small distilleries on the tour cover a wider swath of the state, ranging from Pembroke and Bowling Green in south-central Kentucky to Maysville along the Ohio River.
A new craft brewery and distillery is scheduled to open in Pikeville in far eastern Kentucky next year.
“The big news for us is we can say we legitimately have joined the Bourbon Trail,” said Eric Summe, president and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The New Riff Distillery at Newport on the Levee is making product now. They have a complete bourbon distillery.”
“The craft distillery tour is one of our newest additions,” said Johnson. “They are more over the entire state. It’s another way to showcase the smaller guys. It’s more intimate, but they also honor the bourbon tradition.”
Other members of the craft trail are Barrel House Distilling Company, Lexington; Corsair Artisan Distillery, Bowling Green; Limestone Branch Distillery, Lebanon; MB Roland Distillery, Pembroke; Old Pogue Distillery, Maysville; Wilderness Trail Distillery, Danville; and Willett Distillery, Bardstown.
In addition to small batch bourbons, some of the distilleries also make vodka, gin, rum, brandy and even moonshine.
Eastern Kentucky has embraced its moonshine heritage with the new Moonshine Hideaway Tour in Prestonsburg. The tour reveals historic moonshine stills, stories and demonstrations, with an included mountain music concert.
www.kybourbontrail.com/craft-tour
Craft breweries
Kentucky has been slower than many states to develop breweries and microbreweries, but that has changed in the past few years as more and more microbreweries open around the state, at least 14 since 2011.
Although most of the new microbreweries are in Lexington and Louisville, they are starting to appear in northern Kentucky, a region with strong German heritage that was known for its thriving brewery industry before it died out.
“They are popping up everywhere,” said the CVB’s Summe. “It’s hard to keep up with them.”
The newest is Braxton Brewing Company in Covington, which makes a cream ale, a wheat ale, a pale ale and a pale ale brewed with hull melon hops year-round while also making seasonal small batches. It also makes a limited-edition Kentucky Home mint julep beer, which is aged in bourbon barrels with mint, in the spring around the Kentucky Derby.
Its 1,000-square-foot Taproom on Seventh Street is designed like a Midwestern garage “to remind us every day where we came from. We view the garage as the icon of American innovation,” the company says on its website.
Other microbreweries in the northern Kentucky area include Ei8ht Ball Brewing in Bellevue, Red War Brewing Company in Covington and Mash Cult in Florence.
A prelude to the brewery resurgence was Hofbräuhaus, which opened more than a decade ago near the Newport waterfront and has become a top northern Kentucky attraction.
“It is a very, very popular place,” said Summe. “It was the first Hofbräuhaus in the United States and was patterned after the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. They invest the Oktoberfest element into everything they do. They have the German oompah music, German cuisine, and you can get up and dance on the tables.”
Hofbräuhaus brews all its beers on-site, and tours of the brewery are available. “I’m a beer drinker, and their beer is excellent,” said Summe.
“When you think of northern Kentucky’s most popular attractions, Hofbräuhaus is always on the itinerary.”
Wineries
With the decline of the burley tobacco market in the 1990s, Kentucky farmers looked at ways to diversify their operations. One of those ways was growing grapes and making wine.
Through trial and error, Kentucky’s winemakers have steadily produced better and better wines, and the number of wineries has grown exponentially over the past decade.
“We started transferring acres from tobacco to grapes. That was the kick start of the grape industry,” said Cynthia Bohn, owner of Equus Run Vineyard at Midway and spokeswoman for the Kentucky Wineries Association. “The industry has grown. There are more than 70 wineries and more to come.”
Although the greatest concentration is in central Kentucky around Louisville and Lexington, wineries are spread around the state from Paducah in western Kentucky to Morehead in northeastern Kentucky, from a dozen wineries in northern Kentucky to a winery near the Tennessee border in southern Kentucky.
“They are scattered all over,” said Bohn.
Bohn said although all of the wineries offer some form of tasting experience, they have also developed a range of other options that give groups a wide variety of choices.
“All the wineries are very experiential,” she said. “You can go and do things. Tourists these days like to do things; people want more.
“There is everything from murder mystery dinner theaters to making grapevine wreaths, bonsai classes and yoga,” said Bohn. “There are also art shows, painting classes, skeet shooting, fishing, bike trails and organic farming. Some do concerts with a variety of music.
“My customers pick grapes, help prune and even help with the flowers in the garden. They are having fun, giving back, contributing, learning something and experiencing things.”
