SNOW!!! We woke up this morning to a vision of white -- one to two inches of fluffy, powdery snow all over everything and it was still coming down in big, fat flakes. If you can get rainbows with rain, can you get snowbows with snow? Just wondering. I loved walking around the hotel parking lot and getting snow in my hair and all over my coat. What a contrast to those sunny, balmy days in Savannah and Charleston. Watching the TV news this morning was a bit scary -- apparently there were tornados that touched down not that far away. However, the weather forecasts show stable, although very cold weather for the next few days.
Drove to Woodford Reserve distillery today. This is one of my favorite bourbons and the drive is absolutely lovely, especially so today because all the huge pastures of the horse farms we drove by were covered with snow and the thoroughbred horses were out grazing in the snow. These stud farms are quite large, all neatly fenced with picturesque wood fences and horse stables that look like mansions. I’ve taken their tour two other times but managed to learn some new stuff on this tour. For example, there are five categories of whiskey: bourbon (the only uniquely American spirit and which must adhere to U.S. Federal laws that specify what is required to be able to call it bourbon), scotch, Irish, Canadian (also called rye), and Tennessee straight. The word “straight” as applied to whiskey means that the whiskey has been aged in barrels for a minimum of two years. And that’s all it means. Once the spirits have been poured into the barrels, the Woodford Reserve bourbon is aged around eight years, during which time each barrel loses about 3% to 4% of its volume due to evaporation of water. This loss is called the “angel” share. Isn’t that cute?
After that, we hustled ourselves off to Buffalo Trace, which is another interesting distillery, named because it is built on a road that used to be an old wagon trail, which used to be an Native American trail, which used to be a path used by buffalo. Of course we did a bit of looking around and bourbon tasting. Finally, it was time to head back to the hotel but we were hungry so we stopped at a White Castle for sliders. Two of us had heard of White Castle hamburger sliders (little bitty hamburgers) and one of us grew up going to White Castle, so we decided to stop both for adventure and for nostalgia. We were all surprised that they taste much better than we expected. They are cute little devils.
This evening we had reservations at the Kentucky Bourbon House which is a wonderful bourbon tasting and dinner experience run by a husband and wife team. It is a very personal experience that feels like they have just invited you into their home for an evening of talking about bourbon (the Colonel, as he is called, can tell you about the history and background of just about every bourbon made, can describe the notes, and compare one to another -- he really is a wealth of knowledge) and a lovely southern, home-cooked dinner (his wife is the cook). They are both so inviting and friendly and clearly love what they do and meeting people and talking about Kentucky -- it is something that you just must do if ever you are in Bardstown. We each got to taste five bourbons that we personally selected from his incredibly thorough collection of bourbons -- he has everything from Pappy Van Winkle 20 to Big Ass, which pretty much covers the entire spectrum from the high end exclusive stuff to low end. When I grow up, I want to have a collection like his. I’m slowly working on it, one bottle at a time.
When we left to drive home, it was snowing again -- more big, fat flakes. It love how it tickles my face. Not sure what this means for driving around tomorrow -- we’ll see.
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