This distillery is owned by Sazerac and is not part of the official Kentucky Bourbon Trail. It is the oldest continuously operated distillery in the USA as it continued to produce whiskey even during prohibition. It is also a very "haunted" distillery and featured on an episode of Travel Channel's Ghost Hunters. The tours are free and they also have a nice cafe as well as a well stocked gift shop. This distillery is home to several very well known brands (Buffalo Trace aside) including the Van Winkle, Blanton and Weller lines and they make a total of 17 brands here of which 5 are wheated bourbons. The tour does not see much of the actual distillery, but instead features a walk through the site to a converted warehouse where a movie called "The Buffalo Trace Story" is shown and then the guide gave a lecture on making bourbon. This was my 7th distillery in 2 days but the first that actually talked in detail about the importance of malted barley. We also learned the distillery boasts the largest fementers in the industry at 93,000 gals. Suitably impressed by the size of their fermenters it was time to see the botting hall, fortunately it was not running, but then something a little strange happened. The guide showed us the chill filtratioon system and was quite proud of it. Chill filtration is something that Scots distillers dont even talk about, unless they are proudly claiming that they don't chill filter their products, but here was a tour guide actually pointing out the equipment they use to chill filter their whiskies. It was a bit weird. After the bottling hall it was time for the tasting and they poured the Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare 10 year old expressions.
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