For me, one of the highlights of the Kentucky Bourbon trail is the Maker’s Mark Distillery.
Makers has been my go-to Bourbon for years now – and it was a cool experience to visit the distillery and take the tour. Since then I’ve become an ambassador and have my name on a Barrel aging there, so in a few years I’ll have a palette of makers I guess.
I remember my grandfather drinking a lot of Jim Bean and Old Grandad when I was young. The story goes that when I was a baby and they wanted to stop me crying, they would give me a spoonful of bourbon and honey. Maybe that’s when I first started developing my love of bourbon. When I was fresh out of high school everyone drank Jack and coke. We weren’t old enough yet so we’d find one of the old bums that hung around by the train tracks and have them buy a bottle for us. We just had to give them enough for a pint or a couple Jumbos of malt liquor.
For a lot of years I was a fan of Wild Turkey, and when I started Bartending around 1991 that