Bourbon For Breakfast?

Not exactly, but it was pretty early in the day when we completed our visit to the Jim Beam distillery and stopped in at the tasting room for our 1 ounce samples.  At  this distillery, there isn’t an actual tour, just a film and a short talk about their history.

In the history room, they have this life-like distillery model on display.  We were told that it can produce 1 gallon of bourbon per batch, but because of licensing and so forth, it isn’t currently working!

About 30 miles down the winding Kentucky roads, we finally found our next destination, Maker’s Mark.  This is a more recent addition to the market, although the Samuels family has produced bourbon for many generations.  The current recipe was developed in the 1950’s.

We did get to tour this distillery, although in comparison to our tour of the George Dickell distillery a couple of years ago, we didn’t see as much as we did there.

Maker’s Mark is known for it’s wax-dipped bottles, and Jim has been wanting to dip his own bottle for quite a while now – yesterday was his chance.  Here he is, getting suited up after signing his bottle.  The blue triangles in the picture below point to his signature:

  

He’s dipping his bottle in the 350-degree wax:

Now that he has that special bottle, I wonder how long it will be before he gets into it?

When we’d completed both visits, it was time for a late lunch and return trip back to the Castle.

Today is football and relax.  Jim has just lit the grill, we’re eating at home today!

Tomorrow is travel day, we’ll see you from Birmingham.