The other day Rosemary and I, along with two very good friends, John and Carlene, made a trip to Castle & Key and Glenns Creek distilleries. It was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday on a beautiful July afternoon.
I always like visiting Castle & Key Distillery. It changes every time I visit as they work on renovating those old buildings. We got there in time to take the 11:00 tour. We were met at the check-in booth by Aaron, a wonderful tour guide. We started by visiting the spring house that is shaped like a keyhole. There Aaron gave us the history of the distillery, all of which I was familiar with, but I did not tell him that until he had finished. It was a very accurate history and after listening to his talk, I introduced myself as a Bourbon historian and told him he did a very good job on the history. We then proceeded to the distillery. The distillery was making some wheat recipe Bourbon in the mash tubs, and I could not help myself and stuck my finger in the mash to taste it at several different stages of fermentation. It was an excellent mash. After touring the stills, we met in a room that connects to the gift shop.
We then headed out to the sunken gardens. They were beautiful, as always. It was very pleasant to sit next to the fountain and watch the fish swim in the fountain pool. I could have spent the rest of the day there in the sun on that pleasant afternoon, but we then headed to the warehouse. The warehouse, built by National Distillers, was full of barrels. The first floor was filled with palletized barrels, but the upper floor have traditional barrel racks. Aaron explained that they have off-site warehousing that they hope to move these palletized barrels to in the future. These barrels are mostly barrels of whiskey that they have contract distilled for clients and that the plans are to eventually put racks in this floor, as well.
We ended the tour with a cocktail in the train station building. This was a pleasant experience. The last time I was at Castle & Key, they had just opened the bar in the train station and it still had a few bugs to work out in making the cocktails. There was no problem this day and I got Rosemary and I “Paper Train” cocktails. They were very good. We took our drinks outside and sat in the shade and enjoyed our cocktails for about an hour. We had lunch reservations at The Stave in Millville, so we left the distillery and headed to lunch.
The Stave was a very good restaurant. They had a Sunday Brunch menu and I ordered the Eggs Benedict with a Manhattan cocktail. It was an excellent lunch. Our next appointment was a 4:00 pm tasting at Glenns Creek Distillery and we had time to kill before that tasting. We ate a leisurely lunch and then decided to visit the gift shop at Woodford Reserve Distillery to kill some time. We perused the gift shop, bought a cocktail and killed some time before heading back down the road to Glenns Creek Distillery.
We made the appointment for the tasting at 4:00 with David Meier, the distiller and owner. When Rosemary set up the tasting, he requested we do the 4:00 tasting so he would be available to talk with us. We got to the distillery and were escorted back to their tasting bar. The bar was set in the distillery and David tasted us through several of his products. I enjoyed the OCD, a traditional Bourbon and the “Swheat”, a wheat recipe Bourbon quite a bit and we purchased a bottle of each to bring home. After the tasting, David gave us a tour of the distillery. It is a small pot still distillery making about a barrel a day. David is a person who loves to experiment with his whiskey and he described several of the variations he has made to his products. It was an interesting tour. He then pulled out a product he made recently and we tasted it. It was very good Bourbon.
We finished the tour and tasting and headed back to Louisville. It was a pleasant day in good company. We are planning to do another Sunday tour with John and Carlene in the future, as soon as summer travels open up in our schedule.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller