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Why Is Bardstown The Bourbon Capital Of The World?

Two years ago Louisville, Ky., mayor Greg Fisher ticked off the good folks of Bardstown, Ky., by claiming his city was the Bourbon Capital of the World.

Seemingly no one in the Bluegrass State agreed with what turned out to be a unilateral stance. The remark was viewed by many as sheer heresy, while others deemed it a move by a the Commonwealth’s biggest brother to steal a little thunder from a town whose population is less than 2 percent that of Louisville’s. At the very least it was socially clumsy, and surprisingly so for Fisher, who’s generally regarded as a good guy.

Still, he was surprised at the outrage and began backpedaling to explain that since the industry giants like Heaven Hill and Brown-Forman are headquartered in Louisville, their revenue and taxes flow through the hands of Louisville bourbon industry workers. And that flow of dollars, he declared, was a fair reason to make his claim.

He still got crickets.

Every Kentuckian soon yawned and ignored him in the full knowledge that Bardstown is, in their hearts and minds, the Bourbon Capital of the World.

Certainly post-Prohibition, anyway. Prior to that dark time, the amount of bourbon made, aged and shipped out of Louisville was huge. After Prohibition, it never quite recovered like the industry did in Bardstown–which in distilling, tacitly includes nearby towns such as Clermont and Boston (home to two Jim Beam two distilleries) and Loretto, home to Maker’s Mark.

Bardstown
An aerial shot of downtown Bardstown, Kentucky (image via Bardstown-Nelson County Tourist & Convention Commission)

In Bardstown proper are Barton 1792 Distillery, Willett Distillery, Heaven Hill’s vast warehousing site, the brand-new Bardstown Bourbon Co., and others to come. There are millions of barrels of whiskey aging in and around the tiny town which Rand McNally dubbed “America’s Most Beautiful Small Town” in 2013.

Just kind of make’s Fisher’s claim sound all the meaner, doesn’t it?

Bardstown is the official trail head of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and also home to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, held every September. That party, in its 25th year, draws more than 50,000 people to the town, more than quadrupling its population during that week. (The largest comparable bourbon event in Louisville is the annual Bourbon Classic, which draws about 1,200.)

“Bardstown has been invested in bourbon tourism for more than 35 years,” says Dawn Pryzstal, vice president of Nelson County Tourism. “We have documents dating to the 1950s of Bardstown using the ‘Bourbon Capital of the World’ tagline.”

For Kentuckians, that’s mostly “nuff said,” but for fans of bourbon history, perhaps a deeper question to ask is this: How did Bardstown become the state’s bourbon epicenter rather than somewhere else?

One answer is the water source. According to Bardstown historian Dixie Hibbs, springs in the area were ideal for whiskey making. In nearby Shepherdsville, springs that bubbled up were salty and not suitable for booze. (That water played its own critical role in frontier life as the salt was used for curing meats. It’s worth noting that many great names in whiskey, like Booker Noe, were legendary ham curers, and his son and grandson, Fred Noe III and Freddy Noe IV, continue that tradition today in a smokehouse behind Booker’s house.)

Jim Beam was one such distillery that began on a farm became the largest bourbon brand in the world. One of its plant is in Clermont (open to bourbon tourists), the other, in nearby Boston, is the Booker Noe plant, the world’s largest bourbon distillery.

Not far from Beam’s Clermont distillery is Four Roses’s aging houses, bottling operation and visitors center in Cox’s Creek. Its rickhouses are a leftover of its years under ownership of Seagrams, when the beverage giant used the site as a regional location for many of its brands in aging. (Four Roses’s actual distillery is in Lawrenceburg, Ky., about an hour away.)

Inside Bardstown proper is Heaven Hill, one of the many distilleries started after Prohibition’s repeal, and which boasts more than 1 million barrels aging in rick houses. It also has one of the finest visitors centers on the Bourbon Trail. About two miles away is Barton 1792 Distillery, started in 1879, but expanded and modernized operations post-Prohibition. It also is a massive distilling and warehousing operation. The historic Willett Distillery, located at the town’s edge (and within sight of Heaven Hill), is a boutique operation by comparison, but its whiskeys are highly coveted by drinkers and collectors.

According to Hibbs, there were 27 distilleries in the area in 1896 but just 12 in 1920 at the onset of Prohibition. When repealed in 1933, eight of those 12 reopened and were joined by three new ones. Of those 11 post-Prohibition distilleries, five remain today.

“The generations of whiskey families, the Willetts, Beams, and Samuels, had a generations-long investment in the area and the industry,” says Hibbs. Indeed, many of these families still call Bardstown home, and it’s not uncommon to bump into them on the town’s streets and in its bars and restaurants.

Today bourbon tourism accounts for 68 percent of the total attraction attendance in Bardstown. Not surprisingly, that amber elixir is the top reason tourists give for visiting.

“Bourbon tourism is one of the biggest drivers of our tourism industry,” Pryzstal says. “It’s great to see the way the other businesses have embraced bourbon tourism. It infuses the culture of the community.”

Which is why Bardstown is the Bourbon Capital of the World.

– additional reporting by Maggie Kimberl

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