After four straight days of tasting appointments and barrel selections, Friday was our day to see some new faces, shake hands, work on the logistics of our purchase proposals, and tie up any loose ends before leaving Saturday morning. Many of those tasks aren’t worth mentioning for the moment, but given how many new distilleries are operating in Kentucky these days, I figured we should at least pop in and see a few of them. Lux Row, for example—the company behind Rebel Yell, David Nicholson, Ezra Brooks, and Blood Oath—has a new facility in Bardstown that I had never seen in person. Now that they’re distilling their own juice, I thought it might be worth checking out.

Whenever I see a column that’s multiple stories high and at least 34 inches in diameter, I know things are headed in the right direction. Most of the American whiskies that have failed to capture the public’s imagination over the last decade were made on pot/column hybrids, rather than industrial-size beer stills. While I can’t tell you scientifically exactly why that is, there’s someone I know who can.

If I’m rolling through rural Kentucky and I’ve got time for breakfast, there’s one man I always call to be my date: Bourbon legend Jim Rutledge, the man who made Four Roses into the brand it is today. Even though Jim retired back in 2015, we still keep up via phone and text. We met at Mammie’s in Bardstown to eat a hearty meal and shoot the breeze, as well as talk distillation. Jim’s take about my column still issue from above: in a nutshell, smaller columns are harder to control. It’s not as easy to keep a handle on the temperatures, and it leaves room for variation or mistakes. He had about twenty minutes worth of scientific detail to back that up, but I’ll keep it short for now. Jim always has interesting news about the industry, so it was great to catch up with my old friend.

Some of you may remember that our friend Dean Berger passed recently, and Vic wanted to honor Dean’s memory by eating one of his favorite meals at one of his favorite restaurants. Apparently, Vic and Dean had traveled to Bardstown together back in 2019 and Dean was obsessed with the Cinnabon pancake at Mammie’s. We shared one in tribute to our friend, and even Jim couldn’t put his fork down. It was that good.

Before our departure, two people told me that we absolutely must eat at Jack Fry’s on this trip to Louisville; one of them being Mission customer and Louisville native Christopher Guetig, and the other being WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash. Established in 1933 by a “rambling, gambling kind of guy” of the eponymous epithet, Jack Fry’s was a legendary hangout for fans of horse racing and boxing, known for its bookmaking and bootlegging affairs. “Mohammed Ali would eat there,” Nash told me via text; “It’s one of my favorite restaurants on the road.”

We sat down for an early dinner. Vic ordered a Manhattan; I ordered an Old Fashioned. We had escargot and fried zucchini blossoms to start and I opted for the scallops, while Vic went with the bone-in rib eye. Both were outstanding and capped a perfect end to a long, but successful week of Bourbon buying. Our 6:30 AM flight looming over our heads, we called it early and did our best to get some shuteye ahead of the 4 AM start.

-David Driscoll