Bourbon and More Bourbon

Did you know that the name Bourbon came from the name of the county in Kentucky where bourbon was first made?  And no other country in the whole world is allowed to make BOURBON!  The original bourbon was an accident!  The man was making his usual corn whiskey - or moonshine-  in the hills of Kentucky.  He had the perfect oak barrels to age it in but this time before he could get the barrels filled, they all caught on fire!  He was able to save them from total destruction and not being willing to throw out those expense oak barrels, he used them anyway - even though they were chard on the inside!  The result is what you know know today as Bourbon!  Pretty cool story, eh?  All bourbon barrels today are chard on the inside before they are used.  So, see, we did learn some useful (?) stuff on our vacation!

 Here we are sitting inside a large oak barrel!

 Lucy and Mollie - the ladies in red that day - heading out for some touring and tasting.

 And the guys minding us and doing this little thing so we could take their picture!  They were so good about it and took turns being the "Hear no, or the see no or the speak no" for the day.

 They really go all out at these distilleries to sell you on THEIR special bourbon.  But I do believe that the consensus was that the Woodford Reserve was the very best of the best bourbons and Wild Turkey was the most fun tasting room and Maker's Mark was the most interesting of all the distilleries.

 Now you must bear with me and my artsy fartsy stuff.  Loved the ceiling here!

 This is an exhibit of the bourbon at different stages of aging.

And then we were off into the horse country of Kentucky and was it ever beautiful.  Those horses have barns much, much nicer than my home.  And - this picture of the horses - please enlarge it and see what I saw when I downloaded my pictures......all the horses are Horses As...s!

Out the window of the car!  The country roads barely were wide enough for one car, let alone a car coming from the opposite direction!  We couldn't stop for pictures very easily.