"Won't You Come See Us…": Bourbon Tourism in Kentucky

Bourbon tourism is big business. In 2018, Kentucky distilleries hosted over 1.4 million visitors, a number that reflects the remarkable growth of distilled spirits production in Kentucky since the early 2000s. According to the Kentucky Distillers Association, nearly seventy distilleries are currently operating in the Commonwealth, and warehouses hold almost two barrels of spirits for each citizen of the state. Visitation at Kentucky distilleries is beginning to approach those at two similar destinations: Scotland's distilleries hosted just over 2 million visitors in 2018, and roughly 3.85 million people toured the wineries of California's Napa Valley. "Bourbonism," as Louisville mayor Gregg Fischer has termed the phenomenon, has become one of the Bluegrass State's major selling points.¹

In January 2019, distillers' dreams of "a 'Napa-fication' of Kentucky" made headlines in the New York Times. Since then, Diageo, a London-based distilling conglomerate, has opened a new visitor center at its distillery in Shelby County and Heaven Hill has started work on a $65 million expansion of its Bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown. Four other craft distilleries have opened. Kentucky Owl Park, a 420-acre distilling campus designed around an abandoned quarry outside Bardstown, is scheduled to open in 2020. This $150 million endeavor is the brainchild of the Stoli Group, of Stolichnaya Vodka fame, which will use it to showcase its newly acquired Kentucky Owl Bourbon. Designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Shigeru Ban, the complex will feature a state-of-the-art distillery, warehouses, a convention center, lakes, and a luxury hotel.²

Today, more than forty spirits tourism venues are operating across Kentucky. Almost all draw on bourbon's storied history to entertain visitors and sell their wares. Yet what historical information do they offer? How do they present the history of bourbon production and consumption and the boom-and-bust history of the distilled spirits industry? An informal survey suggests consistent tension between historical interpretation and marketing at these sites.

Contemporary distillery tours are descendants of nineteenth-century factory tours, which became popular as the Industrial Revolution sparked interest in technology and manufacturing. According to historian Gillian Darley, factory tours responded to public interest in the inventions of the industrial age, the great machines and factories of the era, and the cornucopia of consumer goods streaming off assembly lines. The commercial exhibitions of the era further stimulated interest in these subjects. The Great Exhibition for the Works of Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in London in 1851 and subsequent exhibitions in cities across Europe and the United States celebrated the fruits of industry and mass production. Louisville's effort in this regard was the hugely successful Great Southern Exposition of Art, Industry, and Agriculture, which opened in 1883 and gave prominent attention to distilleries, even though the event is better remembered today for the first large-scale usage of Thomas Edison's incandescent lighting.³

Tours of Kentucky distilleries began after the Civil War, when particularly ambitious distillers began employing what Darley calls the model of the "factory as sales tool." At the O.F.C. Distillery outside of Frankfort (now Buffalo Trace Distillery), E. H. Taylor Jr., one of the most important figures in the history of Kentucky distilling, seized on the idea of the "distillery as showplace." He recognized that architecture and landscaping features that moved beyond the basics of distilled spirits production could create enticing environments for visitors while still showcasing industrial processes. In 1886, the O.F.C. Distillery published an extensively illustrated booklet to provide customers and the public with a detailed look at "The Model Distillery Plant of the World." The images and accompanying text showcase a distillery designed with uncommon attention to the plant's aesthetics. Some of the buildings can still be seen on a tour of Buffalo Trace today.⁴

At the Old Taylor Distillery on nearby Glenn's Creek (reopened as Castle & Key in 2018), Taylor went a step further by designing the complex as a tourist attraction. He built the distillery in 1909 in the form of a...