Buffalo Trace Distillery, Frankfort

Hard to find anything bad to say. Lee, our guide on the Old Taylor Tour, was our best guide of the trip. His knowledge and insight was fantastic. The gift shop has so much great merchandise it’s hard to determine what to take home. The tasting was great and I loved the bourbon ball and Freddie’s root beer with Bourbon cream combo. My harshest critique is that beyond the rotation releases you aren’t getting anything special here. But the grounds are perfect. The expansion will bring twice as much bourbon to the market eventually. This is the Mecca and a must stop. So much history.

Historic facility, iconic brand, popular destination to purchase bourbon. Free tour was nice and keep in mind you are limited to one bottle per brand per person. Apparently there is a bourbon shortage. The tour focuses quite a bit on the history. In fact about 25 minutes of the 70 minute tour was spent on the oral history. There is a short walk around the grounds, a stop in the barrel receiving dock, a short walk into one of the barrel aging warehouses, a quick stop in the Blantons bottling room, and finally a tasting room stop. It was an average tour compared to other breweries or distilleries visited. The tour was rather limited in geography--no access to the brewing room or basically any views of how the booze is made--that was disappointing. Note--Eagle Rare sells out within an hour of opening on most days. I don't understand why they limit it so much. You'll find alcoholics, hipsters, and old-timers jogging from the parking lot to the gift store when it opens to make sure they secure their ONE bottle. Very strange. Good for Buffalo Trace for building a brand loyalty though. Hat tip to Todd for an entertaining tour.

Great tour, tasting, and visit. It is great to see progress on the expansion. We visited on a Monday and didn't have a reservation for a tour or tasting. They were able to fit us in even though everything was unavailable online. They now have a tasting room above the gift shop, so it is worth just showing up and doing what you can. The earlier you arrive, the better the chance to score some bottles from the gift shop.

What an amazing experience my friends and I had here. We came to Lousiville to tour some distilleries (Buffalo Trace priority #1) and this place was by far the best! Amazing gift shop with an insane selection of items. We had a great tour that took us all around the campus and ended with a wonderful tasting. Then hit the gift shop for round 2. Love how they offer an exclusive bottle every day basically at the lowest prices you could hope for. However they do have a limit which is totally understandable to keep secondary market sellers afar. Overall amazing experience and we plan on coming back.

This was by far my favorite distillery I’ve been to. It has so much history and the Trace Tour was amazing. There was a lot of people that showed up to just buy bottles so get here early if that’s what you want. They do allow the people on tours in first so that is a good way to get in but reservations usually have to be made a month in advance because they fill up quick