Exploring this lesser known American city through its well known bourbon product yielded some surprising self discoveries.
Words & Images Roberto Serrini
Exploring this lesser known American city through its well known bourbon product yielded some surprising self discoveries.
Words & Images Roberto Serrini
Louisville does only Louisville, and is completely unapologetic about it.
It has tenure, being the oldest city west of the Appalachian, and the fulcrum that allowed the populace the tilt westward to fulfil manifest destiny.
The old fashioned and the hamburger were invented here. They have the world's largest baseball bat, and if you’ve ever suffered through being sung “Happy Birthday” you have Louisville to thank.
What a view.
Louisville isn’t clever. Its nickname is the “river city”. It is what it is and it doesn’t care what you think about it. Well I think Louisville is pretty damn special and wonderfully overlooked, making it a primo destination for anyone thirsting for something real and weird, but not real weird.
"Wow, it's really busy in here".
Gotta love a bit of neon.
Let's get one thing out of the way, this town is built on booze, so 12 steppers step aside. I mean you literally walk through a barrel birth canal to get into downtown. Perhaps its inebriated enlightenment is what gives this city its optimistic air. Of course optimism was born in a booze soaked town. It’s a jaunty little city that openly cheers and toasts you as you walk down the street minding your own business. Sure it has its classic neo-franco-federal-americana roots, but lift Louisvilles skirt above the hem and her freak flag flies in the slightest breeze.
This town bothers to put giant musical sculptures in sad forgotten alleys, and creates art seemingly out of the ordinary at every turn. Even such staunch, unimaginative institutions as banks are jovial and jocose. I mean, Steph Lawless would have a field day here, even the trees were giving me eyes. Bottom line: Louisville isn’t a city so much as it’s a vibe.
Even the buildings are cool.
We'll drink to that.
That's one very gold statue.
The vibe starts Downtown with its seductive, schizophrenic identity perfectly demonstrated in the 21c Museum Hotel. Sure, pop in for some heavenly harissa hummus with a quick flight of local bourbon that will leave you burping and befittingly buzzed, which is how one should preview the politically charged art gallery-slash-lobby that is sure to trigger even the most agnostic critic.
HIT PLAY. GO ON.
Drink up Louisville's eccentric culture.
Further satiate your lust for pure Louisville culture and get yourself an unfortunately named “Hot Brown” at the redundantly named Brown Hotel. Don't let the opulence dripping from the walls or the nearly 30 dollar price tag fool you, the “Hot Brown” is nothing more than an open face turkey sandwich that you’re obliged to tell everyone you ate, like it was Balut in Cambodia.
The Brown Hotel is a fancy place.
Big drink vibes. Huge.
The appropriately named "Hot Brown" awaits.
Louisville is nothing if not a real place that seems phony. The dive bars are just called bars, and “put it on my tab” is said out loud here to an actual effect. All bars by law must offer karaoke on Tuesdays as a public service. Lastly, the bartenders here are professional murderers as even the most pedestrian watering holes serve deadly good drinks.
"Bottom line, Louisville isn’t a city so much as it’s a vibe."
I stopped looking for a reason to leave a long time ago. Now I just try to weave myself into the fabric of whatever city is laid out before me. As hard as I try to follow the weft of Louisville, one thread seems unbreakable: Bourbon.
This city has over 100 distilleries that produce 95% of the world’s bourbon. There are specific rules one must follow to call whiskey bourbon, of which I’m sure any gent in a polo shirt sporting a logo can educate you on, but for me I wanted a more casual experience with the brown beast. With so many possible places to not remember what they told me about how they make the stuff that evoked the memory loss to begin with, I chose the higher road and simply stumbled my way down the bourbon trail and let fate take the wheel cause I was already too drunk to drive my conscience.
We can hear this photo.
The Evan Williams Bourbon Experience screamed at me like a Russian in a tracksuit smoking a Juul. Giving off Amsterdam vibes I knew this would be a perfect baseline introduction to bourbon culture as I was greeted by a two story infinity bottle pouring into a rather giant plastic glass just beyond the entrance. This monolith idol immediately took on a larger metaphor as I discovered that most bourbons are owned by other labels and they have huge conglomerates. For instance, Evan Williams is owned by Heaven Hill, who in turn owns Henry McKEnna, Bernheim, Ritten house, Larceny, Old Fitzgerald, Parker’s, Pikesville, and Elijah Craig to name but a few.
ExplorE evan williams... scroll for more ➸
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
aliquip magna
Velit cillum ex in do exercitation duis ea.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
If you think that’s quite the portfolio then know that Buffalo Trace, another distillery, is owned by Sazerac, who owns over, wait for it, four-hundred-and-fifty different labels of alcohol (and yes I wrote out the number for effect). What’s more I think all of them are owned by a company called Diagio, and Diagio is probably owned by Sony, which is in turn owned by Warren Buffett or something so cheers Warren. The whole thing is like when we all discovered Chipotle was actually McDonalds; no one stopped eating Chipotle, we just smiled a bit less as we did.
ExplorE Heaven Hill... scroll for more ➸
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
aliquip magna
Velit cillum ex in do exercitation duis ea.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
Regardless of the harsh reality that we live in a booze oligarchy, the “experience” Evan Williams offers is pretty fly. Upstairs brings you 100 years back where you can walk the perfectly preserved streets of Louisville and even pop into a mid-century booze hall named Max and Harry’s to have an original recipe “Old Fashioned” (well superior to the “New Fashioned” made with Peach Blast Celsius and Albanian children's tears). Overall a proper way to start my bourbonfication as I drink through history.
"This city has over 100 distilleries that produce 95% of the world’s bourbon. There are specific rules one must follow to call whiskey bourbon, of which I’m sure any gent in a polo shirt sporting a logo can educate you on, but for me I wanted a more casual experience with the brown beast."
Jumping outside the city I B-line it to Buffalo Trace because that is what one must do. Buffalo Trace was founded before the country it resides in if you can believe it, and why wouldn’t you, that kind of factoid makes the juice taste better. Even though it’s a solid hour from downtown there is no worthier destination. First, it’s just plumb beautiful. Buffalo Trace has a botanical garden, archaeological sites, sits casually next to the river and is surrounded by pristine nature; its name derived from the path, or “trace”, buffalo used to take during their migration before we killed them all for sport, much like my liver cells in a minute.
ExplorE BUFFALO TRACE... scroll for more ➸
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
aliquip magna
Velit cillum ex in do exercitation duis ea.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
The tour here is marvellous as well, as they make bourbon pretty much the same way they have for 250 years, just now on a ridiculously large scale having to produce 2.5 million gallons of booze each year, a number so large I don’t even have a proper joke for it. I can’t tell you how thrilling it actually is to have palatable fear from just staring into a tank because it is 4 stories high and filled to the brim with trillions of hungry yeast you can actually hear eating. You can also buy rare bottles not available to the public at the giftshop, which most people sell on the secondary market for big bucks to help pay for their Turkish hair plugs. Me, I was satisfied drinking Blanton’s from the bottle in the parking lot while arguing with people in the comments section about how to pronounce things.
Pecan. Banal. Arkansas. Caramel.
The walkway to bourbon heaven.
Heading back downtown I got let off at Louisville’s baseball stadium which is odd considering Louisville doesn’t have a baseball team. Fortunately you can’t swing in this town without hitting a distillery so I walked 20 feet to a place called Angel’s Envy pleased with the intent of dying and going to bourbon heaven.
I have learned that the key to traveling well is expecting nothing, which is why I was blown away by The Envy as I like to call it. I buddied up with a cat named Terry, who was a rollicking, flippant middle-aged fellow that could get away with suspenders and had an air that he knew quite well what to do with a porch on a hot, southern, summer evening. Terry was a riot, both Martin and Lewis in one person, and brough the world of bourbon to life is a way that only someone with a master’s mind in being a guide can do. Unique to The Envy is that they do “finished bourbon”, and kudos to the marketing team that came up with a term that deems all other bourbons “not” finished by definition. What it means in actuality is that after following the rules of making true Kentucky bourbon (of which Terry told me again but at this point didn’t even attempt to retain it) they then place the booze in ruby port casks that they source from a place called “Europe”. That just sounds lovely, and lemmetellya, it tastes lovely too. The whole experience of The Envy, from the color, to the fragrance, to the cloudlike head it gives you on consumption, is nothing less than lovely.
ExplorE ANGEL'S ENVY... scroll for more ➸
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
aliquip magna
Velit cillum ex in do exercitation duis ea.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
sit nostrud
Enim voluptate voluptate ex ipsum cupidatat.
“It should be, we start with the best, so we can leave behind the rest.” Ol’ Terry waxed as he casually pulled out a clear bottle from his back pocket and wantonly splashed a decent amount in his palm like my father would do with AquaVelva back in the day. Unlike my father he then greedily attempted to lap up the liquid like an ol’ bloodhound. “Pure white lightning in a bottle. This comes off our two story copper still, where gravity slowly migrates the liquor over plates to constantly purify it, into the sweetest heart you ever had”. The term “heart” means the “good part” of the liquor that comes off a still. The heads and tails precede and follow, and contain compounds that are effectively cleaning solutions that you don’t want to drink, which you’ll typically find in a bottle like Jose Cuervo and no one wants what’s in a bottle of Cuervo. You really only want to drink the “hearts” and apparently having a two story copper plate lined still is how you do just that. I confirmed this fact by also cowboy slapping a fistful of this 160 proof moonshine in my face, which made me feel like those racecar drivers who are being burned alive by invisible fire. However, like a man, I scowled and nodded while resisting the intense urge to stop, drop and roll while simultaneously wetting my pants.
There's plenty of fun to be had at Louisville Distilling Co.
The next afternoon I woke up. I had but a sock on and a takeout menu stuck to my face with remnants of french fries strewn around me, so I knew I was safe. I began to think about all the greats that came before me that used alcohol as their vehicle for inspiration: the Hemingway’s, the Gogh’s, the Cash’s. How on earth will I be able to write the first thing about Louisville if I can’t but remember a thing. “Oh. Thank heaven for cameras.” I thought as I put pen to paper and tried to unapologetically write a love letter to my dear Louisville while scrolling through my bourbon soaked phone. Funny, it was stickier than I expected, which is more than I can say for my memory, and maybe that’s the “heart” of what travel is all about.
get in the know Louisville is the disco ball capital of the world and has supplied Madonna, Kid Rock and Pearl Jam with plenty of giant mirrored spheres over the years.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
