Nearly 24,000 barrels of whiskey age inside Warehouse C, a 130-year-old building at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Ky. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
Take a trip through Kentucky’s bourbon country to see and taste where the popular beverage comes from.
A bucket of ice, two samples of bourbon and a bourbon-ball chaser welcome visitors to the tasting room at Woodford Reserve Distillery. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
Workers in the bottling house at Buffalo Trace Distillery attach labels and ornamental corks by hand. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
Thousands of oak barrels hold a total of 400,000 gallons of aging whiskey in warehouses, also called “rickhouses,” at Buffalo Trace Distillery. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
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Bottles of Woodford Reserve, a 90-proof straight bourbon whiskey, are displayed at the distillery’s visitors center in Versailles, Ky. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
A copper-pot still is one of three that’s used in the triple distillation process at Woodford Reserve. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
At Willett Distillery in Bardstown, Ky., seven fermentation tanks each “cook” 10,000 gallons of mash, yeast and water for three to five days. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
“Rickhouses” guard the precious aging whiskey at Willett, a craft distillery in Bardstown, Ky. (Benjamin Chandler / Chicago Tribune)
