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With six Kentucky Distillers Association members providing stops along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — and a seventh set to be added Oct. 1 — it’s apparent the program provides the sort of branding organizers sought when they founded it 13 years ago as a way to promote Kentucky as the home of bourbon.
Nearly a half-million people visited the commonwealth in 2011 to experience the tour, with officials expecting to easily surpass that total this year, even without the addition of that additional stop. That’s created a surge among the individual distilleries in constructing new facilities, redesigning existing ones, or at the very least, making plans for future expansion to accommodate the program’s growing popularity. What’s resulted is an age-old industry working to provide modern amenities for visitors while maintaining the rustic charm and mystic lure of the bourbon-making process that draws those visitors to central Kentucky in the first place.
Member distillers, along with program officials, are wondering just how big it can get.
“That’s a great question,” said Adam Johnson, director of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. “I just know right now we’re focusing on improving what we have, because it would pain us to hear people are having a bad time when they visit us.”
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail was created in 1999 to showcase the industry’s rich history and heritage, something aided by the fact that most bourbon distilleries are located within short driving distances from each other. Six KDA member distilleries currently make up the Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Four Roses, Heaven Hill Distilleries, Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve, with Town Branch joining as the seventh member next month.
And events of the next few weeks should support what Johnson said was the Kentucky Bourbon Trail’s hospitality mission.
Between Sept. 10 and Oct. 3, there will be no less than three additional facilities opening to the public, including new visitor centers at Four Roses and at Jim Beam, as well as the aforementioned Town Branch launch. These also follow two significant moves for the Wild Turkey brand by parent company Campari America in recent months, including groundbreaking for a new $44 million packaging facility here in April that could quadruple the amount of product packaged onsite while also creating more than 60 new jobs.
But the bigger move related to the rise in popularity of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail would be Wild Turkey’s $4 million visitor center, which began construction in late August. It will be a drastic upgrade from the current 1,000-square-foot, circa-1800s building to an 8,500-square-foot facility that will offer views of the distillery as well as the Kentucky River. It’s scheduled to open in April 2013 and expected to serve as many as 70,000 visitors annually, doubling the most recent numbers.
The emphasis on visitor-friendly experiences is key, considering $11.7 billion of Kentucky’s 2011 economy was delivered via tourism. It’s even more vital for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail: More than 80 percent of those who took the tour hailed from outside of the commonwealth. More than 450,000 took the tour in 2011, and Johnson said a 50 percent rise in attendance has already been projected by year’s end. It could rise well beyond that following the addition of Town Branch.
Growth has occurred without any elaborate marketing campaigns. The majority of advertising has occurred via simple signage, enhanced websites both for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail as well as individual distilleries, and tour packages similar to the ones offered throughout Napa Valley’s wine country. The tour has also gotten a significant jolt through its passport and fulfillment programs, which reward visitors for completing the tour. That means the majority of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail’s advertising budget goes toward the T-shirts that visitors get after completing the tour. Other than that, marketing simply comes from word of mouth.
“The bourbon industry in the commonwealth has exploded,” said Matt Sawyers, deputy secretary for the Kentucky Tourism Cabinet. “It’s a wonderful asset we have and delivers positive brand recognition for the commonwealth across the globe. And we expect it to build and build.”