The Chihuly at Maker's exhibit, which runs through October, has helped attract visitors to Maker's Mark campus in Loretto, Kentucky.
In 2017, bourbon is still booming. Fans new and old are mad for it and pay positively mad prices to buy bottles released in maddeningly limited allocations. Classic bourbon-based cocktails such as the Old Fashioned are the new rage in bars in Europe, Australia and Japan, and Scotch makers – venerable rulers of the global brown spirits category – are increasingly wary of American bourbon brands gulping up their market share.
But like the much-heralded introduction of the iPhone and its subsequent releases, the bourbon industry is constantly pressured to make itself new again. One strategy currently in vogue is a focus on bourbon tourism.
The Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA), which created the Kentucky Bourbon Trail (KBT) in 1999, foresaw the nascent desire of bourbon enthusiasts to see their beloved liquor made firsthand and meet those who distill it. Numbers of visits were modest at the outset, but in less than a decade, annual visits to the state’s distilleries surpassed the six-figure mark. Since 2009, however, visits have grown by 300 percent. Just last year, a record 888,733 visits were paid to the state’s older, larger distilleries, while 177,228 visits were made to smaller craft distilleries, also a record. Since 2012, 2.5 million visitors from all 50 states and 25 foreign countries have experienced the Trail.
Since 2012, 2.5 million visitors from all 50 states and 25 foreign countries have experienced the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
Neither the state’s tourism department nor the KDA has precise numbers attributable solely to the impact of bourbon tourism, but according to Adam Johnson, senior director of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, official studies are forthcoming. Recent surveys, Johnson said, showed the average visitor spends somewhere between $400 and $1,200 on the tours, gas to drive to each site, food consumed while in Kentucky and nights in hotels.
“We’re planning another economic impact study for 2019, when we should have better numbers,” he said.
Numbers in which Johnson is confident include where KBT visitors come from: 82 percent are from outside the state, and those from Ohio outnumber those from the Bluegrass. Canada is the top supplier of international visitors, while Japan, Germany and Australia “are all very good for us,” he said. Growth in visitors, he added, is expected to increase at nearly 10 percent annually.
And why wouldn’t it, given all that distilleries are doing to attract fans? Thanks to the 2016 passage of Senate Bill 11, visitors now can stay and drink cocktails made on premise. Multiple sources called SB11’s passage “game changing” due to the significantly increased revenue stream the new licensing provides.
Copper & Kings has turned its events business from a loss-leader into a profit center since the passage of a state bill allowing on-premise cocktail service.
At Copper & Kings, a craft brandy, gin and absinthe distillery in Louisville, large outdoor events designed to familiarize guests with the distillery were loss leaders before SB11’s passage, said co-owner Joe Heron. But after the distillery got its NQ-2 liquor license and began serving cocktails, a profit center was born.
“SB11 was an absolutely fundamental change,” said Heron, whose distillery operated two years before the new law took effect. “We treated those events as brand-building exercises, but now we view them as revenue-building exercises that also build the brand.”
About 200,000 people visited Jim Beam's Urban Stillhouse in downtown Louisville last year.
Jim Beam Distillery in Clermont was the first to launch a post-SB11 cocktail program, and according to Kimberley Bennett, senior director of Kentucky Beam Bourbon Experiences for its parent company, Beam Suntory, a line running out the door of the Jim Beam Bourbon Bar is common. A list of five cocktails rotates monthly, and guests can choose which of its many bourbons they’d like in their drinks.
“When they see our brand ambassadors construct that cocktail in front of them, they want to do it at home,” Bennett said. Last year, Bennett said, 200,000 people visited its Clermont distillery and the Urban Stillhouse site in downtown Louisville. Those numbers, she added, marked a 200 percent increase in visits over 2015.
“Tastings and cocktails and our tableside classes deepen engagement with our brand,” she added.
Heaven Hill's Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, in downtown Louisville, provides a highly visible presence for the brand.
At Louisville-based Heaven Hill’s Bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown, 61,000 visitors came last year, an increase of 34 percent since 2014, and at its Evan Williams Bourbon Experience in Louisville, about 100,000 people visited last year, an increase of 45 percent since in 2014, its first full year in operation. Both locations trade in standard T-shirt-and-trinket wares, but each also sells one-off specialty whiskeys for purchase only on premise. Sales of merchandise overall, the company said, have risen 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively, since the Bourbon Heritage Center and the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience opened their doors.
A spokesperson for Maker’s Mark in Loretto said visitor rates have exploded since Star Hill Provisions, an on-campus restaurant and cocktail bar, opened this spring. Guided by notable restaurateurs Newman and Rachel Miller, owners of Harrison-Smith House in Bardstown, the modern Kentucky eatery has surpassed all sales expectations as visitors can now linger on campus over a full meal and craft cocktails.
Scott Mitchell Leen
Special evening dinners accompanying the Chihuly at Maker's exhibit sold out by early August.
Adding to Maker’s visitor traffic is the all-new Chihuly at Maker’s exhibit, an array of massive outdoor sculptures created by renowned glassblower, Dale Chihuly. Outdoor tours in daylight and at night began in July and will run through October. Special dinners accompanying the tours sold out by early August.
At Willett Distillery in Bardstown, construction of a new visitors center, bar, restaurant and a 20,000 square-foot bed and breakfast are underway in an effort to add what many in the industry call “a Napa Valley feel” to the Bourbon Trail. Unlike many California wineries, no Kentucky bourbon distilleries currently offer overnight accommodations. But Willett, along with the forthcoming Castle & Key Distillery, are moving to change that. Sometime after Castle & Key opens its Millville location to tourists next year, construction of overnight accommodations should begin, said Marianne Barnes, a partner and the master distiller for the new brand.
“The initial vision for the site was to be more of an experience of history than just an experience of product,” said Barnes. A former train station at what is the Old Taylor Distillery Co. site will be transformed into a restaurant. “We’d like to have cabins along (Glenn’s Creek) so people can stay on site.”
But given the time- and dollar-consuming restoration of the Old Taylor property, overnight amenities will have to wait, she said. Already in place is a quarter-mile botanical trail designed by famed gardener John Carloftis (who also designed landscaping around Maker’s Mark’s new Whisky Cave), as well as other stunning gardens on the premises.
“We want people to come here and leave with a sense of awe for the place,” she said.
Jeptha Creed Distillery in Shelbyville entices visitors with live music and craft cocktails.
Owners of Jeptha Creed Distillery in Shelbyville have created a relaxed countryside setting at their property beside I-64. When warm weather arrived this year, owners Bruce and Joyce Nethery began hosting “Jammin’ at Jeptha” events nearly every Friday, enticing visitors with live music and craft cocktails made with the distillery’s range of moonshines and vodkas. (Its bourbon is still aging.) According to the Nethery’s daughter, Autumn Nethery, co-owner and marketing manager, Jammin’ crowds swelled one night to 350 people, pushing the family to consider expanding the already large parking lot. Revenue for the events is 100 percent higher than expected.
“Serving cocktails gives our products a lot of exposure,” Nethery said, adding that all Jeptha Creek’s cocktail recipes are on its website. “That way they can buy our vodkas and moonshines and make those cocktails at home.
“SB11 was a really good thing for us,” she added.
Alltech Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co. was open three days a week for tours when it launched. Now they run tours every day except Christmas and Thanksgiving.
When tours began a few years ago at Alltech Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co., the plants were open just three days a week for tours.
“Very quickly we realized had to change that,” said marketing director Pete Weiss. The plants now open year ‘round, closing only on Christmas and Thanksgiving. “We have a U.S. and world map on the wall here, and in it are push pins marking where visitors have come from. It’s just amazing to see the diverse crowd coming in to Kentucky and Lexington specifically looking for bourbon activities.”