113 Great Buffalo Terrace
Frankfort, Kentucky
Buffalo Trace Distillery is America's oldest continuously operating distillery offering complimentary historic grounds tours and bourbon tastings. It remains the only major Kentucky distillery to offer daily tours and guided tastings completely free of charge. The complimentary Hard Hat Tour + Tasting is a behind-the-scenes journey through the full bourbon-making process.
The distillery has operated on the banks of the Kentucky River for over 200 years along an ancient buffalo path. The property is a designated National Historic Landmark on July 22, 2013. It was also entered on the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 2001.
It famously continued distilling for medicinal purposes during Prohibition. The 50-acre scenic campus features a group of six buildings, constructed between 1880 and 1907 with a blend of rugged 19th-century architecture. There is a Clubhouse and Lodge, both of which are rustic log buildings were constructed in 1935 for the use of employees and corporate visitors.
Stony Point
The residential home on the grounds of the Buffalo Trace Distillery built by Colonel Albert Bacon Blanton. It was built in 1934 by Colonel Blanton as a private residence for himself and his wife. The Frankfort architectural firm of Leo Oberwarth and Son designed the home.
A beautiful example of an Arts and Crafts style, this house retains its original woodwork and intricate detail. A nature lover, avid bird watcher and gardener, Colonel Blanton designed the gardens around his home to attract many different types of birds. Colonel Blanton lived in the house until his death in 1959 spending many hours bird watching from the sun porch on the second floor. Today this house serves as offices for distillery staff.
Blanton's Bourbon is distilled and hand-bottled at the historic Buffalo Trace Distillery. Introduced in 1984 by master distiller Elmer T. Lee Blanton's was created as the world's first commercial single-barrel bourbon named in honor of distillery pioneer Colonel Albert Bacon Blanton.
All Blanton's barrels are aged in the famous metal-clad Warehouse H built by Colonel Blanton in 1935 where extreme temperature swings accelerate the interaction between the wood and the whiskey.
The iconic bottle stoppers feature eight different horse-and-jockey designs with each bottle having a letter that when completely collected spell out
B-L-A-N-T-O-N-S
with the second "N" distinguished by a colon (N:) immediately following the letter.
Each stopper features a tiny horse and jockey in a different stage of a horse racing, moving from the starting gate to the finish line. If you collect a used set of all eight unique stoppers, you can mail them to the Buffalo Trace Distillery Gift Shop and they will mount them on a wooden barrel stave* for free.
*A stave is an individual narrow strip of wood used to build a bourbon barrel or an extra piece of wood added to age and flavor the whiskey. Barrelmakers fit 31 to 33 staves together side-by-side and hold them in place with metal hoops to form the body of a standard 53-gallon bourbon barrel. The inside of these structural staves is toasted and charred imparting classic bourbon notes such as vanilla, caramel and oak spice into the resting spirit.
While law does not require bourbon to be made in Kentucky, the Bluegrass state produces approximately 95% of the world's supply. There are several primary reasons Kentucky remains the bourbon capital of the world today. Kentucky was America's original West. When early settlers moved West in search of more land and resources many settled in what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky. These settlers of Scottish, German and Irish descent brought with them their stills and distilling knowledge. They quickly discovered that Kentucky was the ideal place to make great whiskey.
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