When looking to fill our out schedule,  taking a tour of the Maker’s Mark distillery sounded like something to do.  We discovered that on Friday, they were actually holding a festival at their campus in Loretta, Kentucky.  Friday was scheduled for good weather and was our open day, so we packed up the car and drove 35 miles south of Louisville past Bardstown.

Apple Maps ended up taking us through some back roads to get there, and by the term “back roads”, I mean one lane roads. No stripes.  The drive was beautiful and relaxing other than the pressing question:  “They haul semi’s of this stuff on these roads?”  Are we going the right way.  Sure enough, we came upon “Maker’s Mark Road”, a seemingly even smaller road.

Then we saw the black with red trim buildings and a traffic director sending us driving into an open field.  I had been joking with Sherry about taking the Prius 4-Wheeling.  Well it was off-road time.

The festival was small by any definition, but with live music, some food trucks with the most amazing BBQ and Hamburger we ever had, free bourbon and mint julep samples, it ended up being a rather fun, educational and entertaining day.

I was surprised to see glass art by famed artist Dale Chihuly adorning the ceiling in one of the warehouses where the classrooms and gift shop were located.  They held mint julep making classes in the classrooms.  You could see the bottles being filled and hand dipped in the wax and you could even hand dip your own bottle.

Afterwards it was a drive back to Louisville for a cookout with family.

You can see the rest of the photos here.