Buffalo Trace Distillery

Long before distillers arrived, great herds of buffalo, the American bison, migrated across Kentucky, wearing deep paths called traces through the wilderness as they moved between grazing grounds and salt licks. One such trace crossed the Kentucky River at the site of the distillery, a natural ford that made this a crossroads of animal and, later, human travel.

This was long the ancestral hunting ground of the Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and other nations, who followed the game and the traces across a country they had known for generations before European settlers pushed in. Their descendant nations continue today, largely in Oklahoma and the Carolinas. When settlers came in the late 1700s, they built along the same river crossing, and distilling took root in the fertile Bluegrass with its limestone-filtered water, perfect for bourbon.

Distilling on this site dates back to the late 1700s and early 1800s, and over the generations the operation grew into a major distillery known by several names before it became Buffalo Trace. It survived floods, fires, wars, and shifting ownership, and above all it survived Prohibition, when the making and sale of alcohol was banned across the country in the 1920s and early 1930s.

During Prohibition the distillery was one of a small number allowed to keep operating under a special license to produce whiskey for medicinal purposes, sold by prescription through pharmacies. That unbroken run is a large part of why it can claim to be one of the oldest continuously operating distilleries in America, and it gives the tours a rich vein of story to draw on.

A visit takes you across the historic grounds and into the working distillery and the aging warehouses, where the smell of oak and evaporating whiskey, the so-called angels' share, hangs in the air. Guides walk visitors through how bourbon is made, from grain and limestone water to the char of the barrel and the long years of aging that give the spirit its color and flavor.

Tastings pour a range of the whiskeys made on site, and the distillery is a keystone stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the route that links the state's historic distilleries. Because bourbon has become such a draw, tours here are popular and often best reserved ahead, particularly on busy weekends, but the sense of standing inside living history is worth the planning.

Just up the river lies Frankfort, Kentucky's small and scenic capital, tucked into a bend of the Kentucky River with a historic downtown, the state capitol, and the graves of Daniel Boone and other Kentucky figures in its old cemetery. It makes an easy and rewarding pairing with a distillery visit.

The wider Bluegrass region all around is the heartland of Kentucky bourbon and horses alike, a rolling country of limestone soil, white fences, and distilleries. Buffalo Trace anchors the northern reach of bourbon country, within easy drives of Lexington, Bardstown, and the other stops on the whiskey trail.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.