Bourbon sprawl: Louisville has art, music to offer
IT WAS 11 a.m. in Louisville and I was contemplating a silky, amber and Very Old liquid in my glass.
Fortunately, I was primed to appreciate the art and culture of the Very Old Fitzgerald Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey because Penny Peavler, dynamic president of the city’s freshly redesigned Frazier History Museum, had just given me a whirlwind tour of its new bourbon-focused “Spirit of Kentucky” permanent exhibition.
First, we assembled a mini bourbon barrel in the crafting section. Then, we lingered over the 22-foot-long oak “Gracious Table”, with a touch- sensitive surface like a giant iPad, and explored the museum’s digitized bourbon archives, which is full of stories, maps and interviews. And then, we emerged from Bottle Hall - a glamorous nook showcasing a bottle of every brand of bourbon produced in Kentucky today - and Peavler invited me into a fifth-floor office for some liquid history.
I took a slow sip. “That’s the Kentucky hug,” she said, reassuringly, as I gasped from the bourbon’s heat, still powerful after a half- century. The hug quickly turned to honey on my tongue. My quest to discover Louisville’s new spirit, through the liquid spirit that has underpinned the city’s economy since the 1800s, was off to a surprising start.
Over the next few days, I planned to follow Louisville’s urban bourbon trail, beginning with the new Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center on the Frazier’s ground floor, as a gateway to the city’s eclectic patchwork of neighbourhoods beyond bourbon. Art, cocktails, food and music would be my guides.
At Rabbit Hole Distillery, which opened in May, the architecture and art also reflect an expansive perspective. “There is a new generation of whiskey drinkers coming into the fold,” founder Kaveh Zamanian told me. “And bourbon is leading the charge.”
For the record, bourbon is a kind of whiskey. Visitors learn this, and more, during an hourlong tour of the soaring, Mies van der Rohe-inspired distillery in the revitalized NuLu ( New Louisville) district, a mile east of downtown.
Afterward, visitors can settle in for a post-tour creative cocktail developed by the mixologists behind New York City’s acclaimed bar Death & Co. while exploring socially progressive contemporary artwork such as “Bridge ( Victory),” by Los Angeles artist Glenn Kaino, in the sleek cantilevered lounge overlooking the Ohio River.
Less than a mile away, Copper & Kings American Brandy Distillery anchors Butchertown. Only one meatpacking plant remains in this once-downtrodden neighbourhood along the railroad tracks. But the low- slung, industrial- chic distillery draws a new crowd with events such as screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and food trucks in the courtyard, or jazz concerts in the brand-new rooftop bar, Alex& nder. Cocktails such as “Guns ‘n’ Rosé” ( perhaps the prettiest cocktail to ever wet my lips) showcase the distillery’s brandy, which matures to the rhythm of rock-and-roll blasting through the basement barrel cellar.
Surprisingly, I also enjoyed a couple of bourbon experiences on the touristy “4th Avenue Live!” party strip near Louisville’s new convention centre. I learned the “cocktail chop” while shaking up a whiskey sour at the Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse, which offers introductory cocktail classes as well as various bourbon education seminars several times a day. Then, a few doors down, past the Hard Rock Cafe and the Fudgery, I succumbed to a towering bourbon milkshake, garnished with housemade graham cracker pieces and a flame-toasted marshmallow, at James Beard Award-nominee Edward Lee’s fine burger place, Whiskey Dry.
I had timed my visit to coincide with the second-annual Bourbon & Beyond festival, because I was interested in its “Beyond” component: a multiple- artist lineup of rock, country and bluegrass bands. Unfortunately, the rain gods decided otherwise.
Fortunately, the local musician I most wanted to see, Ben Sollee - lauded by national critics and audiences for his genre-bending creativity - agreed to meet me at a record- and-bookstore cafe on a reviving block in the city’s Portland neighbourhood, west of downtown. Over tea, the selfdescribed grandson of an “oldtime Appalachian fiddler, coal miner and Baptist preacher,” tried to capture his city’s music scene for me.
Instead, I stumbled upon a Brazilian jazz ensemble in a speakeasy below a downtown sandwich shop. Jimmy Can’t Dance is the joint’s name, and there I happened to meet coowner Dennie Humphrey. As we got to talking, he told me he was fresh off Louisville’s annual Jug Band Jubilee. “Jug bands were Louisville’s original contribution to American music,” he explained; “string bands and ragtime arrived via riverboat traffic.” That, combined with sounds made from puffing into a bunch of empty Brown-Forman Old Granddad bourbon jugs, he said, “made for some great musical roots.” — The Washington Post