Bourbon sprawl
Kentucky: Louisville has art, music to offer (and a fine drink)
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. 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 neighborhoods beyond bourbon. Art, cocktails, food and music would be my guides.
Walking down Main Street’s “whiskey row” in the soupy September air, I glimpsed the broad Ohio River and tried to channel the 1800s. Then, I had just learned, Louisville was a major river town on America’s Western frontier, and sailors from all over the world would spill onto this strip for serious carousing.
Today, just past the historical brick facade of the Old Forester Distilling Co., which opened in June, a horse-drawn carriage fit for Cinderella clopped by. On the corner of Seventh and Main streets, in front of the 21c Museum Hotel, I spotted a gigantic, gold-painted statue of ... David. But this David, I soon discovered, is the work of a Turkish artist, inspired by Michelangelo but twice the size of the original, and belongs to the hotel founders’ world-renowned collection of 21st century art.