ANNIVERSARY
A Toast to the Bourbon Trail
KENTUCKY
Even before the Kentucky Bourbon Trail was established twenty-five years ago, brown-water aficionados had long flocked to the state, which produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon. “Before 1999, people would show up to a distillery even if it didn’t have a visitor’s center, and whoever was available would just show them around,” says Mandy Ryan, director of experiences for the Trail. “They got so much traffic that distilleries finally decided they needed to formalize this.” What started as a choose-your-adventure route connecting seven distilleries has grown to include forty-six stops in four regions across Kentucky. Hotels, restaurants, museums, and shops followed, encouraging Bourbon Trail travelers to slow down between tours and tastings. In 2017, the distillers’ association successfully lobbied for permission to sell cocktails and food within the distilleries themselves, so now trekkers can pull up a stool at the Bar at Willett in Bardstown, for instance, and order a bourbon and mezcal sipper alongside an egg salad sandwich so good it has its own Instagram account, or stop in at Louisville’s Copper & Kings for sausage and mushroom gnocchi and a tasting flight. “The Trail is designed now for people to stay all day and relax,” Ryan says. “There are cocktail classes and experiences: You can thieve straight out of a barrel, bottle your own bourbon, see the barrels being charred.” Soon, the Trail’s newly revamped website will allow visitors to create their own itineraries. Ryan’s advice: “Book ahead. Derby 150 is this year, too. It’s a big year for Kentucky.”
BOOKS
Alabama
ENOUGH TO GO AROUND
Carolyn Quick Tillery has. First published in 1996, the volume was recently rereleased with updated photography and extras like profiles of notable graduates (Lionel Richie, Rosa Parks) and stories of the institution’s oft-overlooked role in the civil rights movement. “Students diverted police attention away from Selma-to-Montgomery marchers by walking, driving, or busing from Tuskegee to the capital city themselves,” Tillery says. Remaining are recipes for silky collards and fried chicken, hearkening back to her memories of meals at Dorothy’s (a restaurant that’s still open on campus), as well as George Washington Carver’s Dandelion Salad and Tillery’s springtime favorite, Carver’s Red Lemonade. “Students would serve gallons of it at his annual farmers’ fair,” she says. “The addition of raspberries would tame the tartness, but fresh strawberries work wonderfully, too.”
