Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2012, Let The Bitching Commence.

The 2012 edition of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KBF) in Bardstown, Kentucky, concluded yesterday. Every year I go, have a great time, and bitch about it afterwards.

Let the bitching commence.

First, I should explain that I go to the KBF primarily to see friends. I go to very few official events, nothing you need a ticket for, and definitely nothing you need to rent shoes for. (Saturday night's 'gala' is fancy dress.)

My biggest complaint this year is that Festival officials were bragging about how all of the ticketed events sold out. Many sold out weeks in advance. They call that success. I call it failure. It is undeniable proof that many people who would have attended those events were disappointed and discouraged, perhaps to the point that they just stayed home. It's stark proof that the KBF is realizing nothing close to its true potential.

The folks in Bardstown who call the shots won't let the festival grow, nor will they let it go. The big distilleries and other industry suppliers, who pay for the party, are frustrated by all the official timidity. Bourbon is booming. The iron is hot but the KBF isn't striking.

In that, the group most neglected by KBF organizers is the group they should care about most, out-of-town bourbon enthusiasts. Many complain that it seems like an insiders' party, and they are correct.

Second, and this complaint is also of long standing, there isn't enough bourbon content in the festival as a whole, especially the non-ticketed events. The only place on festival grounds where you can even drink bourbon is an abomination known as the Spirit Garden. It's hard to find and get to, you need to buy a pin just to get in, and there is nothing else to do there except drink. It's actually one of the town's baseball diamonds, fenced in like a prisoner-of-war camp. A tiny bit of shade is provided by a handful of sad umbrellas. It's depressing.

This year, Angel's Envy rented the top floor of Spalding Hall, a very nice and comfortable room with a bar, and turned it into a pop-up lounge. A convenient and comfortable place to drink bourbon at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival? What a concept? And it only took 21 years for someone to come up with it.

The KBF also does almost nothing with bourbon's rich history and heritage, except what the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History does all year. The distillery-sponsored booths are nothing but t-shirt shops. A local entrepreneur does well with a haunted places tour, but nobody does a Bardstown Bourbon History Tour. Dixie Hibbs reportedly did a history presentation at Wickland, but few people knew about it and you needed a car to get there.

For an event organized around whiskey, you need a car to get to a lot of the venues. Friday morning's breakfast at Four Roses was 43 miles from Bardstown. Four Roses does a great job with it, and it includes a distillery tour, but objectively that makes no sense. It's also not clear in the festival materials that attending involves about two hours of driving.

Because the official festival is so lacking, a variety of unofficial events have developed. Regular attendees typically know about and take advantage of some of them but no one knows about or has access to all of them. There is no effort made to coordinate the official and unofficial events, making it virtually impossible for a first-timer to effectively plan a great Bourbon Festival Experience.

While Bardstown is not blessed with a bunch of great bars, the ones that are there should have a bigger role. Every single one of them should be hosting something great every day, but they aren't.

Simply put, nobody cares about these glaring flaws because the Kentucky Bourbon Festival is not about the celebration of all things bourbon. It is just a big party Bardstown throws for itself with other people's money.

Chuck Cowdery Book Signing, Tomorrow, Kentucky Bourbon Festival, 3 PM - 4 PM

If you are in or near Bardstown, KY, come to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival tomorrow and say hello. I'll be at the Fine Bar Art booth between 3 PM and 4 PM. I'll be signing copies of Bourbon, Straight and The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste.

I'm just to the right of the BourbonCountry.com booth, near Maker's Mark.

Also on hand will be Henry Preiss. His former company, Preiss Imports, was the final producer to handle A. H. Hirsch.

If you're in the area but unsure about coming to the festival on the spur of the moment, don't worry. It's not Woodstock. Come for the day Saturday. The barrel rolling, which starts about 10 AM, is lot of fun and it's free.

Festival booths are on the lawn in front of Spalding Hall. The Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History is on the first floor of Spalding Hall. It's open until 6 PM on Saturday, and 4 PM on Sunday.

Spalding Hall is on Fifth Street just north of Stephen Foster Ave. Local youth groups have the parking concession at various lots surrounding the Spalding Hall grounds. The lawn activities run tomight until 10 PM, Saturday from 10 AM to 10 PM, and Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM.

Chuck Cowdery Bourbon Festival Book Signing, Saturday, 9/15, 3 to 4 PM, Spalding Hall Lawn.

If you are attending the Kentucky Bourbon Festival next week, stop by and say hello on Saturday, 9/15, between 3 PM and 4 PM. I'll be signing books at the Fine Bar Art booth, on the lawn in front of Spalding Hall. We'll have copies of Bourbon, Straight and The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste to sell and sign.

If you're going to the Master Distillers Auction, that is supposed to end at 4 PM, the same time the signing is supposed to end, but I'm sure Lisa won't mind if I hang around a little longer. The auction is in Spalding Hall, the signing is right out front.

Also on hand at the Fine Bar Art booth will be Henry Preiss. His former company, Preiss Imports, bought A. H. Hirsch from the Hue family, then managed the brand until they finally sold it all a few years back. He will sign your books too. This could be a one-of-a-kind opportunity to get both of our autographs at the same time, since we aren't planning to do this again.

Kentucky Bourbon Festival activities occur throughout the Bardstown area starting Tuesday, but swing into a different gear at 4 PM on Friday afternoon when the Spalding Hall lawn opens. The distilleries all have booths on the lawn in front of Spalding Hall and that's where the Fine Bar Art booth will be too. There's a lot going on, including booths selling Kentucky arts and crafts, a classic car show, live music, a midway with rides for the kids, and tons of carny food.

The Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History is on the first floor of Spalding Hall. It will be open until 6 PM on Friday and Saturday, and 4 PM on Sunday.

Spalding Hall is on Fifth Street just north of Stephen Foster Ave. Local youth groups have the parking concession at various lots surrounding the Spalding Hall grounds. The lawn activities run Friday from 4 PM to 10 PM, Saturday from 10 AM to 10 PM, and Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival Sampler Is April 28. Here Is Why You Shouldn't Go.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, which happens in September, is preceded each year by the Kentucky Bourbon Festival Sampler, a one-night event, this year to be held on Saturday, April 28.

If this year's Sampler is anything like last year, and there is every reason to believe it will be exactly like last year, it is a waste of your time and money. That's a nice weekend to go to Bardstown and there will be many bourbon enthusiasts in town, but the smart ones won't be at the official event, which has always had problems but last year was an abomination

Imagine a Kiwanis Club Monte Carlo Night in a high school gym, if they started to plan it that morning. It was a big, sorry mess. Many of the producers privately expressed their disgust with it as well. Not one master distiller was in attendance and only a handful of top distillery people of any kind came. Everything about it had an air of desperation.

The Guthrie Opportunity Center, the venue, is a big, open, fluorescent-lit, concrete-floored, concrete block room with high ceilings and zero charm. It looks exactly like the empty industrial space it, in fact, is.

Each distillery has a folding table from which it dispenses samples, seemingly as fast as possible, to the ravenous hoard. There is no place to sit. Last year it was uncomfortably warm.

The reason for the mad dash is that in most, but not all cases, the samples come in nice logo glassware and the main activity engaged in by most attendees is a frantic progression from table to table, to accumulate as many free glasses as possible, as quickly as possible. In many cases they don't even drink the whiskey, they throw it out.

Some of the distilleries, unhappy with this particular turn of events, now use plastic glasses. Sometimes you can't tell they're plastic until you have invested the time in line to get one. This disappoints the mob and makes it surly. 

It's all very 'Day of the Locust.'

There is food, dumped inelegantly around the room like slop in a trough. The fluorescent glare, bright industrial paint job, too-loud bad DJ, and zero seating all say, "we have your money, suckers. Now drink up and go." Attendees aren't treated like valued guests, they're treated like cattle entering the abattoir. 

Speaking of which, as bad as the event is, you have to stand in line for an hour to get inside. Tickets are all pre-purchased, it's not that. It's just poorly organized and no one seems to care.

One of these years, it's going to rain.

The mad dash for free glasses is even more ridiculous when you consider that for the $40 individual ticket price, a couple could buy a nice set of glasses, a nice bottle of bourbon, two Carne Asadas to-go from one of Bardstown's excellent Tex-Mex restaurants, and spend a nice Spring evening on their deck.

In addition to being a miserable experience for anyone who attends, the Sampler is an embarrassment to the industry. American whiskey is an important international product and its premier events are being presented by people who would be over-matched organizing a high school prom.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival Is Next Week.

Technically, the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, Kentucky, starts Monday. Not much happens before Friday, though, which is when the only festival-like part opens up; the booths, rides, and food stands on the Spalding Hall lawn. Most everything before that is a ticketed event.

To refresh your memory about how I regard the festival, read this post from June.

I'll probably go down on Wednesday. Before I head to Bardstown I'm going to check out the new Bulleit Experience at Stitzel-Weller Distillery.

The Festival gets a lot of well-deserved criticism from me, but I always go. My favorite official event -- one that is both public and free -- is the barrel rolling competition. It takes place on Saturday morning on a sports field adjacent to the festival grounds.

Teams from the different area distilleries compete in events that closely mimic how full barrels are managed in the aging warehouses. Barrels used in the competition are the same barrels they really use, only empty.

There usually are some master distillers hanging around, cheering on their teams. It's a lot more fun and authentic than the stupid prom on Saturday night that is supposed to be the Festival's signature event.

If you're in the area, like within a couple hours drive, it wouldn't be crazy just to run down there as a day trip to check it out. Even on the weekend, when the festival is at it's peak, getting in and out and around in Bardstown isn't too difficult.

Woodstock it's not.

You can even make an overnight stay a spur-of-the-moment decision. You probably won't be able to find a room in Bardstown proper, but there are tons of lodging choices at every exit on I-65 near there that will have vacancies.

Fall Is A Great Time To Visit Bourbon Country.

One problem with visiting distilleries during the traditional summer vacation month of August is that most of them are quiet. Even though modern technology makes it possible to distill year round, and some do, hot weather is unpleasant for the workers so many distilleries shut down for at least a few weeks during the hottest part of the year.

That, of course, means they all start to crank back up in the fall. Buffalo Trace even makes a festival of it. The Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown is always the third week in September, 9/12-18 this year. Although it’s technically all week, most stuff happens on the weekend.

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail, sponsored by the Kentucky Distillers Association, will get you to most of the distilleries that give tours. Buffalo Trace and Barton 1792, both owned by Sazerac, give tours but aren’t on the trail. There are also several distilleries that don’t give tours but you can see them from the road.

As important as seeing the distilleries is seeing at least one cooperage (where they make the barrels). Brown-Forman Cooperage, in Louisville, where they build barrels for Jack Daniel’s and other Brown-Forman products, welcomes visitors through Mint Julep Tours. Kentucky Cooperage, in Lebanon, has two public tours a day, no reservations needed. You also get to visit Lebanon, which is charming. I recommend the Cedarwood Restaurant, located just west of the cooperage. It’s a real-deal Kentucky country restaurant, not some city folk’s idea of one.

I also like that Kentucky and Tennessee usually get two or three more weeks of nice weather in the spring and fall than Chicago does. When that first cold hawk (aka Mr. Hawkins) blows in from Lake Michigan, find I-65 and head south.

Kentucky Bourbon Festival: To Go Or Not To Go.

It's that time of year again, as people plan their summer vacations a few wonder, "should I go to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (9/13-18)?"

I went to the KBF the first couple years of its existence, 20 years ago. It was, for the most part, a snore. I didn't go for ten years, until people on straightbourbon.com started to talk about it as a meet up opportunity. That was in 2000 and 2001.

Coming so soon after 9/11, the 2001 event was surreal. Only people who drove could even get there. A couple of distilleries pulled out. But the weather was perfect and the atmosphere was very kind and solicitous. People were being preternaturally nice to each other.

I believe I have attended every year since.

That said, I attend very few official events. I went to the 'gala' once. Awful. I've gone to the Four Roses breakfast several times. It's very good, there's just no point in going to it every year because it's always essentially the same. I usually go to the barrel rolling competition on Saturday morning. It's great.

The only part of the festival that kind of looks like a festival takes place Friday and Saturday on the grounds of Spaulding Hall, spilling over to an adjacent city park. Spaulding Hall holds the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History. In front of Spaulding is where all of the participating distilleries have their booths. They sell souvenirs -- t-shirts and such -- no whiskey. There are usually some of the distillers around.

There are also a lot of other booths; craftspeople, community groups, local and not-so-local businesses. Bourbon Barrel Foods, for example, has a booth. They sell this awesome soy sauce aged in used bourbon barrels. The local show car club sets up. The Army is there recruiting. There is a stage with live music. There is a midway with carny rides and carny food.

It's exactly like a thousand other Midwestern community festivals.

One of the worst abominations of the official festival is the "Spirit Garden," a fenced in, shade-free baseball field, exactly like the soccer stadium holding pens that are used when totalitarian governments round up protesters during anti-government demonstrations. You have to buy strips of tickets that you can then use to buy drinks, served in plastic glasses. There's very little seating.

It's how I imagine the bars are in hell.

They also sell Bud Light and more people drink that than bourbon. In another absurdist touch, they absolutely refuse to serve rye whiskey at this or any other official festival event.

But especially if the weather is pleasant, I enjoy hanging out on the 'festival grounds' for a few hours, though not in the Spirit Garden.

In the evening, the informal events crank up and go into the wee hours. They are the highlight of the festival.

Hey, Whiskey Collectors. How About A Legal Swap Meet At The Bourbon Festival?

This is just an idea now, but if enough people get behind it, it could become a reality.

I first suggested it here back in August, as a way to improve the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. "Attract Collectors. Get a law passed allowing whiskey collectors (legal age only, of course) to have a legal and above board swap meet" at the Festival.

It might work like this:

Let's say it's in a hall somewhere in Bardstown, a big room. Exhibitors have to register in advance but the only requirement is that they be of legal age. Collectors who want to exhibit pay a fee to do so. People who want to attend but don't want to exhibit buy a ticket. There probably will need to be a limit placed on how many bottles a non-exhibitor may carry in. Again, the only requirement is that everyone must be of legal age and IDs will be checked. All transactions will be private, between the participants. Transactions can take the form or either trades or sales. It lasts for maybe three hours on Saturday afternoon. And it's all legal.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival is held each September in Bardstown, Kentucky.

Subsequent to that post I briefly discussed the idea with Eric Gregory, President of the Kentucky Distillers Association. He seemed to like it. The Festival, which KDA co-sponsors, would have to figure out how to do it legally, which might require some new legislation, so KDA is the outfit to work on that. Mr. Gregory seemed to think it was not completely outside the realm of possibility.

Mr. Gregory, by the way, is staff, but the KDA changes its board leadership every year. The new chairman for 2011 is John Rhea of Four Roses Distillery, the vice chairman is Jeff Conder of Beam Global, and the Secretary-Treasurer is Tom Krekeler of Campari (Wild Turkey). The other board members are Chris Morris (Brown-Forman), Andrea Wilson (Diageo) and David Hobbs (Heaven Hill). The board consists of one representative from each major company.

If you think this is a good idea, let the KDA know.

I would also encourage anyone who thinks it's a good idea to help flesh it out here with comments to this post. How might it be done? What would get you to participate?

They Did It! Signs At The KBF!

I have complained for years that the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KBF) needs more signs, starting with big ones as you come into town, welcoming visitors to the KBF. It seems like a little thing, also an obvious one. It's a big deal, right? Then why keep it a secret?

As you can see from the pictures above and below, they've taken a step in the right direction. I saw at least two of the official welcome signs, on major thoroughfares coming into town. Also saw the sign boards on two different restaurants with a 'welcome KBF' message. That sort of thing goes a long way toward making out-of-towners feel ... well ... welcome!

I was told by someone in a position to know that Bardstown has a sign board with very restrictive policies. Every time the festival proposes more signs their requests are denied.

But the new signs are a step in the right direction. Still, the sign promoting St. Monica's Parish Festival in October is bigger and in a better location.