Good to the Last Drop: 5 Ways to Enjoy Bourbon in Louisville

Known as Bourbon City, Louisville truly lives up to its name. Once your meetings have ended, attendees have countless options for immersing themselves in Louisville’s thriving bourbon culture.

Louisville boasts a dozen bourbon distilleries, including some that offer tours that take your attendees behind the scenes of the bourbon-making process. Guided tours include tastings, too. 

Looking for the city’s best bourbon cocktail and culinary experiences? Steer your group toward the Urban Bourbon Trail, a curated list of bars and restaurants that complement a distillery tour. All stops on the trail have at least 60 varieties of bourbon and servers who can explain the nuances of them all.

Some other bourbon companies showcase their products with visitor experiences and tastings in their Louisville brand outposts. The Bardstown Bourbon Company has a modern tasting room in Louisville while Heaven’s Door, a brand of whiskeys co-created with Bob Dylan, is planning a brand and visual arts center called The Last Refuge (opening Spring 2024).

Attendees who want to brush up on bourbon basics can head to a cocktail class. Angel’s Envy offers a class on crafting a classic Manhattan; Liquor Lab features mixology experiences on various cocktails including the Old Fashioned, espresso cocktails and brunch drinks; and at the Frazier History Museum, attendees can take in a craft-your-own-cocktail class on the traditional Old Fashioned.

Louisville’s spirited calendar is full of bourbon-themed events Old Fashioned Fortnight takes place in the first two weeks of June, August features the Bourbon SIPosium, a female-focused whiskey conference, and from Oct. 2-6 comes the inaugural Bourbon & Belonging: Kentucky’s Queer Bourbon Week, which takes place in Louisville and across the state.

For more information, please visit GoToLouisville.com.