By Richard Thomas
(Runner1928/Wikimedia Commons/CC by-SA 4.0)
These days, a map of the Kentucky Bourbon Path appears to be like like a skewed quadralateral set onto Central Kentucky. Whereas there are distilleries nestled deep within the mountains of Jap Kentucky; within the distant river nation of the western a part of the state; and in bucolic and remoted school cities like Danville; a lot of the motion is present in one in all 4 corners: Louisville, Bardstown, Lexington and Northern Kentucky (i.e. close to Cincinnati). But a lot of the vacationer consideration by way of the place individuals keep, dine out and indulge not whiskey-related actions is centered firmly on Louisville and Bardstown.
Whereas Northern Kentucky is pretty new as a correct nook of the path and residential to not one of the Kentucky Majors (the state’s huge, legacy distillers), the best way individuals overlook Lexington has all the time been peculiar. It’s a mid-sized metropolis, the horse capital of the world and the nook that hosts 4 Roses, Wild Turkey and Buffalo Hint, plus Woodford Reserve and several other distinguished newcomers like City Department and Fort & Key. With a C.V. like that, Lexington needs to be a pure base for half or all of a vacation on the Bourbon Path, however statistics reveal that town itself receives lower than 8% of all Bourbon Path site visitors.
(Credit score: RD1 Spirits)
Final week noticed the ribbon chopping for the brand new $5 million RD-1 Spirits customer middle and distillery, which is meant to usher in 30,000 company yearly and hopefully break the dam on bringing these Bourbon Path vacationers to Lexington. RD-1 presently hosts the corporate tasting room, bar, present store and mixing lab, however will host a future craft-scale distillery. Though not but operational, there may be already a small hybrid nonetheless and 500-gallon pot nonetheless on the property, together with a fermenter. The bar is open to all guests, not simply tour patrons.
RD-1 Spirits is positioned in The Commons, an ongoing redevelopment of a property that was as soon as house to a sprawling tobacco warehouse complicated. The brand new bourbon attraction is a comparatively early entrant to the event, with a lot of the development ready for groundbreaking, however they aren’t the primary main attraction to open there: that honor belongs to Battle Axes, an indoor leisure middle. The favored Distillery District on Manchester Road, only a mile from The Commons, started even smaller than this with Barrel Home Distillery in 2006.
RD-1 Spirits is called after the outdated Ashland Distillery, which in 1865 grew to become what’s technically the primary Federally registered whiskey distillery of the trendy period. If that date appears late within the historical past of American Whiskey, President Thomas Jefferson abolished taxes on whiskey, and the Federal authorities stayed out of the whiskey trade till President Abraham Lincoln reintroduced taxes on spirits in 1862 as a measure to fund the Civil Warfare. The distillery was later owned by one William Tarr, whose identify was used for the Wm. Tarr Bourbon model launched by RD-1.
The brand new facility is thrice the scale of the outdated RD-1 tasting room, which was well-located within the aforementioned Distillery District. Though RD-1’s earlier facility was on a floor flooring, street-facing nook of the outdated James E. Pepper rickhouse, that location was about half a mile down the highway from the positioning of the unique Ashland/William Tarr Distillery. The one surviving constructing of that plant is its Warehouse #1, which is now the Manchester Music Corridor.
