Done this trip twice. Once in 2017 and once in 2024. and had an amazing trip based out of Louisville. We booked an Air BNB near Audubon Park and it was awesome. Some people do the trail based out of Lexington or Bardstown. Louisville with a rental car is manageable and fun. Louisville has plenty of hotels too.

If you're in Louisville, Many liquor stores do tastings and can open up bottles that you could never afford for per ounce drinks, Tried a Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year Old for $40 as opposed to trying to find a bottle. Totally worth it if you want to try this way. The one store that had an amazing selection of options and barrel picks was "Westport Wine and Whiskey" in Louisville.

As far as the distillery tours go, your mileage may vary depending on your interests and preferences.

Stitzel-Weller Distillery- They make Blade and Bow and IW Harper. This tour is okay but odd. It has all the history of Pappy van Winkle but it is empty and they produce nothing there. So its largely a gift shop/tasting tour of the grounds. It is more of a history lesson of people that use the name of Pappy. Skip it unless you are a Pappy History enthusiast. Julian Van Winkle and the Pappy line is all made at Buffalo Trace now.

Buffalo Trace- Out of all the tours, this one is a "Must go". beautiful scenery, Book the "Hard Hat" tour for the full experience (book early, fills up fast. Ask for Freddie as your guide if possible). Don't even think about buying Blanton's or hard to find bottles. They only had Wheatley Vodka and Buffalo trace in their shop. They have a huge gift shop as well. The tasting was their "White Dog" Un-aged distillate, Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, and then you could try their Bourbon Cream IIRC. Overall, if you only get to do one full tour/tasting experience, this should be it.

Woodford Reserve- Smaller grounds, nice tasting paired with chocolate in the tasting room. Bottling room access on tour was very interesting. Very loud too with the glass bottles. Very cleaned up tour and "higher end" it seemed like. Tasting was paired with chocolates and had notes and tasting wheels. They have a restaurant on site too.

Willett- Bardstown area distilleries are neat and less refined experiences than the bigger ones closer to the city. Willett had you tour the grounds and then gave you access to their gift shop. Willett has a whole experience now with a bed and breakfast/restaurant that wasn't there when I went. You can buy bottles in their shop that are harder to find and aren't as widely distributed. They also have a good tasting of all the different ones they make if you like their stuff. Eat lunch at the Talbott Tavern

Heaven Hill/Bourbon Heritage Center- Heaven Hill seems to dominate the Bardstown area. This was much more "museum-like" with a smaller tasting. Got to try the "Very Old Fitzgerald 12" in their tasting, just ask if they have it. Very good. They have a large gift shop with some rarer bottles of Elijah Craig if you're lucky.

Four Roses- We did the bottling plant tour which is much smaller than the main one. Very simple tasting of their yellow label, small batch and single barrel. Nothing too special on this one. Gift shop had a lot of options for gifts, tumblers, glasses, etc.

Makers Mark- The other "must visit" tour from our experience, the grounds are beautiful, the gift shop lets you dip your own bottle or anything you would like to dip in red wax, they also have a good tasting and selection. They've opened up their experimental lab and the Maker's 46 side of things. Cool to see how they warehouse it in a climate controlled environment. They have an amazing restaurant on the grounds too called "Star Hill" that was outstanding.

Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse- This was in Downtown Louisville and was a touristy place, but you can bottle your own custom bottle and have it engraved.

Angel's Envy- In the middle of downtown Louisville. This tour was great and had a great tasting with orange-chocolates. Their rye was one of the our favorites. All of the bourbon chocolates you sample at all the distilleries are made in Downtown Louisville not to far from there at Art Eatables. Pack a few for the trip home to have with whiskey later.

All the distillery tours are pretty similar, to be honest. A few really stand out to me, but overall its very similar.

We ate at some great restaurants, Doc Crows was great, Garage Bar was good too, especially their charcuterie. Haymarket was a cool dive bar with great bottles. The Eagle bar had great fried chicken and a cool beer hall atmosphere too. Feast BBQ had good BBQ and frozen whiskey and ginger ale.

Let me know if you want anymore recommendations.

May be little hokey, but dipping your own bottle at MM was fun.

Just returned from our trip and it was an awesome time. Highly recommend to anyone that has even a basic level preference for whiskey. The area was beautiful with color changing for fall and when you get out to the horse farm area with the rolling hills and fences it is very scenic. All the food we had was really good and people were friendly. Here is a quick run-down of my experience of the distilleries we visited:

Angel's Envy - we did the bottle your own experience which came with a tasting and short history. After we were done we had a very short tour of the facility and then ended upstairs in the tasting room. Very good old fashion. We enjoyed the experience. Unfortunately the bottle we filled which was a single barrel selection could not be engraved, but it is logged with your own name. This is across from the Louisville Slugger baseball field. It would have been nice to have had more time to walk down the street and visited more of the local shops and other distilleries but we did not have time.

Buffalo Trace set the bar really high as our first real tour. The grounds are really cool with the brick rick houses and facilities. Our tour guide Fred was awesome and thought we was the famous one I had read about, however, that is Freddie, a different guy. But Fred was awesome as well. This was my personal favorite and I think was the same for everyone else in our group. Nice grounds, good tour, lots of information, good tasting, and nice gift shop. There were no special releases that I wanted to lug home but there was a line out the door when we arrived with local people picking up their whiskey release.

Hit Castle and Key next and that is also a very beautiful location. We didn't have a reservation and everything was booked, so we didn't get a full tour. However, the guide told us to wait after hours and she gave us a quick private tour through the facility while it was closing down. Pretty cool that she even gave us a tasting in the dark of the barrel room. We all turned on our phone lights and enjoyed what was still there from earlier tastings.

Woodford Reserve was probably my second favorite over-all experience. Beautiful location and buildings. The walk from the fermenting vats into the copper still area is a sight to behold. That by itself was probably the most impressive photo op of the trip. Good tasting as well and our guide was really good.

Four Roses was our least favorite site. I didn't see any construction but the tour had no real interesting information that we had not already heard. The facilities are not much to look at, and several of the areas we went to we were only allowed to peak through the window of the door and then moved on. The tasting was interesting as you can see their different recipes diagram and how each type is made but overall I would probably suggest to anyone else to skip this one. We didn't go to Wild Turkey but it is really close and would be a great alternative option.

Bardstown Bourbon definitely had a different feel. Very modern and advance technology. Everything is stainless steel and computerized. Our tour was really good though and got to taste straight out of one of the barrels that has another two years to go, and was really good already. The tasting was really good and our tour guide was interesting and well spoken. Ate lunch here and probably one of our best meals. (The Stave near Castle and Key was probably our favorite food location).

Our last distillery we visited which was not planned was Heaven Hill. We did not tour anything, just the gift shop and had a drink in the tasting room. We each did a flight. Not sure what the tour would have been but it seemed like a nice facility and a good stop if you are in the area. Probably a lot of information on the fire in '96 I would guess.

We spent most of our time in the Frankfurt area and it is a really neat little downtown. They were having a little Christmas celebration one night that we happened to be down there and all the locals were hanging out. Seemed like straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.

I definitely think two tours a day was a good amount due to driving distances and also sipping on drinks during meals and along the way. We reserved most tours ahead of time which really helped as well. Thank you to everyone that replied with their own feedback. Cheers!