It was a chilly Tuesday lunchtime when I sauntered into Wild Turkey Distillery’s tasting room in the Jimmy Russell Visitor’s Center. Expecting to grab a neat pour of the latest Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse, a distillery-exclusive single barrel pick, or maybe even the new Wild Turkey 101 8-year-old, I instead noticed most visitors were drinking an Ectocooler-green cocktail.
Curious, I saw the small bar had a cocktail menu — and a pretty ambitious one at that. Alongside expected classics like the Old Fashioned, Manhattan, and Boulevardier were inventive house creations like Welcome Back, a blend of Longbranch bourbon, molasses, oat milk, bananas, and lemon curd. There was also 10 Years, 55 Seconds, a coffee cocktail made with coffee-infused Russell’s Reserve 10 Year Old Bourbon, Grand Marnier, Punt y Mes, and a Frangelico foam.
The green drink that everyone was enjoying was called Always Shining: Wild Turkey 101 Rye with honey liqueur, ginger, Braulio, and an acid-adjusted “yuzu” Midori, all carbonated in a SodaStream and served in a tall glass with a long ice cube.
The improbable mix of rye whiskey, alpine amaro, and melon liqueur somehow worked. It was a well-balanced highball — layered, complex, refreshing, and delicious. Completely unexpected, considering the setting.
Nestled in the rolling hills of rural Anderson County, at least a half-hour from a major city (Lexington), sits a sunlit bar above a gift shop that closes by 5 p.m. It doesn’t even share its menu online, yet these were some of the tastiest cocktails I’d had all month — a sign of a new era where distillery tasting rooms are no longer mere sampling spots but destinations for world-class mixed drinks.
The Distillery Becomes a Bar
“Traditionally a lot of distillery tasting rooms and visitor centers didn’t place much focus on modern bar programs,” says David Bates, who runs Wild Turkey’s bar program.
When he left New York to join Wild Turkey last year, his first task was to create an elevated cocktail experience for the newly renovated Visitor Center, which reopened in summer 2024. He was told to maintain a selection of the tried-and-true classics while also creating original, in-house cocktails.
Since many Bourbon Trail tourists expect whiskey neat or on ice, Bates made sure bourbon or rye remained the star of each drink. But with the Bourbon Trail booming, distilleries receive plenty of big-city visitors, including cocktail geeks willing to pay $18 for something innovative and unique.
“We wanted to have an offering for everyone, and we wanted to meet people where they are. Challenging expectations is really fun.”
“It’s not uncommon to have guests that are less familiar with cocktails standing shoulder to shoulder at the bar with individuals that routinely drink at some of the most established cocktail bars around the world,” Bates says. “As consumer interest in bourbon cocktails has grown, distilleries are looking at how to incorporate modern mixed drinks as part of the guest experience.”
In the Mix
Other Kentucky distilleries are likewise leaning into mixology.
Willett’s The Bar at Willett opened in 2019, with Andrew Pope, formerly of top bars in Washington, D.C., and Florida, serving as GM and beverage director. Besides well-executed classics like a split-base Willett and Cognac Sazerac, the current movie-themed menu features drinks like the Pineapple Express, a clarified cocktail combining rye, aquavit, pineapple, orange juice, and orgeat. Of course, there’s also the cult egg salad sandwich.
Lest you think these distillery bars are cynical showrooms for selling more bottles from the nearby gift shop, some Bar at Willett cocktails don’t even feature Willett spirits — like a Mardi Gras-inspired Hurricane with passion fruit and an expected rum blend. Similarly, many of Wild Turkey’s cocktails, notably that bright green Always Shining, don’t scream “this is a Wild Turkey cocktail.”
Maker’s Mark Star Hill Provisions restaurant offers farm-to-table food paired with cocktails made from produce grown on the distillery grounds. Last winter, the distillery hosted a holiday, Parisian-themed pop-up; called Le 46, it was helmed by Colin P. Field, noted former bartender of Paris’s Bar Hemingway.
The distillery cocktail renaissance extends beyond heritage producers. The upstart Bardstown Bourbon Company has its Kitchen & Bar, where the menu features barrel-aged Old Fashioneds and Manhattans, a bourbon-barrel-stave-smoked cocktail called Ship Shape made with seaweed water, and even a frozen bourbon and red wine slushie dubbed the Sip n’ Slide.
A Killer Crusta
While rural distilleries have elevated their offerings, Kentucky’s urban hubs are proving equally — if not more — inventive. Main Street in downtown Louisville, better known as “Whiskey Row,” has some of the finest whiskey bars in the country, but the stretch also counts some stellar cocktail bars. There’s hip and sophisticated Hell or High Water. Farther east, you’ll find vintage-cocktail-slinging Sevens. Nearby, Tartan House shakes up one of the finest Penicillins this side of Manhattan’s Attaboy.
Yet, my favorite cocktail in Louisville comes from a distillery bar: the Fort Nelson Crusta, served at The Bar at Fort Nelson, an unassuming spot on the second floor of Michter’s downtown microdistillery.
“We wanted to have an offering for everyone, and we wanted to meet people where they are,” says Matt Magliocco, the executive vice president of Michter’s Distillery. “Challenging expectations is really fun.”
The Crusta has been on the menu since the bar opened in 2019. The first time I had it, I was blown away by how a typical brandy cocktail had been transformed into one highlighting Michter’s US★1 Kentucky Straight Bourbon. It was surprisingly citrusy for a bourbon cocktail — perfectly balanced by vegetal and spicy yellow Chartreuse, honey and Demerara syrup, and Creole bitters.
“It really was the bar community more than anyone else who adopted [the Michter’s brand], and embraced it,” Magliocco says.
From the start, Michter’s designed The Bar at Fort Nelson to appeal to industry folks and cocktail enthusiasts alike. The Bar features high-end glassware from U.K. producer John Jenkins and an ice program featuring Clineball, Hoshizaki, and Scotsman machines — the same equipment you’d find in top cocktail bars. Unlike most of the rural distillery bars that close by late afternoon, The Bar at Fort Nelson stays open seven days a week, well into the evening.
This desire to appeal to the bar world and serious cocktail drinkers is also why Michter’s enlisted cocktail historian David Wondrich to craft the initial menu of classics, including that Crusta, along with Manhattans, a Whiskey Fix, and even a Springfield Punch for eight to 10 people.
Since late 2019, head bartender Dallas White has taken the reins, working alongside lead bartender Christy LeCompte to maintain Wondrich’s list of classics while adding a fresh lineup of modern cocktails rotated twice a year. The goal: satisfy both cocktail geeks and average Janes and Joes who might be unaccustomed to avant-garde cocktail culture.
The latest menu offers includes The Bare Necessities, a tropical-leaning drink combining Michter’s US★1 Kentucky Straight Bourbon with tiki-inspired ingredients like coconut rum, falernum, lemon, pineapple, pepita orgeat, guava, mint, and an absinthe mist.
“We try to make sure that we’re pushing the boundaries of creativity,” says White. “But we also want to make sure that we’re representing the whiskey with at least a few fun and interesting stirred options so that people who are more used to drinking it neat will have something that they can connect with.”
“Maybe it will be a stepping stone into becoming a cocktail enthusiast as well,” he says.
The Best Discoveries
Already, the cocktail and culinary worlds are taking notice of these distillery bars.
The Bar at Willett has become one of the toughest reservations in the state and this year earned a James Beard Award semifinalist slot in the “Outstanding Bar” category alongside more “typical” cocktail bars like Kumiko in Chicago and Thunderbolt in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, The Bar at Fort Nelson was named a 50 Best Discovery by the vaunted World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization. Even more impressive, top bartenders from across the globe have started to make pilgrimages to Michter’s in order to guest shift at the distillery’s bar. So far those bartenders have included Andrew Ho and Bastian Ciocca from Hope & Sesame in Guangzhou, China; Jesse Vida and Yana Keller of Singapore’s Atlas Bar; and Anna Sebastian, formerly of London’s Artesian.
In turn, White has become a bartending celebrity of sorts, invited to guest-shift at top spots like Toronto’s Library Bar.
At Wild Turkey, Bates continues to elevate his own burgeoning program, hand-cutting clear ice, making infusions and foams, and acid-adjusting Midori to the perfect tartness.
“I think we’ll continue to see high-end cocktails become more prominent [at distilleries] as the influence of modern cocktail culture continues to expand,” Bates says.
