Bardstown Bourbon Company is the easiest distillery in town to fit to your budget: eight published experiences, from the $24 Core Four Tour to a $250 tasting of vintage whiskey in its library, all on a modern, glass-walled campus about ten minutes east of Court Square. Book the Core Four for a classic tour with a rickhouse barrel tasting, or skip the tour for Rickhouse Barrel Thieving or a cocktail class. Two rules shape your plans: every experience is 21+, and there are no tours on Mondays or Tuesdays.
A young distillery with an old-school master distiller
Bardstown Bourbon Company was announced on June 26, 2014, as a $25 million distillery on 100 acres in the Nelson County Industrial Park, and the announcement called it “the fifth distillery in Nelson County.” Production began in September 2016. The master distiller is Steve Nally, a member of the Bourbon Hall of Fame, and a 2022 expansion added 16 fermenters, another distillation column and roughly 55,000 barrels a year of capacity, taking the site past 390,000 square feet, according to the state’s economic development office.
Much of that capacity goes to other brands. Bardstown Bourbon Company distills for outside labels through its contract program, now called Lofted Spirits, which is why a guide may point at a fermenter and tell you whose whiskey is bubbling inside. Its own lines include Estate Distilled, the Discovery Series, collaborative Barrel Finish releases, Single Barrel and Distillery Reserve. Recent honors listed on its website include Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2025 and 2026 and IWSC Worldwide Producer of the Year in 2023.
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail calls it “the first Napa Valley-style destination on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail” to combine distilling, food and drink, and that’s a fair description. Expect contemporary architecture, big windows onto the stills and a restaurant as much as a production floor.
Every tour, compared
All prices and lengths below are published on the Bardstown Bourbon Company experience page. Every experience is 21+.
| Experience | Length | Price | What’s included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Four Tour | 1 hour | $24 | Distillery tour, rickhouse barrel tasting, tasting of 4 whiskeys (3 bourbons, 1 rye) |
| Rickhouse Barrel Thieving | 1 hour | $30 | Three whiskeys drawn straight from barrels; no distillery tour |
| Shaken & Stirred | 75 minutes | $55 | Hands-on cocktail class, 2 cocktails; no tour |
| Shaken & Stirred: Brunch | 90 minutes | $65 | Brunch cocktails plus a biscuit with house-made butters |
| Beyond the Barrel | 1.5 hours | $60 | Tour, rickhouse, tasting of 3 single barrels with a chance to buy |
| Behind the Scenes | 3.5 hours | $75 | The full distillation process and the rickhouse tasting room |
| Tour with the Master | 2 hours | $100 | Personal tour with Master Distiller Steve Nally |
| A Taste of Whiskey History | 30 minutes | $250 | Three vintage whiskeys in the library |
Which one should you book?
First distillery tour of the trip: the Core Four. At $24 it’s one of the best-value tours in Bardstown, and the rickhouse stop, where you taste from a barrel, is what reviewers remember.
Already toured elsewhere: Rickhouse Barrel Thieving. You skip the grain-to-still walk you’ve heard twice already and go straight to the warehouse, where whiskey is drawn from the barrel with a thief (the long tube distillers use to pull samples).
Serious enthusiasts: Behind the Scenes is the deal of the list, three and a half hours for $75. Tour with the Master is the rare chance to spend two hours with a Hall of Fame distiller, so book it early when dates are released.
Groups and celebrations: Shaken & Stirred is built for friends who’d rather make an Old Fashioned than hear about mash bills. The brunch version comes with a biscuit. For more group ideas, see girls’ trips and bachelorette weekends.
The splurge: A Taste of Whiskey History pours three vintage whiskeys from a library that the distillery says holds more than 400 bourbons and ryes dating back to 1892. It’s 30 minutes and $250, and for a certain kind of bourbon lover, it’s the highlight of the trip.
The Kitchen & Bar
Lunch here is part of the plan for many visitors. The Kitchen & Bar, which older listings call Bottle & Bond, serves Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., per the distillery’s own page. It’s closed Monday and Tuesday by omission from those hours. The whiskey library is the backdrop, and TripAdvisor reviewers single out the chicken sandwich. Some third-party listings still show dinner hours, but the official hours are lunch only, so don’t plan dinner here without calling. Our guide to distillery restaurants and bars compares it with Five Brothers at Heaven Hill and The Bar at Willett.
Hours and booking
The visitor center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Monday and Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Monday and Tuesday you can shop and look around, but no tours run. Reservations are “strongly recommended.” Fall weekends, Kentucky Bourbon Festival week in September and National Bourbon Week in June book up first.
Tips:
- The Core Four and Beyond the Barrel both visit the rickhouse. Bring a layer in cold months.
- Reviewers praise the headset audio on tours, which helps you hear the guide next to loud equipment.
- One tour per distillery per day is Kentucky law, so choose one experience per person.
- Bring a government photo ID for every adult in your party.
If you can’t decide, remember the one-tour-per-day rule and split across two days: the Core Four on day one to learn the place, then Rickhouse Barrel Thieving or a cocktail class on day two once you know what you like.
Getting there
The distillery is at 1500 Parkway Drive, in the industrial park on the east side of town, about four miles and ten minutes from Court Square. Parking is on site. This isn’t a walkable stop from downtown, so plan a designated driver or book a driver through our bourbon tours and transportation guide.
Pair it with
Lux Row Distillers is on the same east side of town, about ten minutes away, which makes an easy two-distillery afternoon: tour at Bardstown Bourbon Company, lunch at the Kitchen & Bar, then Lux Row’s barrel wall. For a morning-to-evening day, start at Willett on the south side and finish downtown at Circa 1856, which stays open into the evening. Want cocktail ideas to take home? See bourbon cocktails and food.
Is it worth it?
Yes, and it holds a 4.9 rating from more than 1,200 TripAdvisor reviews to prove it. The variety of tickets means you can come twice on one trip, on different days, and have two different experiences. The one knock from a minority of reviewers is that a modern campus lacks the patina of the older estates. Balance it with a historic stop, and Bardstown Bourbon Company becomes the most flexible piece of your bourbon plan. See how it compares on price and length in our distillery tours guide.
