Wine & Beer
Posted on 24. Jan, 2012 by admin in Featured
Close your eyes and think of Kentucky. What do you see? Horseracing? Bourbon? Right. But try a bit harder and you might get the sense of a decent wine and some incredible beer.
Not a lot of people know this, but Kentucky sported the first commercial vineyard in the US in 1798, spawned by Frenchman Jean-Jacques Dufour. He put 600 acres under cultivation near Lexington; soon Kentucky was making more than half of all America’s wines.
The civil war ruined many a vineyard, as did Prohibition, with most farmers turning to growing tobacco, not wine. The industry is starting to return to former glory with Kentucky vintners scooping gold medals at wine awards and the output growing ten-fold in five years. State and federal grants are helping transform tobacco fields into lush vineyards.
You can visit family vineyards or bigger concerns right across Kentucky, from the southern lakes region to the western hills and the Appalachians in the east, though most cluster in the bluegrass region, tucked away near Louisville and in the rolling fields of bluegrass, behind the white horse fences or old stone walls around Lexington and Versailles (ironically).
Try the Black Barn vinery in Lexington, boasting top clarets and bordeaux – “fine big dry reds” as Black Barn calls them; all made by Collin Boyd, who learned his trade working in France, in the St Emilion region no less.
For the compete list, click here or visit the interactive map, so you don’t accidentally drive past and miss that vintage red.
Beer, too, is making a comeback in Kentucky, once an important brewing state, much as it is all around the world, with small independent brewers, known nowadays as craft brewers, making fine-tasting pale ales and stouts
The Beer Engine in Danville is one of many craft ale small brewers. This establishment sports real ales and IPAs with spicy names such as Dogfishhead and King George Nut Brown.
Perhaps the state’s best known brewery is Alltech, established in 1794 and based in Lexington (it runs tours) which makes the ubiquitous Kentucky beers Kentucky Light, Kentucky Pale Ale, and Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which is aged in the fabled charred bourbon barrels. It’s good! But strong, 7.9%!!! No wonder some serve it as an aperatif.
When in Kentucky, don’t forget to taste perhaps the state’s most famous beer, Ale-8-One. It’s not a beer at all, rather a deliciously refreshing non-alcoholic ginger ale, one you can rarely find outside Kentucky, and brewed by a family concern in Winchester. Southern Kentuckians like to mix it with a local bourbon! There’s beer cheese spread too, a German imported idea traditionally made, and sold, pretty much only in Kentucky.
If you want all the beers, traditional foods, wines and bourbons, not to mention the fabled bluegrass music, there’s no better place than the Kentucky State Fair from August 18 in Louisville.
For a full list of brewers and wineries, head to:
http://www.kentuckytourism.com/things_to_do/wineries_breweries.aspx
