Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2024 Review

Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2024 Review

The 2024 Kentucky Bourbon Festival was a very enjoyable, worthwhile experience! A fantastic variety of distilleries and pours, a large selection of food options, arts & crafts tents at one end of the festival, an on-site liquor store for some products not featured at the tastings, on-going musical events, distillery personalities sharing insights, 45 team-chosen single barrel picks, and bottle signings with musician private picks (Halestorm was there!) and distillery personality signings.

Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale & Joe Hottinger with their Three Cord bourbon

I purchased the 3-Day pass option when tickets were first released in April. They had 4 VIP options available, a 3-Day Pass, and a Sunday Only Pass. Hours were 12:00 – 6:00 on Friday & Saturday, 12:00 – 4:00 on Sunday (VIP tickets got you in at 11:00 each day). I don’t think that the Sunday Only Pass is a good option, unless you have a very limited and focused plan for tasting and/or purchasing. Tickets were available at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival website.

Ticket options included:
$180 Bourbon Taster 3-day pass
$105 for Sunday Sampler
$595 for Enthusiast VIP
$695 for Flask Force VIP
$895 for Flask Force Gold
$1,295 for Decanter Club

All VIP passes included these additional perks plus individual extras based upon level purchased:

3 Day Access to the Festival Fri-Sun
Separate VIP Gate Early Entry (11 AM)
Access to A/C VIP Penthouse
Bottle Signings by Master Distillers
Access to VIP Bar with Premium Pours
Catering and Small Bites
One Ticket to Bourbon in the Air on Thurs
Glencairn Travel Kit & 2 Glasses
KYBF “Wee” Glencairn Tasting Glass
Buy Unique Bottles Direct from Distillers
Mountain Valley Spring Water Bottles
Access to IV Hydration Station*
Bourbon Festival Credential & Lanyard
Access to Deployment Cigar Lounge*
Bourbon :30 Show Viewing
Private Luxury Restroom Trailer
Entry to Win an Oris Timepiece
Complimentary Bourbon Lockers Item
* Indicates additional charge may apply

Kentucky Bourbon Festival Map 2024

All Pass Sessions and Events

All passes included access to the general stage where on-going events ran throughout the day, including unannounced musicians, including Halestorm, who performed throughout the day.

Premium Sessions & Events

Premium sessions and events were also available to purchase at the time you buy your tickets (and some may have been included with a VIP pass). Be sure to save your receipt and bring a copy with you! The scanner for purchased private events wasn’t reliable in my experience.

2024 Premium Sessions & Events included:

Thursday September 12:

• A Taste of Heritage and a Glimpse of the Future at Heaven Hill
  1:00-4:00 PM – $250
• Bourbon in the Air
  6:00-9:30 PM – $175

Friday September 13:

• Cocktails: Worthy of a Bar, but Easy Enough for Home
  12:30-1:30 PM – $85
• Friday Bourbon Opener, Bourbon and Boards featuring Rabbit Hole
  12:30-2:00 PM – $95
• Whiskey Blending as It’s Done at Pursuit Spirits
  2:00-3:00 PM – $85
• Deconstructing a Barrell Bourbon Blend
  3:30-4:30 PM – $85
• Friday Bourbon Engagement, featuring Angel’s Envy
  4:00-5:30 PM – $95
• Rare Whiskey Tasting: Proprietor’s Picks of Olde St. Nick
  5:00-6:00 PM – $125

Saturday September 14:

• Saturday Bourbon Opener, featuring Bardstown Bourbon Co
  12:30-2:00 PM – $95
• Cocktails: Make ‘em Pop
  12:30-1:30 PM – $85
• Whiskey Blending: Precision + Balance = Perfection
  2:00-3:00 PM – $85
• Deconstructing a Bourbon: Four Roses Small Batch Select
  3:30-4:30 PM – $85
• Saturday Bourbon Engagement, featuring Heaven Hill
  4:00-5:30 PM – $95
• A Tasting of Woodford Reserve Distillery Series and Master’s Collection Bourbons with Chris Morris
  5:00-8:00 PM – $250
• Kentucky Bourbon Festival Icons Dinner
  7:00-10:00 PM – $500

Sunday September 15:

• Sunday Brunch, Bourbon, Bacon and Burgoo, featuring Michter’s
  12:30-2:00 PM – $95
• Rare and Vintage Bourbon Pours with Travis Hill
  12:30-1:30 PM – $125

For meal options, just outside the event there is a street lined with assorted food trucks. Getting in and out of the festival to access these options was fast and painless. On the actual grounds there were several food vendors available, and if you have VIP tickets then free food was available all day in an air conditioned area.

The Distilleries

There were 62 distilleries to choose from and each one had multiple offerings with a total of around 200 whiskeys to sample. Specialty cocktails were also available and allocated pours were randomly released at some distilleries throughout the event.

Single Barrel Level

• Angle’s Envy
• Bardstown
• Four Roses
• Green River
• James Bean
• Maker’s Mark
• Old Forester
• Preservation
• Whiskey House
• Woodford Reserve

Small Batch Level

• 1792
• Barrell Craft Spirits
• Bulleit
• Chicken Cock
• Limestone Branch
• Lux Row
• Michter’s
• New Riff
• Rabbit Hole
• Wild Turkey
• Wilderness Trail

Craft Distiller Level

• 15 Stars
• Augusta
• Barrel House
• Bespoken
• Bluegrass
• Burton James
• Buzzard’s Roost
• Casey Jones
• Castle & Key
• Dueling Grounds
• Curley
• Even Williams
• Fresh Bourbon
• Hartfield & Co
• Heaven’s Door
• Hemmingway
• Jeptha Creed
• Kentucky Owl
• Kentucky Peerless
• Lawrenceburg Bourbon Co
• Log Still
• Luca Mariano
• Lucky Seven
• Mary Dowling
• Milam & Green
• Neeley Family
• Nulu
• O.H. Ingram
• Old Louisville
• Old Steelhouse
• Penelope
• Pursuit Spirits
• RD One
• Red Line
• Ross & Squibb
• The Bard
• Three Chord
• Town Branch
• Wenzel
• Whiskey Thief

VIP Tickets – Are They Worth It?

Now that I’m sitting down to write this Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2024 review, I understand why there was such a rush to purchase VIP tickets, and why they all sold out within one hour on the first day tickets became available. And that is actually the day prior to the official ticket release date. You had to be on a special list that you can sign up for at the Bourbon Festival website to get a 24 hour heads up on ticket purchases.

The biggest purpose of VIP tickets, as far as I’m concerned, is that you get to enter the grounds one hour early. That’s not really a big deal if you’re just there to drink samples and explore new whiskeys. But it’s a huge deal if you want to get in one of the lines for allocated releases at Heaven Hill, Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, or any of the other highly allocated bottles. That hour early entry puts you head and shoulders above everyone else. For instance, this year they were only releasing 40 bottles at a time of the Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged 2024 (which was released the weekend of the festival). I think they had two releases on Saturday, separated by two hours, and two releases on Sunday separated by one hour. The Sunday 12:00 releases were all purchased by VIP ticket holders by the time the general admission people (including me) got in line.

Festival Allocated Releases 2024

These are the allocated releases and hard to find bottles that I know were available in limited supply at MSRP during the 2024 Kentucky Bourbon Festival:

• Heaven Hill 18
• Parker’s Heritage Collection 14 Year Barrel Finished
• Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged 2024
• Little Book “The Infinite”
• Old Fitzgerald 13
• Booker’s “The Reserve” 2024
• Bomberger’s
• Knob Creek 18

Leave a comment if you know of other hard to find bottles that were available!

The Heaven Hill bottle purchase line grew to around 400 people deep and the wait was 3 – 4 hours to try to get an allocated bottle.

Suggestions for the Event

• Book your hotel room first! Rooms fill up fast, so your travel plans may change based on availability of rooms. I looked for a room five months in advance and initially could only find something 20 miles away! Then I switched to using a travel agency, and they found me a room in Bardstown.
• Sunday only tickets… Kind of a rip off in my opinion! Instead of closing at 6 PM like Friday, and Saturday, they close at 4 PM, but last call is around 330. You either need to know exactly what you want or you’re going to find yourself frustrated by not getting to the whiskeys you wanted to try.
• Order one of the storage lockers! Cost me about $53 for the whole weekend (free for VIP tickets). Having the storage space on the grounds is worth it so you don’t have to carry purchased products or extra gear around all day.
• Some of the hotels offer a free trolley service that runs about every 30 minutes to and from the festival. Check with your hotel see if they have a service.
• Bring a water bottle (disposable or personal one). They have water stations, but they only have a spout to refill an existing container or paper cup.
• Bring a Glencairn lanyard for a small Glencairn if you have one. This year, Green River distillery was handing out free promotional ones that were really nice. This makes sure that you don’t loose your glass, plus keeps you “hands free”.
• Having a shoulder pack or hip pack is really handy! And if you also have a rented locker, you can always store it if you get tired of carrying it. 
• ZBiotics! I’m not sponsored by them at all, but I did try ZBiotics during the festival, and the morning after was significantly better throughout the whole weekend, compared to how I would normally have felt with the same amount of alcohol consumed. They are expensive, but in my opinion, totally worth it!
• If you purchase access to any of the special classes or sessions offered, bring a copy of your receipt! I purchased access to the Heaven Hill tasting on Saturday afternoon. But they failed to associate my purchase with my wristband, so I could not get in without proof of purchase. That receipt was in an email from five months ago! So I missed out and lost money. 
• Bring a portable cell phone charger! Some backpacks, hip packs and sling packs have a port for charging your phone. But they still require a portable charger.
• Establish your bottle purchase budget before the show!
• Stay within your established budget!
• Ask about Allocated releases. When getting samples from your favorite brands, ask if they will have any special (allocated) bottles released over the weekend and get the schedule for those releases, as well as quantity available if they’re willing to tell you. For instance, the Makers Mark Cellar Aged was being released two or three times on Saturday with only 40 bottles released each time. And the Heaven Hill purchase line was several hundreds of people deep with a 3 – 4 hour wait.
• Use a reputable car rental agency! I booked mine through Expedia and they paired me with Dollar Car Rental, who was pathetically inadequate. I called the day of my flight to change the pick-up time and learned that they were closed when my plane landed at midnight and they had no options for getting your key after hours. I made a total of 36 calls (during business hours) over several days to sort this out, but only reached a live person 3 times. Long story short, I had to pay for a car that I never used, plus paid for Uber or walked everywhere instead.

Even with long lines at the festival opening each day, entrance to the event was very quick. You purchase your tickets before the festival and they mail you a cloth wristband with a scannable ID that you wear all weekend. They have multiple scanners at the entrance, which scan your wristband. It takes about 1 1/2 seconds per person to scan and enter, so even with a long line the process goes very quickly.  That same wristband is also used to identify you in the VIP tent or any special sessions that you have pre-purchased. But remember to bring a receipt for special session events because the wristbands were not reliable for those events in my experience.

Food Truck Vendors

Two blocks along 5th Street was lined with food trucks all weekend. 5th Street is also where the entrance to the festival is located, so getting some bangin’ food was a quick and easy detour from all your favorite tastings. Vendors included:

• 502 BBQ
• Acme Chicken Bowls
• Roll Up Cafe
• Made in Brazil
• Con Aji y Cafe
• Chop It Like It’s Hot
• Upnormal
• Everybody Loves Bacon
• Ramiro’s Catina
• Sugar Rush
• Rolling Tacos
• Big Moe’s BBQ
• It’s Tea Time
• Forks Up Diner
• Alchemy Empanadas
• Stumps Diner
• Erhlers Ice Cream
• Ramiro’s Slushi Truck
• Mini Mai’s Thai
• Cask Southern Kitchen

A Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2024 review needs at least a few more pics of the event. With 200 pours available, I simply chose my best photos to “give you a taste” of what the experience was like.

Barrel Char Levels 1 – 5. Level 1 is on the right, 5 on the left.

Do you have additional info or thoughts to add to this Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2024 Review? What bottles did you score? What would you do differently next time?