A. Smith Bowman Distillery Tour!
Background
As I assume most people reading this, I have been roughly zero for infinity in whiskey lotteries since the dawn of time. Well, my fortunes finally turned, and I won this year’s A. Smith Bowman Cask Strength lottery (review forthcoming, I promise!). Because mental health is important, I opted not to drive an hour and a half down the hellhole that is I-95 to merely pick up a bottle and turn around. What better opportunity to spend an afternoon touring A. Smith Bowman and writing up my experience at this Virginia institution! Just like my three part series from Kentucky, details on the tour are below along with any notable gift shop offerings.
A. Smith Bowman: Distillery Tour
Price/Length: Complimentary, and tours run 30 minutes.
Details: I’ve found often when you roll up to a distillery, there’s a Willy Wonka-esque moment of wonder. That is uh, not quite the case when you roll up to A Smith Bowman. Apparently, the building was an old FMC corp cellophane factory… and it looks it! Both the exterior and interior give major “I was big in the 60s” vibes. The building apparently was dormant for a period until Bowman moved in during the 80s, Four Roses Spanish architecture this is not. You walk in, and the staff is exceptionally friendly and the gift shop cozy… even though it’s drowning a little in comparison to the unused space.
As we head into the distillery proper we see Mary, their one of a kind still with the odd looking condenser ball. All distillate that ends up in their bourbon passes through many, but to keep up with volume the white dog comes in from their ‘sister distillery’ (Buffalo Trace but they aren’t going to say that) and then again passes through Mary. One of the cooler aspects of the tour are the experiments, which Bowman puts basically everywhere. Right near Mary is a rack of them, including vanilla infused barrels, amburana, and a hot sauce barrel our tour guide informs us is one of the worst whiskeys they’ve made. But you’ll also see Hungarian oak barrels, Virginia Oak, and an “original recipe” barrel made in 2015 that is apparently an old mashbill they discovered and is entirely VA produced. Their goal is to get those barrels to 20 years.
We then enter one of four again warehouses, which are lightly climate controlled. Lightly because they are not doing any Old Forester style heat cycling here. Basically if the temperature drops below 45 degrees, the heat kicks on for a little to ensure the whiskey in the barrels keeps aging. They also dont have AC, but because the warehouses are brick and there are very few windows they stay pretty cool in the summer. They also famously store their barrels vertically, largely because it’s easier to move them around on pallets given their small staff. But it also means liquid is touching all staves at all time so barrels don’t need to be turned.
Finally we conclude with a very simple tasting: Bowman’s Vodka, their Caribbean Rum, Isaac Bowman (the port finish), and finally their Mary Hite Bowman Caramel Bourbon Cream. I haven’t met a bourbon cream I don’t love adding to the occasional weekend coffee, so a bottle of that obviously went home with me.
Overall Thoughts: At no fault of the fantastic Bowman staff- this is a pretty run of the mill experience. It’s obviously nice that tours are complimentary, and it seems like they are pretty available, but that lack of cost has its drawbacks. Bowman, and honestly, Sazerac writ large, have not really modernized to the Bardstown Bourbon Company or Heaven Hill premium experience line of thinking. How many people would pay 20, 30, hell 50 to taste a line up of limited releases? Or taste Bowman right from the barrel? The tasting itself is also reminiscent of the Buffalo Trace tasting, in that you’re going to drink a bunch of not bourbon. If you’re in town and have some time to kill, great! You could find worse ways to spend an hour. I just wouldn’t recommend a massive destination trip to check it out.
Notable Gift Shop Offerings: None really. They appear to have had some John J Bowman’s at open but I didn’t see any by the time I left.
