Maker's Mark

Maker's Mark is the overrated Disneyland of the bourbon trail: crowded, impersonal, overpriced, and extremely commercialized. You have to fight for a parking spot with loads of tour buses and limos. You can't get a tasting without going on the tour, so if you just want to try their bourbon, you have to go to their restaurant and pay $17 for a flight of 4 1-oz tastes. The restaurant food was pretty good but overpriced, and the host didn't want to be bothered when I had to go ask for forks and napkins. The bourbon was nothing special. This is the only distillery I visited where I had absolutely no interest in buying anything to take home. This place is busy enough, they clearly don't need my business.

I'll start by saying the grounds here are beautiful - they put a lot of time in that. Unfortunately, our clan (family reunion) was too large to do a tour or tasting so we just went to sample and visit the gift shop. Dipping your own bottle was cool - we loved that but the tasting flights at their little bar area (restaurant not open yet) were too expensive compared to the other places we went that day. Maker's is very well know so I guess I expected something different. We were somewhat disappointed.

We were visiting Bardstwon nearby this weekend and although we could not get a tour reservation at MM in advance because they were all booked. We decided to take our chances and arrived when they opened Saturday morning at 9:30 am. Sure glad we did. They just happened to be able to accommodate us.
We were assigned to their best tour guide (IOP), Josi, and began our stroll with her through their only terrific Maker's Mark historic distilling facility located down in Loretto, KY about 15 miles from Bardstown on a beautiful piece of KY countryside.
This is an excellent Bourbon company, making excellent Bourbon, using classic old recipes and methods in an excellent distillery location with excellent people. Iook forward to becoming a full blown Ambassador in a few years and restocking my liquor cabinet with MM from my own barrel that they are putting love into for us. The best of the best IMO.

I signed up to be a Makers Mark Ambassador 5 years ago and the barrel with my name on it just came of age. So we made arrangements to tour as well as pick up a few bottles with my name on them and dip in wax. The tours are great with lots of history and very knowledgeable tour hosts. Since it was a Saturday production wasn't running but you get to see pretty much start to finish minus the bottling on the weekend.

Makers Mark was the distillery everyone in our group wanted to visit. The grounds are beautiful and extensive, with several race horse artwork located around. Madison, our guide, was a master at keeping our group together and providing us with her extensive knowledge of Bourbon distilling and history and processes at Makers Mark. The distillery is large and expensive, so there is some walking, and the buildings are very large, so you can easily see all aspects of the distilling process. The tour ends with bourbon tasting. After, you enter the gift shop where you have an opportunity to buy a bottle and deal it with the iconic hot wax!! Great tour on the Bourbon Trail!!

This distillery has done a marvelous job of disguising itself as a European village instead of an industrial facility that makes great bourbon. Great tour guide, and although we could not go inside many of the buildings due to covid, the ones we saw were terrific. Probably the most laid back tours of the four distilleries we visited in August 2020.

This is a must for a bourbon trail tour. Get tickets on line - cannot stress that enough and get early as well or you may be shut out. Our host Sam was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. We saw everythinG, from still to printing labels, to bottling, to dipping in red wax, to ric house. Tasting was great as well. A must see.

BUT nowhere are you told until you are in the middle of the tour that the actual distillery is not open during August. You get to see pictures but it is not nearly the same and that should be made clear before you book a tour as w/o seeing the actual distillation process you miss most of the understanding of how bourbon is made--not to mention it is a bit unfair to pay full price for a tour and not see most of what you came to see! To add to it the bottling facilities are closed to the public b/c of pandemic issues (understandable) but that was not mentioned until you would have seen that part of the operation and, again, you are paying full price for only a fraction of the tour.
Essentially you are paying to walk around the grounds, have the process explained to you, see the "bourbon cave" and a pretty empty rickhouse, get a tasting of four products, and an opportunity to visit the gift shop. Having been on the tour several times previously I know what we missed on this visit and it was disappointing (understandable in the case of the bottling facilities but it still should have been mentioned when making reservations).
Again the facilities are beautiful and the docents do a very good job of explaining what happens and why Maker's Mark is different but I feel a bit cheated that we received only a partial tour for full price.

We made reservations for our tour a few months before our visit. This was a very cool tour! The property is beautiful. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and friendly. She provided us with a lot of great information about the history of the distillery and the distilling property. She was able to answer any of our questions. We were able to sample 4 different Maker's Mark whiskeys. Very cool art pieces around the property as well. The highlight was the Chihuly glass pieces in the ceiling at the end of the tour. There is a restaurant located on the property and a gift shop. We were able to dip our own Maker's Mark bottles to take home with us as well.

Ambassador Tour - our guide, Laura, was wonderful. She made the tour educational and very entertaining. The restaurant was open, but I recommend checking the menu first as the list of offerings is small and a bit unusual. There may not be something that everyone will eat.