My Trip to Kentucky: Second Day on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail

We enjoyed our first day on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in downtown Louisville, so we were excited to continue exploring more distilleries outside of the city. For our second day on the Trail, we mostly stuck around Frankfort, the capital city of Kentucky.

A "whiskey thief" is this copper tube, almost like a straw, that you dip into the barrels to take a taste.

Our first stop at ten in the morning was Whiskey Thief, a smaller local distillery (what a way to start the day!). It was a very pretty day, so we enjoyed our tasting al fresco on the Three Boys Farm where the distillery is located. We had tastes of five spirits: four bourbons of different ages/mash profiles and a rye. Whiskey Thief's claim to fame is that their single-barrel spirits are uncut and unfiltered, meaning that every barrel is different, the proof isn't cut down with water, and all the little char bits from the barrel are left in the liquid (so the sediment in your glass is normal). Their spirits were quite strong (~114+ proof), and our mouths were tingly and our throats warm (the "Kentucky hug"). As a souvenir, while we did not do this, you could actually fill your own bottle straight from the barrel and take it home with you. You can't buy their spirits anywhere off the property, so it's really local and one-of-a-kind! Along with some pretzels and a bourbon ball candy, we actually got a second tasting of other spirits in the giftshop, like flavored moonshines and the like. So it was like a two-for-one experience!

The Three Boys Farm has a cat on the property named Pluto. Of course I had to pet him!

This is the old capital building in Frankfort.

After our trip to the farm, we headed to downtown Frankfort. After having pizza for lunch at the Locals, we had just enough time to slip in for a quick tasting at Glenns Creek Distillery before our reservation at Woodford Reserve. Glenns Creek was more of a hole-in-the-wall place; you climbed up some metal stairs and came into a narrow tasting room that could barely hold ten people. They had more than ten spirits on the menu, but you could only taste five of them. So I tried several bourbons and their vodka. I didn't really care for any of them, but then again I was a bit rushed to get to the next tasting. She shuffled us off pretty quickly, saying that Woodford Reserve is very particular about being on time!

I liked this flower wall at Woodford Reserve. My little jacket just happened to match!

Woodford Reserve does ask for you to arrive twenty minutes before your reservation, which is a bit excessive, but I guess it ensures that everyone is there in time for the tour. The feel of the visitors center is kind of corporate, but I guess it is a pretty well-known and successful brand. The tour was very cool, since we got to go inside multiple buildings on the property. We saw the fermenters and the stills, and we got to see where the barrels are stored. And all Woodford Reserve products are bottled and distributed from the same building, so no matter where you are in the world or what year you buy the spirits, they all came from the same place. During the tasting, we tried their bourbon, rye, and double oaked bourbon, as well as a taste of a cranberry lemonade cocktail (and another bourbon ball!). We didn't buy any products in the giftshop, although we were disappointed to learn that they had sold out of their annual Kentucky Derby bottle (although I found some online to send to my dad, since he loves Secretariat)!

Woodford Reserve recently doubled their capacity, now featuring SIX copper pot stills. 

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by the Josephine Sculpture Park on a whim after seeing a road sign for it. On a nice, sunny day, it was very pleasant walking through the grass and seeing the modern art (a lot of which you could touch and even climb on). It reminded me of Glenstone or the sculpture garden in Minneapolis. We saw lots of wildlife, including a huge rabbit and a swallow peeking its head out of its house. Not an original stop on our itinerary, but a very happy accident!

Here are some photos of the artwork:

Here's the bird peeking out of its nest!

Another fun day in Kentucky! Next up: our day in Cincinnati! 

My Trip to Kentucky: First Day on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail!

 

Part of a cool Kentucky Derby mural in downtown Lousiville

The Sunday after the Kentucky Derby (read my blog post about my experience at the races) started with horrible rain and thunder, so we stayed at the hotel a little later than planned. But once things cleared up, we headed to downtown Louisville to start our journey on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Most distilleries didn't open until the afternoon, so we started out trying some Derby Pie and Rabbit Hole whiskey (the distillery was closed, so we figured we'd try the spirits elsewhere) at Doc Crow's and had brunch at The Porch.

Upstairs at Angel's Envy, we got to see the mash in the fermenters. They also had a hands-on interactive display of their grains, and I was definitely getting ASMR vibes from touching the corn kernels, barley, etc.

Our first distillery of the day was Angel's Envy, and that tour was amazing! Our tour guide really knew her stuff, and the facilities were beautiful. I liked the unique touches, like pouring some of their moonshine on your hands as hand sanitizer and then clapping your hands and smelling them (it sounds weird, but after you clapped your hands, they did smell like corn, what the moonshine is made from!). And the tasting in one of their many beautiful tasting rooms was very nice. We learned how to "acclimate" our palates by swishing the first sip for ten seconds (the "Kentucky chew"), then swishing the second sip for five seconds, and having our "true taste" with the third sip. We had the chance to try their bourbon (both neat and on the rocks) paired with a yummy orange chimere from Art Eatables (we went there later to buy some of our own candy!), as well as their rum-cask finished rye whiskey (some of the best rye whiskey my boyfriend and I have ever had). This tour and tasting is a must-do if you visit Louisville!

Inside the Evan Williams distillery, you can see an older version of the store front, so it's like a store within a store!

The next distillery we visited was Evan Williams. They aren't known for having fancy or expensive whiskey, but they are a well-known brand. And the tour was great! The tour is very interactive with several videos and other multi-media exhibits. Our tour guide was a funny guy, and I was entertained the whole time. Their spirits aren't my favorite, but the tasting included trying four of their spirits (and a chocolate as well), and they offered water to "open up" the whiskeys, which I appreciated. I would recommend this tour as a fun experience and a cool history lesson.

I had to get a photo with this great fountain at Evan Williams!

After that visit, we finished the day with a quick tasting over at Barrels & Billets. We arrived near closing time, so we just did a mini-cocktail tasting; we tried a smoked margarita, a strawberry drink, and a "confresi colada" (like a painkiller except with rye whiskey instead of spiced rum). I don't usually like smoky-flavored drinks, but their margarita was pretty yummy. We didn't buy anything else, but if we had, I think I would have gone for a bottle of that. 

And of course there's a big history of baseball in the city, so we saw a lot of that around!

Instead of having stars on the sidewalk like they do in Hollywood, there were "bases" for famous baseball players.
This one is for Babe Ruth!

This huge bat is at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. We didn't visit the museum (I went as a kid),
but this ginormous bat is a sight to see!

This statue of Pee Wee Reese is in front of Louisville Slugger Field, where their minor league baseball team plays
(their mascot is the bat, like the animal!)

Despite the rainy day, we still had a fun time exploring downtown Louisville, and we especially enjoyed the two distillery tours. Day Two of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail would be next; stay tuned for that blog post!

Play Version of "Pride and Prejudice"

 

Image found here. Photo by Brian Knapp

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite stories. I grew up watching the BBC mini series (my mom seemed to watch it once a month; it's to the point that my parents have pretty much memorized every single line of dialogue), and I read the book my senior year of high school. It's a fun, romantic commentary on Victorian society, particularly regarding women. So when I saw that the Writer's Center in Bethesda was showing a play version, I bought tickets off Goldstar for a great deal. 

I thought this was a wonderful production! I felt the play was true to the original book, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself (despite the show starting ten minutes late). Here are my main take-aways:

Actors

The actors playing Mr. and Mrs. Bennett (Tom Howley and Andrea Spitz, respectively) acted JUST like the parents in the mini series. And Katherine Leiden, playing Lizzy, was clearly inspired by Keira Knightley from the feature film (which is rubbish. Don't bother with anything other than the mini series!). Her accent and voice were nearly identical to those of the famous actress, and she even mimicked her facial expressions and other mannerisms. I wonder how many times she watched the movie to do that... Leiden was also quite sunburned from the day before, which killed the character a bit for me, because a proper Victorian woman never would have been in the sun like that. And I don't know if it was the sunburn, but her eyes and cheeks looked so sallow, it was almost distracting. My other favorite actors from this show were Amanda Dullin-Jones as the annoying youngest sister Lydia, Nicholas Temple as Darcy (I saw him in "Perfect Arrangement" at Silver Spring Stage, as well as "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the same venue, and he was great in both of those, too!), and Declan Cashman as Catherine de Bourgh (such a great character to hate!). 

Set

The play opens up (and uses throughout) Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, which is one of my favorites (it's the same music used in the unicorn/centaur scene of Fantasia). So I immensely enjoyed hearing that during breaks and such. The physical set had an indoor-outdoor field so that it could easily represent either setting. There were multiple entrance ways to allow the actors to walk in and out as if they were walking through a house from room to room, which I thought was quite clever. The lighting was a bit off: they were using purplish light (perhaps because it's less harsh), which made the actors' hair look magenta. At first I actually thought that one of the actresses had pink hair! 

Length

I have to admit that I have a short attention span and tend to get a little antsy. I admire that they were able to distill the book down into less than three hours (I think the mini series is six!), but it was still too long for my liking. There were a few dancing scenes that I thought were unnecessary, or at the very least could have been shortened. And the second act was longer than the first, which is unusual. While I did like the show very much, I was ready to be home as the second act was only just beginning to wind down. 

Even with my minor complaints, I still really enjoyed this play. Bravo!

My Trip to Kentucky: Our Day at the Kentucky Derby!

 

For my birthday, my boyfriend likes to take me on a trip. Last year we went to Nashville (read that blog post here), and this year he took me to Kentucky, mainly to see the Kentucky Derby! I've always loved horses (never grew out of my "pony phase" from childhood), so going to the famous race at Churchill Downs has been on my bucket list for a while. 

I knew I wanted to see this Annie Oakley cow at the Lost River Trading Post!

To save money, we made it into a road trip, so our first day was spent driving through the pretty mountains of Virginia and West Virginia (Did you know WV is the only state that is completely inside the Appalachian Mountain region?) and the bluegrass of Kentucky. We made a few stops along the way, visiting the Lost River Trading Post and tasting some wines at Equus Run Vineyards. The drive took us all day, but it was sunny out and the nature was beautiful to see (and fun to see lots of cows and horses, too!). 

I loved this painted horse on the Equus Run Vineyards property!

The next day was Derby Day! We weren't sure about traffic or parking, so we got an early start and arrived just about when the first race of the day started. We immediately got mint julips and found a picnic table with another couple who we befriended for the day. There was certainly lots of people watching (the hats!), and through the TwinSpires app I could easily place bets on the races. Since we got there so early, it ended up being a long day, and we actually left before the official Kentucky Derby race started. But we certainly can say we experienced the Derby!

Bigfoot was at the Derby photo-bombing everyone!

But I have to say... The Derby experience was not everything I had hoped it would be. I was going to do a pros and cons list, but most of the day was cons, so we'll just go with those (in no particular order):

The worst of many blisters I had on my feet from walking to Churchill Downs. It now looks like a black bruise.

1. Even though more than 150,000 people attend this event, the whole place has only TWO entrances, and everyone has to funnel in from the same starting point. Most sporting venues are just a fraction of that attendance, and they have many more entrances for everyone to spread out. So not only is it crowded, but you end up walking a lot to get to where you want to go. And getting out is even worse: you seriously have to walk MILES in the wrong direction because the road is completely blocked off and you can only cross it at ONE spot. This set-up was not only annoying, but it's completely inefficient; there were cops everywhere, so couldn't they have been stationed at a couple of crosswalks instead of just a single one?

2. There are not enough food or drink vendors. We were lucky that we arrived early and could easily get our mint juleps right off the bat. But for all of the people who arrived mid-day, good luck: the lines for ALL the food and drink vendors were over an hour long wait. The only food we purchased all day was ice cream because it was the only vendor with no line. I wouldn't be surprised if people waited over an hour in line only to get to the front and learn that the food had run out. That's especially dangerous when it's warm out and people are drinking a lot of alcohol; how can they properly hydrate? I actually saw a girl passed out with paramedics surrounding her. Thank goodness you can bring your own snacks; that was a lifesaver for us.

3. Beware of the betting fees. I didn't realize the app would charge a $5 credit card fee with every deposit, so I should have done the math and made one deposit in the beginning; I ended up spending $15 in fees. Luckily I won $16 over the day of bets, so my winnings covered the fees. I just wish that information were more accessible from the get-go. 

4. You couldn't go to the Kentucky Derby Museum. I would have liked to visit the museum to learn more about the race, and to honestly break up the day a little bit. But the main entrance was closed when you first entered the grounds, and after that I never saw another way to enter the museum. Perhaps it was only open to those who had purchased tickets to sit in the Grandstand. It would have been nice if they had offered shifts to visitors, even just to spend 30 minutes in the museum.

5. The whole scene feels like a frat party. I was thinking that the Kentucky Derby was a classy affair, but honestly it's just a bunch of drunk people (especially college kids) dressed up as if they are classy. I couldn't believe the number of under-aged people there; did they pay full price, or is there a cheaper ticket option available for students or for those who only want to attend for the last few hours? 

Bottom line: if you're over the age of 30, pony (no pun intended) up the dough for seats in the Grandstand.

Marc Broussard at the 9:30 Club

 

Image found here

I had seen Marc Broussard in concert before (read that blog post here), so my friend and I bought tickets to see him again when he came to the 9:30 Club last week. We got there very early (even braved the rain standing outside!), so we were able to stand right next to stage (the man behind me fist-bumped Marc!). We were so close, which was really cool, albeit quite loud.

Image found here

The opener was a band called Nicotine Dolls. My gender bias thought this would be a girl group, but there were actually no women in the band. Supposedly “nicotine dolls” are the people who “stand outside smoking all night because they are too afraid to go inside but can’t bring themselves to leave.” Sam Cieri, the main singer, has a Napoleon complex and mostly sings about sex and his insecurities. Annunciation is not his forte: I think I caught one out of every ten words he was singing. Songs are poems, and they are a lot meaningful when you can understand the lyrics… I liked the music itself, but I could take or leave the singing, since I didn’t know what was really going on.

A fan gave them rhinestone sunglasses, and on cue he did his best Elton John impression. Very fun!

Here are some of their videos:

Upset the Neighbors

What Makes You Sad

Hate It // Fight It

They were actually on America’s Got Talent, but seeing as the kind of songs he sings, I’m not surprised he didn’t win. It’s a family-friendly show, and some of his songs, while the music may be upbeat, have some darker messages...

I couldn’t find a video on YouTube, but you can listen to their song “How Do You Love Me” on Tiktok. I could actually understand most of the lyrics when he sang this one, and the title reminded me of the Garbage song “Why Do You Love Me” (which I think is much better, but you can be the judge):

But anyway… On to the main act!

Photo credit: Mike Davis

Marc Broussard’s show was banging from the get-go. I was dancing along and feeling the blues/funk/soul vibes (how could I not while standing right near the speakers?). We were closest to his young guitarist, who was so good. If he’s this talented now with that baby-face, he’s going to get even better over time. I really enjoyed the music, but since it was late and I had to catch an early bus the next day, we left before the encore. But how cool to see Marc up close and personal like that!

Check out my previous blog post about Marc to see some of his videos.

The Joffrey Ballet: Anna Karenina

 

Image found here

Over Black Friday, the Kennedy Center offered discounted tickets, so my friend and I bought tickets to see the Joffrey Ballet perform Anna Karenina, which they debuted in 2019. I read the book ten years ago, and I didn't really understand a lot of the story. When I tried to recall what I could remember, I drew a blank. So watching this ballet was like seeing the story for the first time. 

The show started off with the orchestra playing music written by Ilya Demutsky (which I really liked) and a video of smoke projected onto a screen. I wasn’t sure what the smoke represented, but the more I watched, the more I felt like I was “cloud painting,” finding faces and animals inside the moving smoke. Towards the end they looked ghostly, like the skeletons in Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain. Foreshadowing, hmm?

Along with the music was some singing of songs written by playwright Valeriy Pecheykin. The songs were supposedly based on the Tolstoy novel, but the lyrics make about as much sense as the book (you can read them in the program). I suppose the singing added a little something (this was quite the multi-media production!), but when you can’t understand the words, something is left to be desired.

Image found here

Speaking of multi-media, let’s go back to the screen. There was the big one at the very beginning with the smoke, but throughout the production there were many screens of different sizes that would come down from the ceiling to help create the set (both as walls but also as something to use for projections). I thought this was especially effective when the characters were in the train station. Images of the rafters and tunnel were projected onto the screens, so you really felt like you could see the entire station in 3D. The screens also showed the horses legs during the horse race (a scene from the book I don’t remember at all), while the male dancers themselves represented the jockeys. Sometimes the images or videos played were too literal: when the doctor visits Anna when she’s sick, a huge needle was projected to give the reasoning behind her erratic behavior. I think her being sick with a doctor visiting is enough of a hint to the audience that she may not be thinking clearly…

Image found here

I did love the costumes of this show. Many of the outfits were quite opulent. And even when the dresses seemed dark or somber on the outside (while others were iridescent), underneath they had brightly colored tulle, which was a fun little surprise. I thought the tiny parasols the women carried at the races were funny; the dancers looked like Mary Poppins in a vision of white. With the creative set design and the beautiful costumes, this was a very pretty show to watch.

Image found here

My favorite part of the ballet was the lovemaking scene between Anna (played by Amanda Assucena) and her lover, Alexey Vronsky (played by José Pablo Castro Cuevas, who was very well cast, by the way. So young!). The way the two dancers moved together truly gave meaning to the phrase “getting tangled up.” The lifts were very reminiscent of those from pairs ice skating (although perhaps they had been used in dance first?), and it was so beautiful to see the two play off each other. It reminded me of Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, another steamy, romantic ballet scene.

The other scene from this ballet that I thought was really good was [SPOILER] when Anna walks onto the train tracks to kill herself. Again, with the use of the screen, as she walked toward the train (i.e. a bright light), her shadow got bigger and contorted. Her clothes were blowing in the force of the train, even coming off her body, until she was gone. It was a very artistic, not graphic, way to portray such a violent scene.

There were some parts I didn’t like about the show. While I understand that they wanted to stay true to the book, the side love story between Kitty and Levin never made sense to me. How does that tie into Anna’s story? While her suicide would have been an obvious ending, instead there is the jarring segue into a joyful pastoral scene of Kitty and Levin living happily ever after. It is such a non-sequitur and really was a weak ending to the show. It reminded me of the extra half-hour tacked onto the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to wrap up every single storyline for each character. Just end it already! Speaking of ending, I would say many of the scenes throughout the show went on for too long. I appreciate ballet, of course, but sometimes it’s just best to end things before they drag on; less is more.

I was thankful to have the notes in the program to follow along, because, while I liked what I was seeing, I didn’t really know what was going on most of the time. There are so many characters, and since ballet has no dialogue, I still was quite lost. Clearly I need to re-watch the movie (because I am NOT re-reading the ~900-page book!). Maybe the film will somehow jog my memory? Or maybe after reading the book, watching the movie, and seeing the ballet, if I don’t understand the story, I’m never going to, and I should just let it go.

It's not too late to see this show! Tickets are still on sale!

2023 DC Environmental Film Festival

Image found here

Each year I see a couple of films through the DC Environmental Film Festival. Two years ago I watched LOTS of movies because they offered so many virtual screenings due to COVID-19. This year they only hand a handful of virtual screenings, and I wasn't interested in some of them to begin with, so I only watched a few in total. But the couple I saw were really good!

Eating Our Way to Extinction

We've all seen documentaries about how raising animals for food is killing our planet. But this one, narrated by Kate Winslet, was the most effective yet. The film looks at all kinds of husbandry: cows, chickens, even salmon. This film focuses less on how eating meat effects your health, but it does make some impactful highlights, like interviewing Tony Robbins about his mercury poisoning or showing the pus that is in a lot of beef (ew). I already don't eat pork and beef, but I was ready to go full-on vegan after watching this film (I even added a bunch of vegan cookbooks to my Goodreads list). Very well done film, and yet another one that shows how our industrial greed supersedes our own suicide in destroying Mother Earth.

The Issue with Tissue - a boreal love story

This was another film that made me want to take personal action. The documentary is about how major toilet paper brands, such as Charmin, use the trees of boreal forests to make their products, decimating the forests in much of Canada. Most of the people featured in the film are members of different Native American tribes throughout the country, and they talk about how gratitude for the earth is important in their culture, the opposite of the Judean-Christian/Western ethic. They also go more broadly than just this specific destruction of the forests: they extrapolate all the way to colonization, and how Westerners have not only hurt the earth but the native peoples as well, taking children from the families and trying to eradicate the Native cultures, which has lasted hundreds of years. It was sad to see how those Native societies have been impacted so terribly, along with the wildlife, too (especially caribou). I am definitely going to look into recycled toiled paper brands, like Seventh Generation. I don't want to literally flush those beautiful forests down the drain!

Path of the Panther

I saw this screening in person at the National Geographic in downtown DC (after enjoying a Shamrock shake from McDonald's, another annual March treat along with this film festival). I am one of the (few) people who wants to protect nature just for nature's sake, not because of what nature provides to humans. This is especially true of wildlife: the biodiversity of our planet is so amazing, and I hate that we are killing so many different kinds of animals and plants, creatures that cannot do anything about their own demise. So this film is all about protecting the Florida panther, a subset of the panther/cougar/mountain lion that historically roamed all of the Americas. Carlton Ward, Jr., a National Geographic Explorer, is the main "character" of the movie, and the film follows his adventures of setting up camera traps and trying to find these elusive cats. We also hear from other people like a local rancher and a representative from a Native tribe who speak about caring about the wildness that is left of Florida and not wanting to see it all developed, shattering any hope of saving the panther. It was sad to see some parts, like the cats hit by cars or the kittens with a neurological disease that affects their back legs, but it was also very cool to see the awesome photographs and video footage of the panthers and other animals like black bears. [SPOILER ALERT] The most moving part of the film was when, after local government officials were shown the documentary, those leaders were inspired to protect areas of land where the panther is known to be, or "wildlife corridors," and passed legislation on it. I was crying in the audience, both for the joy of that win for nature, but also for knowing that this is just a drop in the bucket of the annihilation of our planet that we continue, and will continue, to take part in. 

Since this was an in-person screening, I got to hear from the photographer, the writer and director Eric Bendick, and a few others, and they discussed the process of making this film and the movie's impact (as well as answered questions from the audience). I always enjoy that part of in-person screenings, although I know several people scoot out after the movie. I cannot recommend this film enough. You can watch the film online on the Path of the Panther website, as well as sign a petition, make a donation, and take other actions to protect the Florida panther. I signed it and told all my friends and family to watch the film ASAP, and you should, too!

If you missed the festival this year, you can catch some of their "encore" screenings in a few weeks! So it's not too late!