Old Bardstown Bourbon comes to us from Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, better known as Willett, who only recently started distilling whiskey again and for years has operated as an NDP, buying other people’s bourbon and putting a label on it. For many years KBD / Willett has been getting a lot of their bourbon from Heaven Hill and based on the taste in this one that’s my prime suspect for who actually made what’s in the bottle.

As a brand though it’s been around for quite a while and it gets it’s name from a handicapped race horse from the 1950s. The horse had a lot of hip and ankle problems but the owners raced it anyway and it actually won quite a bit. According to the Willett site old Bardstown had “31 career starts, Bardstown had 18 first place finishes, 7 second and 1 third place finish. The bay gelding had total earnings of $628,752.” Which, to put it in to technical terms, is a crap load of 1950s dough!