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Did you know Kentucky has more navigable miles of water than any other state in the U.S. except Alaska?

Is Alaska still a state?

There's 9000 miles of streams and dozens of rivers.

It's also quite famous for some other liquids.

Those which flow from a barrel.

That being beers, bourbons and wine.

Many of the world's best known distilleries can be found right here in the Bluegrass State.

And interestingly enough, pretty darn close to many of our lakes, rivers and streams.

We're here to take you on an expedition of the secrets and histories of our intricate waterways.

While visiting Kentucky's distilleries, breweries and wineries.

I'm Carrie and I'm pale.

And we're two Kentuckians who are proud of our state.

Share a sip of what the Commonwealth has to offer and honor.

Kyle, what are you doing there?

Well, I thought I'd catch up on a little reading, and, you know, for a change, hang out on the water myself.

Well, you do realize you're not in an actual river here in Bowling Green's beach fence slash lagoon.

Looks like a pretty good river to me, lazy or not, you know, And in fact, I'm a little surprised it's not in this book.

That one's for actual rivers.

What are you doing here, anyways?

Aren't you supposed to be out paddling around, speaking up?

Well, I am going to this afternoon.

I'm going to meet up with a Q professor, and we're going to take a little trip on the Drakes Creek.

And then later today, I'm going to go underground to the last river cave.

Once I'm done significantly relaxing here, I've heard there is a pretty fantastic brewery here in Bowling Green and a winery and a place that I can learn how to make my own beer so I don't even have to leave the house.

All right, well, until then, I'm just going to.

Oh, Kyle.

Right before you sail away.

What a passing lifeguard gave this to me.

And I think it was a love letter.

No, but he was pretty adorable.

I'm sure he was.

I think it's another one of our challenges.

That's a riddle.

It is.

There is no race involved with this spirited run through downtown Bowling Green.

For good, because this is as fast as I'm going to go today.

This one I'm going to get Kyle.

You think so?

I will.

We'll see.

All right.

Have fun.

You know, it does.

Ray Kyle.

This is fantastic.

Thank you.

We are a Travelers seller in the seller with a whole lot of bottles of wine.

What about this location?

We're here in Bowling Green.

We're out in the country of Bowling Green.

Really?

Well, you know, like four and a half years ago, we were driving.

My husband was retiring from the Marine Corps, and we were driving down the road and my in-laws were showing us another house down the road.

And we saw for sale by owner sign on this house.

And lo and behold, we walked in and there was this wine cellar and we were like, Oh my God, it has a wine cellar.

We have to buy this house.

So here's how it works then.

What you did was you realize how much it was going to cost to fill this up by going out and buying bottles.

And you said, you know, it's going to be way easier to just make our own and fill it.

Is that That's kind of how.

So we thought.

Right.

So you thought and then you realize, oh.

That was the idea.

And then once we grew the first hundred vines, we did some some experimentation with small batch winemaking and decided, like, we can do this.

This would be.

Fun.

There's a lot of failures before you get.

Yes.

Yes.

Right.

I mean, that's part of making the wine is the tasting.

Some things work, some things don't.

Yeah, and that's the fun of it, because when you get something to where you want it to be, it's like an aha moment.

Well, you know, I think I need to talk to Derek about some of this stuff because I want to know what that aha moment tastes like.

Let's go.

Check it.

Out.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Okay.

You've got a lot of grapes out here.

It looks like I'm seeing them.

We're in the tasting room right now, which is beautiful and overlooks the vineyard.

Was there a challenge of growing grapes in Kentucky here in Bowling Green?

Is it is there something unique about that?

Anything and everything about great growing in Kentucky is unique and special.

You know, the limestone water is key to Kentucky bourbon, just like it's key to winemaking in many regions of the world, but specifically in Kentucky.

So the main chemical component of that is calcium carbonate.

Calcium is used in the same things that make antacids.

So it offsets the acids in your stomach.

Same thing it does in the soil.

So in the vineyard right now, we have the most of what we have is CEC Franco, also known as Limburger or Blaue Frankish.

It's a Hungarian, Austrian varietal.

We have also planted some Riesling and Norton and cab franc.

Right.

Which are commonly found in Kentucky.

So we've got a red that looks like you've put it up so far.

And this is bacon or.

So tell me about that.

Yeah.

Commonly known as Bacon War.

It's a although spelled a somewhat the same.

There is a separation.

There is a Balkan war is a great bridle that grows well in Kentucky as well as a lot of the other varietals that we've made wine from this year.

It's really good.

So tell me about the Oh, what else is popular here?

Because we've got quite a few to choose from.

It looks like probably our.

Most unique in-house creation is our sweet tea wine.

Sweet tea.

Wine.

You got it.

So where did the sweet tea won?

This is exactly what it is.

This is Grandma's brewed Southern sweet tea with a base of golden raisins for.

For the tannins, for the for the structure and body structure and that sort of thing.

And the balance comes from the the freshly cut lemons that are added during the fermentation process.

So this is a very unique creation that took quite a while to perfect.

We're very proud of it, very happy that it's turned out so well and it's been very popular.

So I think I think we should.

Try try it out.

All right.

So this is the sweet tea.

Let's.

Wow.

It does smell just like a summer day.

That's amazing.

And you do get the reason I can get a little bit of that flavor in there and a little bit of the citrus with the lemon.

But not so much there.

But not too much.

And the finish is just like a tea.

It's fun and it's it's Southern it's unique to Kentucky and it's something very special to bring to this region.

Definitely.

Definitely.

Derek, this has been a pleasure, my friend.

What a beautiful place you have out here.

And thanks.

You all are already cranking out some really good stuff from the bacon to the vignola to the sweet tea.

And when you get a little bit of something for everybody.

I appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

Good luck moving forward.

Cheers.

Well, Dr. Grose, tell me a little bit about this beautiful waterway that we're paddling on and what the significance is to this region's geology.

Well, this is Drakes Creek, and it flows north towards ultimately to get to the ocean.

To the bay.

Remember, not too far from here, because first it was a type of landscape that is formed in certain types of rocks, limestone.

In this case, those are especially soluble.

And so you reach a big underground river and sinkholes.

And a great story here is one of the nice characteristics of it is a lot of the water, a lot of the areas of the creek are actually held by big spring or came streams are emerging back to the surface.

So there's all this water underground and then it bubbles back up into the surface.

Yeah, there's big springs right here.

If we continue to move downstream, there's various springs, Big springs where underground rivers are coming out.

And in fact that has a pretty big influence on the fishing because that means that the waters are colder in the summertime here in the creek and warmer in the wintertime.

Dr. Groves, I know one of the things that makes this river so unique is it has these really cool gravel bars.

How and why does this river get those Dregs creek?

And so it was something that was nearby.

Not all of them have these gravel bars.

There's certain types of rocks and where they're relatively insoluble.

And so they accumulate in these gravel bars and they're really very nice because you can stop in and have a picnic or, you know, use it as a base for swimming or even camp.

Now, the limestone in the water is what makes Kentucky great for bourbon, right?

Well, yeah, it's closely related.

When water gets in contact with limestone, it tends to the water tends to have high age, which in turn means that iron is not very soluble.

And from what I understand, iron is really bad for whiskey.

And so the just because just the natural chemistry of.

Dr. Groves, I was wondering if you could maybe help me solve this riddle.

I have it's, it's something about a bearded run through downtown Bowling Green.

Well, that's a good question, I guess, And I just don't know if it is maybe has something to do with, like, a cave.

I mean, I.

You know, I'll have to find out.

That's where I'm headed next.

I mean, any help.

Chris?

You know, I always need help.

I mean, seriously, what what do I need to get to make the perfect beer?

Have a beer doesn't exist.

So what we're gonna do is want to figure out your flavor profiles.

We'll work from there.

So this is a kid.

This has everything.

And these kids are homebrew kids.

Okay, so there is dehydrated malt extracts.

It is the same thing as if you picked up these models right now.

This is a big bag of malt here, right?

So what happens?

You have to extract the sugars out of this.

That's called the mashing process.

It takes a lot of equipment to do that.

So this sounds like a bit of work.

It is a lot of work.

They've taken the work out of it for you and you have this ground up.

Yeah.

These are the sugars.

They they basically already match it all out.

Dehydrated onto a powder.

So you guarantee to get the alcohol content out of this.

So this is a safe bet?

Yes.

All right.

So we've got grains here.

These these are these are flaked barley.

We got flaked oats.

These these all do different things.

And this looks like my oatmeal, like I mean, pretty much it's ready to go.

You just poured in there.

It's poured in there and you run your mash at 155 for 20 minutes and all the sugars come out.

All right.

So hops, hops are really important, right?

So this is a it's a small addition into it, but it puts out a large variance on flavors because each one of these different hops have everything from wood and grain flavors to grapefruit citrus flavors.

Let's call it a good IPA.

At about 80 avenues, you're going to use about five ounces.

Okay, Your American lines, you're going to use about one ounce total.

So that's so the volume of it is going to definitely correct.

Depending on what type your IP was, you're going to have more depth in your light pilsners.

Not near as much as most any other.

Okay.

It's easy to make great beer.

It's hard to reproduce that exact same great beer because you've got to do everything the exact same time, the exact same temperatures.

You cool it down, the same process.

I even tell people it depends on how you're holding your mouth.

We got our all.

We got our our our grains, our hops.

What's next?

So we're going to need to ferment this ferment, right?

And once we extract all the sugars and we cook it down for our one hour, we're going to put something in there that's going to take all of the sugars and it's going to expel CO2 and alcohol.

But so what happens?

You're going to put this in there within 24 to 48 hours, the yeast will come alive and viable.

It'll start eating the sugars.

I mean, that's what it does.

We we we love eating all kinds of stuff.

The only thing is this yeast, once it gets done, its byproduct is CO2 and alcohol.

And that's what we want people.

CO2 and alcohol.

Yes.

And that's where that heat comes from that you've got coming off of that and the bubbling and everything else.

So the CO2.

Yeah, I guess we know it's I'll know it's working when I see those bubbles and everything going up inside there.

I see that blue Höller has some beers.

So apparently you're successful at taking all these ingredients and making one.

I would like to say yes, but it's an ongoing process is whether or not we're successful with each batch, each new recipe, Everything that we do, it can be hit or miss.

Each microbrewery at one time was somebody that made beer at home.

That is the American dream.

You know what, though?

It seems a lot easier for me just to go and order it out of the keg over there.

I think we should try that.

Let's go see.

I follow you.

All right.

So what do you recommend for me?

Somebody that doesn't know anything about anything.

Well, so a pale ale.

Yes.

Pretty good standard.

You know, it's just thinking pale ale.

We have our own variant off of it, so it's a lemon drops hop, pale ale.

Lemon drops.

So you got a really good lemon flavor on the end of it.

Chris, thanks so much.

This is an awesome story.

You know, I've always known how to drink it, but now I know how to make it.

Yeah.

Cheers.

Hey, Gary.

Chad, how you doing there?

Gary, how are you?

Good.

This place is so beautiful.

Yes, it really is.

Well, tell me, has it always been a park?

No, no, no.

We actually have a lot of human history that comes along this place, you know, from Native Americans using this area for water as a wintering and summering shelter to civil war soldiers camping out here.

We've been a nightclub.

We've had all sorts of amazing things, even a landfill at one point.

But now we are a 72 acre nature park that works to get kids back outside.

And it's new and creates a lot of connections and nature.

So you have the river system going up and over here it's also means shut down to the mouth of the cave.

It continues on throughout various inspiring rivers.

This is impressive.

Yes, it really is.

It's about 150 feet across, 43 feet from the river bed up to the ceiling.

And then we have about 73 feet from the top all the way down to the river bed.

If you're wondering how big that hole is, they just from the top down.

So it's pretty.

Yeah, it's fairly impressive.

Wow.

Now, you were telling me before that it always it has not always looked this beautiful.

No, it has not.

Now, the friends group, you know, the Friends of Lost Forever, who I work for, we fawn about 9090 and we started cleaning the place up.

Took a very long time to pull out about 55 tons of trash from the cave in from the valley.

55 tons of trash.

With it.

And I am super excited to explore our last river cave.

And I hear you have a really unique way of doing that.

Yeah, we're one of the only caves they can explore by boat, and so that's all we're gonna be doing today.

So let's get on the boat.

Oh, yeah.

It's about the wishing rock.

Yeah, of course you do.

All right.

You rock.

Yeah.

You have the venue over for about 10 seconds.

Now, you say this is called.

We call this the Wishing Rock because we don't lean your heads towards the middle.

You really wish that you did, huh?

So welcome to Alaska.

Okay, The inside edition.

Get it?

Because in our in our system and is cast you know sinkhole playing area a drop of oil can leave your car on a rainy day.

Make it down to here an hour and a half.

So when you look at these flow stones is a lot of small things over time to really help make all these beautiful things happen during that time.

You can do a lot of wrong things, but you can also come back.

It's very peaceful just to listen to the water flow over that stone.

Three Nice.

So we are in what's called the breakdown room.

Now it's a room is formed by lots of breaking down in the cases.

Rooms like this are formed from smaller rooms opening up into other ones in the making tunnels.

And we get made fun of sometimes here and there because we have small formations.

We really do.

If you look around, you can tell I've been down here too much.

This is in the lawsuit.

Okay, Mummy, There's his head, his arms and his legs up there at the top.

Oh, yeah.

I can see.

That.

And that's what we call if you look right there at his feet he we have cave remaining and you see how the water has been making that pass.

We also have our law server Bonsai tree.

Oh.

Or safari tree.

Not five.

Bonsai not a tree in a five.

Oh.

What was that.

That may have been one of our cave cases.

And now if it was cold, it was a cave.

Because over the hundred years ago, a lot of it's warm.

So with 100 years of bad luck.

Well, it was definitely cold.

So I think I have some good luck.

All right.

Good deal.

Are there any bats that live in this case?

Yes, Yes and no.

See, bats like nice, quiet, dry caves.

And that is just the complete opposite of ours.

We have this natural river system that continually flows through here.

And so as you can definitely hear.

And so based on why it like to be in this area that we're in, but here in the wintertime, we have more of an increased bat population because there's young adolescent males that are kind of looking in the wrong spots.

We jokingly call them bachelors as a real life.

There you go.

Yeah.

I saw a boat go by earlier with some families on it and it looks like it was, you know, mom and dad and some small children and grandpa and grandma with them.

So it really looks like you get a whole range of folks.

Yeah.

Our tour guides are really good about trying to meet everybody's needs in the audience so that we can continue to make it, you know, impressionable for young people and still a great, great experience with, as you've probably seen before and heard all of our information.

But it's our guides that really make the difference there.

And they're the ones who get to interact with the 4000 schoolkids a year that we see.

That's a lot of kids.

A lot of kids.

We do a lot of environmental education here.

Well, Chad, I was wondering if you could help me solve a riddle because there is no race involved on this spirited run through downtown Bowling Green.

Do you know what kind of redneck could be talking about?

So there are a couple different runs that we have here in Bowling Green.

We have those typical races.

You know, we have days all over the place.

A run could also mean an underground river system.

Really?

Yes.

And so the one that you may be talking about, maybe some organized crime people use that in the 1920s.

And Bowling Green was known here and there.

And, you know, local legend as well as Chicago.

So Whiskey run may have been one where they had this entrance there in downtown Bowling Green, the accident out at Barron River.

And so they would send things down through there, particularly whiskey barrels.

Oh, so whiskey run.

Thank you so much, Chad.

Good health.

Thank you.

Whitney.

We're here right on Broadway.

Right on.

Broadway.

Bowling Green, Kentucky.

There's a giant white squirrel on the wall behind us.

What's going on?

Well, this is just our little brewery that we have here.

We are the first brewery in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

We're also really known for our food, too, a full service restaurant.

And you all are making beer inside here.

We make beer inside.

Behind this white smoke.

In our kitchen.

So what's up with the white squirrel?

Well, the white squirrel is it's our unofficial mascot here at WQ on the campus.

Unofficial?

Unofficial?

Yes.

They have a big red blob as the official name.

Yes.

Scary.

Really frightening.

Little, little terrified.

Elderly people are like.

The big red blob with not scary on beer.

So cuddly white squirrel instead is.

Kind of cuddly.

So you all have room here.

You're also there's a restaurant, there's food.

Tell me about the food.

What can you get here?

Is this just like pub food or.

We have some good stuff.

What's going on?

We have all of the above, so we are more of a gastropub, a little bit of a Southern flair as well to it.

If we can get local, we get locals, we can get it fresh.

We also have a pasta dish, so we use fresh pasta.

Our chef creates new specials every week for us as well, where we we really utilize our local ingredients during that time.

So yeah.

And of course the beer as well.

And the beer, we actually do use local pumpkins in our pumpkin ale that we make during the fall, and we use fresh opinions from local farms for Halloween.

You'll be out in the summertime.

So yeah, we try to keep it local as much as we can.

All right.

You know, all of this chatter about food and beer has made me thirsty and hungry.

Let's go talk with Evan, who's going give you some awesome beer.

Great brewer.

Yeah.

And get some food, too.

Yeah, that'd be good.

Come on.

So Evan Whitney had me outside telling me all about white squirrel, the food, how it started and all that stuff.

I got heart.

I got thirsty.

She said, come inside, talk to you about the beers.

So if you come and get a squirrel sampler, you'll get a five ounce for each of these glasses.

All right.

So our last one here is the darkest of them.

What do we have going on here?

This is our nut brown.

It's a it's the squirrely one.

It's the one.

It's a brown ale.

Like I said, we only do ales here, and it's actually has no nuts in it.

It's the nutty flavor actually comes from the malts that we use.

And the way that the grains are malted gives them that either can give them either a chocolaty or a nutty flavor.

And that's how we get the nutty boy.

I mean.

I know my squirrels.

I know they like they're nuts.

That's right.

It's a prize to me.

There's no nuts in this at all.

So if you have an allergy to nuts, you can drink this beer.

You'll be fine.

Okay?

Yeah.

Making sure you appetizers out here.

We got our smoked wings.

Smoked wings?

Yes.

Which they're.

Unbelievable.

Smell of vision.

You wish you had it right now.

These are a dry run brewing and a got a hobby hot sauce underneath, which is actually made with our coals.

All right, good.

I love it when you incorporate the liquids in the food.

Yeah, it looks like a an English muffin.

It is an English muffin.

It's our hot damn burger.

Actually, It's got Halpin Jones jam on it.

It's amazing.

And we got kale chips here.

These are chips.

Yeah.

And that's our the sauce that goes with it.

It's a.

That's healthy.

I get the feel right now.

My whole body cleansing itself by eating that kale.

It's.

You need to get that.

Yeah.

You should have got it with the salt, man.

Yeah.

All right, then.

We got a pizza of some.

Sort fried chicken pizza.

It is amazing.

It's got cilantro on it.

It's got that fried chicken on there.

I personally like to get my chicken spicy whenever I get this pizza.

And then last but not least, pork belly.

Pork belly, holy gas.

Pressure cooker for 72 hours.

It's the bacon cut from the 72 hours.

Yes.

Right.

Very cool.

There we go.

Now we know the white squirrel.

We know that there's no nuts in the nut brown.

And we know that there's some amazing food here.

Evan, my friend, appreciate it.

Thank you.

We'll be back after.

Now, this is my kind of designated ride winning Bowling Green.

You got to do it in a Corvette, remember?

Never drink and drive.

Oh, Kyle.

Hello there, Kerry.

Did you just pull up in a Corvette?

As a matter of fact, I did.

That was a fancy car.

Oh, we're in Bowling Green.

You know how I'm going to drive.

So that's the best thing to take a ride.

And.

Right.

So what?

What are.

Are you going.

To the preservation tasting room?

And this is one of the top tasting rooms in the country.

Kyle.

That was your.

Expedition to the.

Well, I explored some of the most beautiful places here in Bowling Green.

I took a paddle on Drakes Creek, and I learned about the geology.

And then I went underground at Lost River Cave.

And you didn't get lost.

I did it.

And some natural air conditioning.

Oh, that does sound good.

Well, while you're out there spelunking, I went to a winery and learned about some science, and then I went to learn how to make my own homebrew, which I'm going to do.

Oh, and then after that, well, I went to White Squirrel, and it was a good day.

Fun, fun stuff.

And you know what the best part was, Kyle?

I solved the riddle.

Well.

Whiskey run flows right through the middle of downtown Bowling Green, and they used it during Prohibition to smuggle bootleg whiskey.

Cheers to you for finally getting the riddle right.

Oh, this is number two, Kyle.

Whatever.

Yeah.

People need to come here and check this out.

They absolutely.

It's a fun town.

There's a lot to do.

I think we can drink on that.

Until next time.

We'll see you.

Downtown.

Dream.