Team Kentucky Cabinet for Economic development.

Thank you for your support.

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 whose 90,000 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 Kyle.

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

You share a sip of what the Commonwealth has to offer.

Are you excited about this food?

Because I sure am.

I haven't looked at the menu yet, but I know you look at Biancke Supposedly you got some very thin.

it does.

I already placed our order.

Here comes the food.

Look at this.

Some fried green tomatoes.

They're famous for their fried catfish.

So that's why I let you have those.

And, of course, some coconut cream pie.

And this is all mine.

The Kentucky hot brown and Kyle This is a walking dead in the morning.

Bloody Mary.

Walking dead, Bloody Mary.

You know, Cynthiana is one of the most haunted towns in Kentucky.

really?

Is this place haunted that we're in right now?

I do hear that there are some ghosts here.

The owner said there's an old speakeasy upstairs, and, you know, there might be resident ghosts or two.

And after we're done here, we're going to go on a ghost tour.

It just so happens that I don█t know if you noticed it's getting dark outside.

So we actually get to spend the night in Cynthiana.

And you may have ordered the food, but I ordered the rooms for the evening.

And if you think you're going to be scared here.

Wait til█ you try to go to sleep.

Well, maybe I am just not going to be able to sleep because I'm so excited about the paddles I'm going to do tomorrow.

Oh did you bring your little yellow?

I brought my little yellow boat, and there's an old abandoned distillery.

I'm going to get to paddle down and I get to paddle downstream into Cynthiana.

Anna.

The river goes right through the middle of town.

But what you're doing that it just so happens that Cynthiana is ah has a brewery of some notoriety as well as a wine tasting bar and a vineyard, their own wine.

So I'm going to check those out while you're out there sweating the people always bothering me during that text message.

Did we get a text message?

Doesn't have a number on it.

that's scary.

There's no number.

Text message.

See if you can survive this sisterly city.

See if you can survive this sister city.

That's the text I just got.

Creepy.

What does that even mean?

I don't know.

Guess we'll see after we eat all this food.

I'm ready.

Let's do it.

Got my flashlight walking up.

I got mine in my pockets.

Guys want to go in?

This looks pretty old.

It's pretty out.

It's so cool.

18, mid 18, eighties, 18.

And they use it.

They use it until the 19, 99 years old when they close it down Carey you probably had some ancestors who stayed here.

stop it.

Come on in.

This is the exercise yard.

Exercise yard.

So this was a jail Cynthiana█s jail?

Yes.

I'll go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yes, go on up.

This is pretty solid, though.

I'm going to say I remember.

It would be tricky to get out of here.

You'd have to do more than carve a hole in the wall, cover it up with a girly poster.

Are any ghost in here?

There's a ghost that's tied to the place.

Takes place about 1847.

He was a good old boy.

He was drunk.

Was a drunk.

He had married the love of his life.

Nancy.

He wakes up the next morning.

Monday morning, he looks over to wake his wife and she's already started the chill to the touch handprints around her neck.

They had said, I don't know what happened.

They had a trial.

He was found guilty in November, that same year in this location.

They hung him by the neck.

He hung, but they didn't even take the noose off.

They cut it and they buried him right there on that farm Christmas Eve.

That same year out at the midday house, Peter Bell was a freed slave.

He was showing up for the entertainment.

He gets there, nobody's in the house, but there's a nice warm fire and he hears somebody walking around upstairs.

David Sheely walked through the door.

He didn't bother to open it.

Hangman's noose dragging behind him.

He was dressed in the clothes that he was hung in.

And he leans in and he says, the only words that we know that we see, we never say.

He said, There's nobody here.

You and me haha who.

So do ya█ll know.

Cynthia.

Anna was the birthplace of The Walking Dead.

No, not not the show, but the comic creator and the original artist Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore with the high school here.

That's where it all came to life.

And then it got picked up to make the movie.

And we had our Walking Dead day a few years ago to bring Robert and Tony back and brought in Odyssey took him about four days, 77 cans of spray paint and the zombies and things like that.

You won't see the real stuff that is the most vulnerable building in the state right there behind us, right there behind us.

Ross Opera House.

Yeah, you go first.

Yeah.

I█m game, let's go do it.

Let's do it.

All right.

We're inside this opera house.

Its supposed to be scary you█ve heard of the history of Cynthiana We told you it's one of the most haunted cities.

This little creepy.

This is the heart of that.

We are in the oldest continuing running theater in the state of Kentucky.

And it's also one of the most haunted buildings and our state.

How long are we talking about here?

The part we're in right now that the theater opened in 1871, the part we're in right now from that wall back was actually added on as an addition in 1941, very haunted building where one of the most active parts right now, the things that happen here, we have children.

We've actually had people come out and they will say, hey, there's a little boy that's running from that curtain down there.

And when we first opened, we would go down to see whose kid was running.

of course there was nobody.

And he would dart in and out.

I've never seen him.

We have whistling.

We have a lady in white.

I know that's cliche, but she's a lady and white lady and white lady.

The opera house.

That's what made me a believer.

I was working for the previous owners.

I'm in the projection room back when it was still 35 millimeter.

And I look out, I get the movie Focus and I look over to my right and there's a lady walking into the balcony.

So she's as solid as anybody I've ever seen.

She was dressed a little weird.

I follow her into the balcony.

Not a person was there and the room was just electric.

Woo!

How do you feel?

It's kind of cold right here.

Thank goodness it is hot outside.

I am loving it.

Ghost, come to me.

This is a pretty neat art deco place.

I wouldn't want to be here by myself at night.

You would want to be.

And I wouldn't want to be here.

We can lock you in it.

Please, don█t our Aeolian Hall was.

It was started.

This is the original opera house.

It was started as like a place to meet and hold meetings, and it ushered in the era of silent movies.

And they actually used this until 19 1940.

Hello.

You got to find the spot Hello.

We do have a gentleman that hangs out in the corner back there.

Supposedly you do hear some sounds and people will be having a little get together and you'll hear a cheer move when there's nobody here.

So just a really neat place.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can hear.

Does anyone else ever answer you?

Sometimes you'll get answer.

Don't leave me.

Thank you.

The light.

Right.

I'm scared now.

So the best way to the experience is to experience it yourself as a come spend the night.

Do you do overnights here?

You do overnights?

Yeah.

I got a nice, quaint place, at Ashford Acres.

So do you.

I'm sure we'll sleep.

Wonderful there.

You know it█s haunted?

I'm going to stay awake all night.

The most haunted city in Kentucky.

Yes.

right here?

How'd you sleep last night?

I don't know about you, but I didn't get a wink.

Yeah, not a lot here either.

And it would have been a lot easier had you not been crying the entire night.

Crying?

No, Kyle, you heard it, too.

It wasn't you?

No.

And did you notice the lighting flicker a few times?

Yeah.

Funky, but otherwise beautiful place.

it's gorgeous.

In the beds are comfortable.

And look at these grounds, Kyle.

I could stay here all day.

Wedding gift, 1858.

This whole place.

I would like that I had a wedding gift and then a Civil War Union hospital.

Hence maybe some of the...

I heard a cannon actually was shot through the front of the building.

There you go, that's some craziness.

And now two sisters own it, one of which is the wife of the creator of The Walking Dead series.

Well, I don't expect to find any spirits on the Licking River while you're doing that.

I'm going to do what I got to do.

And other liquids.

After you finish, meet me at the Daily Grind.

It's right on the Licking river.

Let me see if you can survive Cynthiana.

I think I will.

But the question is whether you could survive Cynthiana, let's go.

yes.

The Maiden City fella's!

Bill, Daniel.

We're in a new spot.

Well Maiden city started in 2016.

Started with three local guys that lived here, and they all had a passion for brewing.

And so the name Maiden City, Why that name?

The Maiden City, is actually that's the nickname of Cynthiana.

It's Cynthiana is the Maiden City, one of the founders of the town.

Their daughters name was Cynthia.

Cynthia and Anna.

Yeah.

So.

So those were his maidens.

What all do we have going on here?

We've got I brought you some blond ale, El choco.

That's a hazelnut porter stepping stone, strawberry cider.

And then our Mexican lager Por Que No, you guys said cider, right?

Yeah, Strawberry.

So there's a farm here.

It's actually in between Cynthiana and Paris called Stepping Stone Farm.

Agreed to give us a bunch of strawberries.

So you give a brewer a bunch of with sugar in it and we'll make alcohol out of at some point.

But I don't know what we're talking about.

Yeah, Why are we talking about this?

We have to see this.

You know, it's it's it's so much about the color, the way it we look at that that just gets a nice rosy look.

And that is just and again local down the road.

Yep.

I wanted to kind of the idea was to make sure it tasted like strawberries, not strawberry candy.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's great.

And then we've got the growlers here.

Look at this.

We start here.

This is a key lime blond.

Great Summer beer.

This is our South Fork cream ale This is a Kentucky proud beer.

So we source all the ingredients right here from the blue grass, actually about 500 feet that way.

That Really?

Yeah.

Let's try the cream ale.

Let's do it.

This is our local Kentucky proud.

Like I said Bill we Bill and I didn't bring any in this.

Expect them to take any of it back with us.

So.

Well, we got some work to do.

Exactly right.

All right.

This is the Kentucky this is this is the cream ale.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Cream ale my God.

This is totally different.

Like, this is just because that's not the cream ale This has got to be the lime.

That's the key lime to say this is the cream ale It's limy-est cream ale I ever had.

I love it.

I appreciate that.

The key lime is the best cream ale ever.

If you try this, you're going to be surprised.

Okay, so now we have the mislabeled cream ale.

I love it much better.

And what's in a label, right?

This is our cream ale Kentucky Proud.

That's delicious.

That's smooth.

And then from right here in Kentucky, I mean, it really is.

And that's.

That's.

That is wonderful.

It needs, you know, hint of lime But other than that, it would be no this is great just so fun, you know, because when you come and you talk to like what you all are doing experiment and that's any of our local breweries out here like there's there's great stories like that and and there's plenty of mistakes that turn into wonderful things.

yeah, exactly.

Well, you got to think to it, if we're relying on another organism to do the work here where there's nothing I can do about the yeast, I can create the environment for them to do what I think they might do.

But sometimes they don't do what they what their, their, their own thing.

So that's one of the cool things about craft beer, too, is sometimes you don't end up with what you intended and it's just as good cheers, cheers raise em up Maiden City, folks come out.

CJ This is just beautiful, right?

I can see downtown over to my left here.

We put in right in the middle of town.

This is really nice.

Yeah, it's.

It's very nice and pretty unique There aren't a lot of towns that have this.

Yeah, a lot of fishing opportunity, A lot of paddling opportunities here in town.

You don't have to go far.

It makes it a lot easier if you can just go into town, drop your boat and paddle around and get back out this stretch of river.

And it's used more than any stretch in the county.

It's really nice.

It's nice to have a river going through your town.

It's beautiful.

You get a nice green corridor here through town.

Yeah.

Now, Cynthiana has always been a river town, hasn't it?

Yeah.

So Cynthiana was founded in 1793 on the land of Robert Harrison.

Always been a river town.

Lots of commerce up and down the river, moving bourbon, flat boat.

this is a nice little spot over here.

Yeah.

So this is Grays Run.

It's normally, if we hadn't gotten the rain yesterday, it would be about half.

That's what I caught a 4lbs large mouth back here one day.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's a nice little place to paddle back in.

You always see some like, great blue heron standing back here.

Do you see a lot of kayak fishermen now?

yeah, for sure.

When I started, I was kind of like the only person in the county.

And now it seems like every time you turn around, watch out, Turtle.

It seems like every time you turn around, there's some people down here fishing in kayaks.

It's really awesome.

It's great.

That's.

That's what people need to do.

They need to utilize these natural resources that we have.

You know?

Well, I understand that there's a really cool put in a little bit upstream from here near maybe one of your old distilleries.

Yeah.

Lair station, that distillery was home to old Lewis Hunter Bourbon, I believe it was.

And then towards the end of its life, it became a Seagram's distillery.

My grandfather actually worked there in the seventies.

I'd love to check it out.

You want to head that way?

Yeah.

Awesome.

This is a beautiful spot.

Yes, it's picturesque.

The river actually begins about 8 to 10 miles upstream.

Hinkson Creek and Stoner Creek come together in Bourbon County to make up the South Fork.

And we're in a place called Lair Station.

So you can put in here and actually floats about two, two and a half, maybe 3 hours to our local airport and take out.

It makes a good like, you know, destination type of float.

Well, this looks like a fun little section of river up in front of us, a little bit of rapids there.

Some days it's a ripple some days it's a rapid.

We had three inches of rain yesterday, so it's a rapid today.

this will be fun.

It's fun for those who have an adventurous spirit.

Well, I can see just a little bit of a structure.

kind of over here.

What?

What was along the river here?

Those are the remains of the old Lewis Hunter Distillery.

Ooh, That was one of our strong brands here in Harrison County.

Back in the Bourbon days.

You heard any creepy stories about that abandoned distillery?

Let's preface this with that distillery can be accessed, but you may be trespassing.

I've heard some things, people coming out here and experiencing things at night.

Now, whether or not they brought spirits or saw spirits, I'm not sure.

but yeah.

There were a lot of distilleries along this river I heard recently.

You guys have established a new blue water trail that kind of traces the Bourbons past.

Yeah, it is the original bourbon trail, because, I mean, just upstream is bourbon County where Jacob Spears started distilling bourbon.

So basically from Bourbon County to Cincinnati is about 122 miles.

And that is the original bourbon trail where bourbon was floated downstream on flat boat.

The idea is you'll you'll put into Bourbon County and float all the way to Cincinnati if your heart desires.

And that would be right down the licking river.

Yeah, right down the south fork of the licking.

And so we are paddling on the original bourbon trail right now.

The bourbon trail was a blue water trail.

Well, thank you for bringing me on such a beautiful paddle today and telling me all about the wonderful history of Cynthiana.

This is really been a treat, CJ.

Yeah, any time.

My pleasure.

It's been a blast.

Well, next time we're going to have to run this little rapid down here for sure.

Skip, I almost skipped back here, but I might have tripped.

This is a small space where all the magic happens.

You've got barrels behind us, we're aging wine, we get the fermentation tanks up here.

This is a true urban winery.

This is it.

Everything happens right here in these two rooms.

So we are standing in the barrel room.

We do labeling, bottling in this room, and we do long term storage in the barrels, the room behind us.

We'll do the fermentation and then lab work.

But as a true urban winery.

You're right.

Everything's tight.

We have a vineyard about 20 minutes away and we call that the Runner's Ridge.

And that's where on our label we have six different varieties there and probably about 1700 vines in the ground, 1700.

And we have some of that wine in the barrel behind us and the French oak barrels.

Excellent.

So that's for long term storage.

We'll probably go a year or more in this barrel.

And there's something I saw that's different that I hadn't seen before behind us here.

And that's this this ceramic pottery.

It's a lot like pottery.

It's like a giant clay pot.

Now, what's this all about?

This is a it is a clay pot.

It's an ampour.

I was right.

And this was made for us in Oregon and shipped here.

And this is originally how wine has been made traditionally in Eastern Europe, but some places still use the ampour That's a little unique.

I like that you're making stuff.

We are here and mixing and blending and stuff.

What's your favorite?

Just working with some of these grape varieties has been great as a winemaker and learning how to make good wine with it.

This is great.

You know what I want to go try some of this.

Who might I speak to to sample some?

oh my wife.

Let's go find her.

All right.

After you janette we're here at my favorite part of every single tour that we do, which is where we have our wonderful stars of the show here, ready for their reveal and tasting and all that good stuff.

What do we got going?

So right now we have five varieties and one unlabeled varietiey.

I love that's actually this right here.

This is my favorite kind of bottle.

But do you know for real, this is legit.

This is this is the stuff the non label bottles are awsome .

I'm not even joking Okay, sorry.

No, no problem.

So right now we have one white, which is the vidal blanc.

We've got one rosé and three reds and all of our wines are dry.

So dry too means different things to different people.

So dry for us just means no residual sugar.

Dry for me means Good.

no, I do.

I love a good dry wine.

So why don't we start with the Vidal Blanc that we talked about?

Good, perfect.

Everybody's palate is different, though.

yeah.

It's got a little bit of tart, a little bit of maybe a little citrus going on with it.

All right, I'm going to skip you to Riley█s Run in this one.

Well, let me just.

Don't tell me what it is yet.

You have a lot of fruit coming through.

I'll give you a hint.

It's a there's a proprietary blend.

There It is a blend.

So it is a blend.

What's the majority?

The majority of Chambourcin All right.

Yeah, Chambourcin I love Chambourcin.

Another great picker as well, right.

I'm going to give you the last sample would be that Cabernet Franc that we talked about and it is 100% Cab Franc which is unusual.

We don't get a lot of nose on this.

So this is oaked There is a little bit of French oak there.

So it has been barrel aged?

very small amount.

Okay, a little bit very small amount of time.

I hope to convince you that a Cab Franc is a that is a pretty tasty Yeah.

Yeah, I█ll give you that.

Cheers.

Cheers.

We're.

We're right here across from the opera house.

And any stories from being across the street, literally from that place.

And this building itself, I assume, is pretty old, right?

Yes.

This building was built in 1880.

We had a lady last week.

She really didn't want to talk about it.

So it was that traumatic.

I can tell you.

She wouldn't tell me.

Wouldn't tell me.

And she worked here for several years and didn't want to say so.

Our first night here, we were working in the building demo, doing some demo, and we were upstairs and looked across and we'd heard about the opera house and it being, I think, the second most haunted place in Kentucky on the second floor.

They they have multiple windows.

And my husband took a picture of the building and showed it to me and I started looking at it.

It's like there's somebody standing in that window.

So kind of blew it up.

And very clearly and distinctly, there was a woman and a child.

that█s a little creepy.

But everybody loves a good ghost story.

This has been a blast.

I'm going to drink six or seven more bottles and then we'll get out of your hair.

Go find some more ghost Sounds good.

.

Hey, Kyle.

Well, hello there, my good friend Carrie.

What did you bring me?

just so happens.

I brought you some lovely brew from our friends at Maiden City Brewing Company.

The Bluegrass Blonde.

did you know?

You know what Maiden City is?

Cynthiana?

It is Cynthiana.

You know why they call it The Maiden City I do not.

Well, it just so happens that Cynthia and Anna sisters, we're both maidens.

And that's why we got Cynthiana and it's the maiden city.

It's a fantastic, beautiful little city.

Once you get past some of the scary part, you know, I had the **** scared out of me in this town, But while I wasn't being scared that way, I had some wonderful beers.

I tried six, seven, eight, nine, ten from our friends at Maiden City and then went over to the Pike Street Wine House.

I tried some very delicious local wines.

It's beautiful.

By daylight I took a lovely paddle today downstream into downtown Cynthiana and then I paddled near an abandoned distillery and about the new blue water trail that goes downstream past four former distilleries and traces the path that bourbon used to go.

And you know what, Kyle?

I survived Cynthiana.

Well, good for you.

So did I. Yeah, I don't.

I don't know about that.

Kyle Are you feeling okay?

You know, it's funny you mention that.

A little soar.

Not so much here or here.

You're kind of right in this area.

It's.

It's.

It seems that little stingy, little, little tingly tingly kinda thing.

Kind of thing.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, well, otherwise nothing that a beer can't fix, right?

Well, you.

Where you going?

I'll see you downstream, Kyle.