More than 600 whiskies will be poured across four city blocks of Benton Park on Friday as the St. Louis Bourbon & Cocktail Festival takes over Cherokee Street, DeMenil Place, and the grounds of the historic Lemp Mansion. Vendors will be pouring samples throughout the footprint, giving attendees a sprawling crash course in everything from Kentucky imports to homegrown Missouri craft bourbon.
Artfully Bourbon detailed the festival's spread across the four-block stretch of the historic neighborhood. As STLtoday.com reported, pours at the festival will include Barrel Craft Whiskey out of Kentucky and Old Elk Bourbon, recognizable by its distinctive elk-shaped pourer, alongside a lineup of regional and national labels.
One of the festival's marquee draws is Ben Holladay Bourbon, distilled in Weston, Missouri, near Kansas City, per the same STLtoday.com account. The brand comes from the Holladay Distillery, established in 1856 and recognized as the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi River still operating at its original location, according to the Holladay Distillery.
A Stillhouse Revival Rooted in 1856
The distillery's original stillhouse underwent a $10 million renovation in 2015, and Holladay resumed bourbon production before re-entering the market in 2022 with a Bottled-in-Bond release based on a recipe dating to 1856, according to Kansas City Magazine. The 2022 Bottled-in-Bond release was the first in more than 35 years, per the same account.
The distillery's namesake, Ben Holladay, earned the nickname “Stagecoach King” in the 19th century by building the Overland Express stagecoach network, later sold to Wells Fargo, and briefly acquiring the Pony Express, according to Holladay Distillery. He became the largest private employer in the United States in the mid-1860s, and his ventures also included hotels and silver mines, per Whiskey University.
Bottled-in-Bond labeling, a term festivalgoers will see throughout the tasting tents, comes from a federal law with real teeth. Under the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, whiskey carrying that designation must be produced by a single distiller at one distillery in a single production season, aged at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse, and bottled at exactly 100 proof, according to Flatland KC.
The festival itself is organized by the St. Louis Bourbon Society. Founded in 2016, the group has grown from a few hundred local whiskey enthusiasts into a network of nearly 16,000.
VIP Tastings at the Festival
The festival offers exclusive VIP tasting sessions held inside the Lemp Mansion and the Lemp Grand Hall, according to Artfully Bourbon. The Lemp Mansion itself, built in the 1860s and later purchased by brewing executive William J. Lemp as a family residence and brewery office, anchors the festival's four-block footprint and ties the event to the neighborhood's 19th-century brewing history, according to the St. Louis Bourbon Festival.
A portion of ticket proceeds will go to Code 3 Response.
