By KATHY WITT

Contributing writer

HARRODSBURG — Recently, the Beaumont Inn’s Old Owl Tavern was named one of “America’s Best Bourbon Bars” in the summer issue of The Bourbon Review.

The new tasting room at Old Owl Tavern recently opened for personalized bourbon tastings with the innkeeper. The tavern offers a cozy and low-key setting for sampling the inn’s expansive collection of fine Kentucky bourbons, with exposed brick walls, warm wood floors and a print of the family tree of the Dedman Family distilling history.

 “This is really the only tasting room/tasting opportunity in Kentucky where someone leads you through a collection of different products from different distilleries,” said fifth-generation innkeeper Dixon Dedman.

Two tastings are available (advance reservations required): the Profile Tasting ($40/person) and the Ultra Premium Tasting ($70), where the samplings might include such rarities as George T. Stagg, Pappy Van Winkle 20 and 23, different offerings in the Willett Family Estate bottling line, Jefferson’s Reserve Presidential bottlings and more, with Dedman guiding participants through the profiles of different bourbons, side by side. Both are by appointment only.

 “You can taste bourbon anywhere in the world and it tastes like bourbon,” said Dedman. “A tasting with me in my tasting room is an experience you can’t get anywhere else in the world.”

An official sponsor of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the inn also serves Kentucky Owl Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey – “The Wiseman’s Bourbon,” a recipe created generations ago by Charles Mortimer Dedman, and his son, Thomas Curry Dedman, Sr. Once thought lost to the Prohibition era, the whiskey was resurrected in 2014 by Dixon Dedman and went on to win a “Made in the South” award from Garden & Gun magazine.

For more information about the Beaumont Inn and about planning a visit to Harrodsburg, KY, visit www.HarrodsburgKy.com. Request a Harrodsburg Experience Guide from the Harrodsburg/Mercer County Tourist Commission by calling 800-355-9192.

SO YOU KNOW

Beaumont Inn has been named by industry publication FSR Magazine (Full-Service Restaurants) as one of the “Top 100 Independent Restaurants” that opened in the United States in the 1900s. Both legend and landmark, the Beaumont Inn has been earning high praise for its Kentucky fare for decades, including a 1949 shout-out from Kentucky’s pioneering restaurant critic, Duncan Hines, as the “best eating place” in the state.