High Proof Productions was dreamt up by two college buddies. One of us is a whiskey geek. The other’s an A/V geek.

The whiskey geek was a regular visitor to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. He loved visiting the distilleries, hearing their stories, and discovering new bourbon offerings. But after each incredible tour, the long drive to the next distillery felt…empty. Boring. Plus, his navigation app would send him the wrong way down some pretty scary back-roads. He would have loved to take a guided bus tour…but didn’t want to pay hundreds of bucks (that was his bourbon-buying money!) for a ride on a cramped bus with random strangers. So he drove himself.

Then, when we were hanging out one day, the A/V geek showed the whiskey geek a newly finished project – a phone-guided driving tour through his city. The driving directions were clear. The story was engaging. The whiskey geek had an idea.

This was what the Bourbon Trail needed! Bourbon tours that folks could take in their own car, on their own time. Guided audio tours that would take them on the correct roads and tell them great stories in between each distillery. Something that would make the drive come alive!

It stayed an idea for a year or two. Then, in 2023, we decided to give it a try. We began moonlighting. We started pestering the kind folks at the Kentucky Distillers Association. We lined up some incredible interviews at iconic distilleries. We spent some beautiful fall days driving around Kentucky. We registered an LLC and called it “High Proof Productions.” Over the winter and spring, we researched, wrote, and edited together our first tour – Kentucky Bourbon: Birth to Boom. It features Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Four Roses, and Woodford Reserve. We tested it in the summer of 2024, and published it in the fall.

Over the course of 2025, we aim to add more distilleries and more tours. And, if this little moonlighting project of ours goes as well as we think, we plan to add more tourism regions in the years to come.

Here’s to the slow, patient maturation of ideas and dreams. Cheers!