The official page for Bourbon Archaeology - the study of materials left behind by early whiskey / brandy / moonshine distillers and a collection of projects lead by Bourbon Archaeologist, Nick Laracuente. With few exceptions our projects are run by volunteers (including the director) in partnership with the Jack Jouett House Historic Site. We are studying early Kentucky distilleries in or
der to learn more about a critical component of early Kentucky agriculture and highlight some of the key players in that industry. The Jouett/Buck, Epler, Frazier, Camp Nelson, James Pepper, and George T. Stagg distilleries are a few of what we have studied so far. Sometime we fill the gaps in the written record via excavations and the study of artifacts recovered. A lawsuit from the early 1800's between Jack Jouett and Peter Buck revealed that Jack had a distillery that used slave labor. From those documents we were able to locate the distillery and hope the artifacts help us tell the rest of the story that was never written down. Sometimes we bring focus to forgotten parts of a distillery that are well documented. In 2016, Buffalo Trace encountered old foundations beneath one of their warehouses. While documenting these old structural remains we realized that several mash fermenting vats were buried as well. Over a year of investigation revealed three different distilleries that had been buried over time. Archival, archaeological, and architectural information was distilled to make a unique exhibit that we call the Bourbon Pompeii (or the O.F.C. Take a tour starting August 7th, 2017.
