By Jimmy Ewing
I don’t know much about Kentucky. I know there are horses there. My father-in-law was from Kentucky, so at one point, I guess he was there with the horses. That about sums up Kentucky and me.
I clipped the corner of Kentucky at high speed one time on the way to Wyoming, and most of what I know about the Bluegrass State until about a week ago came in hazy through the window tint on that trip. Sometime later, I hunted whitetails in the southern part of the state, but all I saw were oak trees and some hills, and then I went home. I didn’t get a feel for the place in any tangible way; it just seemed like a bunch of little hills connecting to bigger hills and eventually, Yankee Land and the Great Frozen North, where the White Witch keeps it always winter. Maybe that’s not fair to Kentucky, but there it is.
My friends at Field Ethos changed all that for me last week. Our very own Ron Dan—The Brown Man with a Plan and Two First Names wrangled us an invitation to the Fourth of July grand opening of Horse Soldier Farms–Horse Soldier Bourbon’s big, fancy new $200 million distillery in Somerset, Kentucky. I loaded up my friend Austin, his family, and my family, and we made a pilgrimage. Many men will spend their time planning and take a great many things to be prepared for an excellent adventure trip. Not me. I take Austin. He will have all the things.
To get to Kentucky, we left The True South and traversed Tennessee, which I understood to be “in the north” most of my childhood, and eventually passed through a fair amount of Kentucky, which I heard about in my childhood zero times.
Into the Bluegrass
It was magical. The air smelled good, sort of like the Georgia mountains, where God lives, and there were fewer people. In fact, there aren’t that many people in Kentucky at all, period, which is nice. More importantly, the few people that we encountered in Kentucky were fantastic.
When FE called and suggested I go meet the guys at Horse Soldier Bourbon, I thought, “It’s summer, and I’m a grown man, and grown men don’t switch back to bourbon from gin until September 1. So, that’s not going to work.”
Turns out, there are summer bourbon drinks. Who knew? Not me. That wasn’t in the homeschool curriculum. There is bourbon and ginger ale when it is crisp outside, and there is gin and tonic to help protect you from malaria when it is hot. That has been my understanding for many long years.
On the way to Kentucky, it was further related to me, via text, that the men behind Horse Soldier Bourbon are literal heroes, and there is an actual movie with a Hemsworth in it about them. I pulled over and had my kids download the movie with the intent to brief me on it after we got to Kentucky, but before I met anyone important. It was rated “R” so they were very excited to watch it.
What was related to me, ultimately, is that some of the men responsible for this brilliant bourbon that I now dab behind my ears on date night were integral to the first 12 sets of boots on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11 and had the Taliban on the run before most Americans knew we were over there at all. These 12 Green Berets were dropped off in Afghanistan, told to make friends with local warlords who also hated the Taliban and al-Qaeda and wipe both groups out. They touched down in mid-October and had toppled the Taliban regime by mid-November, on horseback. The mountainous terrain was a little tough to navigate in a tank.
Later, they all came home, which seems nearly impossible.
The Legend of the Horse Soldiers
They are, to put it mildly, “interesting” and worth getting to know, and that same spirit of unconventional warfare so ingrained in Green Beret ethos and training shows up in their approach to bourbon.
On the way up there, I didn’t know what to expect, but I discovered that after Chattanooga, it was pretty much just a bunch of dirt holding the world together until we crossed Lake Cumberland into Somerset, Kentucky. I then proceeded to spend an entire Fourth of July weekend at a Hampton Inn—which is a thing that has never before happened to me. My kids have stayed in all kinds of places, from sleeping on porches with black bears underneath to having a butler and staff at their disposal, and I believe this was their favorite hotel—and do you know why? Waffles. Fresh, hot waffles that you make yourself right there out of little Dixie cups of batter in the foyer of the Hampton Inn. They could not believe it. I was the early morning recipient of a text bulletin from my 7-year-old War Correspondent: “Dad hav you sene the wfles!!?”
You could have trotted a butler and chef past them with a tray of crepes and caviar, and they would have sneered and lit a cigarette.
This particular Hampton Inn was situated just outside the gates of Horse Soldier’s enormous distillery, where right there on their brand-new sod atop Kentucky’s rolling hills—John Koko and Scott Neil and all the great Horse Soldier guys hosted two nights of the PBR American Freedom Invitational Rodeo AND two concerts AND a fireworks show that had to have cost $200,000 by itself.
The rodeo was glorious. I’ve never even watched one on TV, and don’t care for horses or bovines, so I had spectacularly low expectations. I actually don’t like llamas at all, either, but that’s a different story.
My First Rodeo
To kick it off, they set the whole damn arena on fire, on purpose, then a bunch of actual American heroes came out and took a bow. I poured myself a Coors. Things were looking up.
After that, what happens is this: a skinny-jeans-wearing cowboy type straps himself to a 2,000-pound actual live bull, presently situated in a tiny open-topped cage and absolutely beside himself regarding the rope tied tightly around the shaft of his penis. Then—someone else pats the cowboy on the shoulder, reaches over, and tips open the cage.
The bull, perhaps familiar with the program, and exactly as unhappy about the penis rope as you might be, comes out of the cage, which I think they call a “chute” (a misnomer), and goes absolutely bananas.
The bull is 100% trying to kill the cowboy the entire time they are together, and he goes about it with a certain ferocity of purpose that is palpable. It is not a game.
At one point, a bull got down on its knees to get a better angle on the cowboy it was attempting to murder. This goes on for a bit, the crowd goes wild, then, about 15 seconds later, they do it again with a new bull and a new cowboy. Somebody keeps time. If you stay on the bull for 8 seconds, you make some money. If you don’t (and you don’t)—you limp home to your welding job.
Brown Liquor & Other Bluegrass Miracles
Later, during the rodeo, I looked around and spotted my two boys, 13 and 7, leaning against the top rail surrounding the arena. They were both carrying large leather-sheathed knives—appendix carry, for quick deployment—and neither had asked if that was ok. Somehow, they just knew. For a moment, I was very proud. Then the little one picked his nose and wiped it on his brother’s back, and I was back to being conditionally proud, once again.
To be fair, everything wasn’t perfect. Scotty Neil did not give me my own full barrel of their highest-end bourbon to keep in my garage, enjoy, and share amongst my friends, which seems like a genuine miss on their part, because I am quite good at relationship marketing. Other than that, it was a tremendous success. If you haven’t been to a rodeo—you should go to this one. It was a small enough crowd to get right in there, tight to the action, and located up against several swimming pool-sized tanks of bourbon. You will not run out.
If you get a chance to make the ride up to Horse Soldier Farms, you can tour the distillery, buy their delicious fancy bourbon cheaper than you can get it in the store, and you can partake in all the glory that is Somerset, Kentucky. If you need more incentive than rodeo (and you don’t), there is a water park. The kids loved it. They smelled like chlorine and glory for six days, and almost forgot about the waffles for a minute.
Beyond that, I can recommend the pool at the Hampton Inn. And the waffles? They were delicious. I have been wasting money on finery.
If you are PARTICULARLY enterprising, you will plan to be there for the rodeo next year, and you, too, can spend all weekend embarrassing your wife with your shorts and boots and announcing to anyone who will listen, “It’s my first rodeo.”
Check Out Horse Soldier Bourbon
- Learn more about the PBR American Freedom Invitational.
- The Horse Soldier story is fantastic. Read more about those crazy heroes HERE.
- Don’t forget about Somerset. It was fun: https://somersplash.com/
- And you know what? Here’s a great waffle recipe. Enjoy!
- Experience the Horse Soldier Grand Opening!
