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If we’re to believe the polls that were released over the weekend, it’s going to be a long Election night. Just in case you were taking a political news holiday, the big headlines were that neither Presidential candidate has a commanding lead in the so-called swing states and Ohio seems to be looking to Florida for tips on how to operate their polling stations.

And while we all hope for nothing like the 2000 election, it may be well into the wee hours before we know who our next President will be.

What’s certain is that over-21 voters might need a little something to get through the night, no matter if you’re toasting the winner, drowning your sorrows, or raising a glass in glee that the whole mess is finally over.

So, here’s a cocktail that not only blends a little taste of Kentucky, but also gets better as the night goes on. It’s a riff on a traditional Old Fashioned that you can make as soon as the polls close, but will taste even sweeter just before you fall asleep on the sofa. Just remember to buy ahead of time as alcohol sales are prohibited in Kentucky while the polls are open.

The Old Fashioned Election Night

Ingredients:

Kentucky bourbon (Settle for no substitute. Just because they make bourbon in Brooklyn doesn’t mean they should).

Ginger ale

Orange Liqueur (Buy the expensive stuff. It’s worth it).

Cola (You know you have a brand preference, use that).

Oranges

Limes

Apples

Pears

Maraschino cherries (stems removed)

Bitters

Slice the fruit and place it in the bottom of your pitcher. Work out your irritation with campaign ads by muddling the fruit with a small splash of the cola. It’ll help break the fruit down a little further and bring out the caramel flavors in the bourbon later. (Once it’s good and smashed, reserve and set aside a few portions of fruit.)

Add  ice and fill your pitcher just shy of halfway with bourbon. Add the ginger ale to get you to almost two thirds of the way full. Then, top off  the pitcher with the orange liqueur and a few dashes of bitters to taste. Give it all a stir and pour into rocks glasses with ice and a spoonful of the reserved muddled fruit. Now, you’ve got a drink that keeps on giving as the fruit continues to infuse the drink all night, guaranteeing you a sweet finish, no matter who wins the election.

Every time an anchor or pundit calls this the “Social Media Election,” tweet or facebook  or pin or tumblr or  Google Plus or instagram a photo of your Election Night Celebration and tag @aceweekly for an upcoming e-dition.

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The Old Fashioned Election 2012 Drinking Game

So, you’re over 21, and you’ve responsibly designated a sober driver (or you’re staying in for the evening), and  you want to make a game of it? You want to drink like the fate of the free world hangs in the balance?

Ok, then.

Take a sip every time:

• a fancy network Election 2012 visual does not work. (CNN counts as a network for the purposes of this game. FoxNews? You decide.)

• “Hurricane Sandy,” “The Perfect Storm,” or the “Superstorm” is referred to as The October Surprise.

• a pundit says “binders” “P90x” or “malarkey.”

Top off your drink any time:

• a broadcaster says, “now it’s really all down to Ohio.”

• Ohio goes to your candidate of choice.

Finish your drink if:

• Ohio goes opposite your candidate of choice.

• a state is called for one candidate, then changes to the other.

• your state actually becomes a bouncy ball bobbing on a network’s touchscreen.

• Magic Underwear is mentioned.

• Chris Matthews’ head explodes.

Add a piece of fruit to your drink every time Same Sex Marriage, Gay Marriage or Marriage Equality is referenced by a network anchor. At midnight, eat the fruit salad (if any) you have assembled. It will fight scurvy.
Have a cup of strong black coffee if any newscaster says “There’s Karl Rove!”

Cheers!

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Ace Daily Photos  9.29.2012

The Finish Line at the Bourbon Chase

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Click here for the complete aceweekly.com Lexington Kentucky events calendar.

Submit Lexington Daily Photos for consideration via acelist at aceweekly.com, or tag us on twitter, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, or instagram. Your photo may be shared with Ace readers in every possible digital and print format, including those not yet even conceived of, so be sure to include your name and a photo title  (we might make you famous, and we will register you for swag, baubles, gew-gaws, whatnot.)

Alltech opened its $9.2 million Town Branch distillery today in Lexington, Kentucky, located next to the Alltech/Kentucky Ale brewery at the corner of Maxwell and Cross Streets.

The site will produce Alltech’s Town Branch Bourbon, Pearse Lyons Reserve malt whiskey and bourbon-infused coffee drink, Bluegrass Sundown.

Ace’s Lexington Daily Photo 9.13.2012 “Dreadlocked”  by Chris Snider, Ace Weekly

Submit Lexington Daily Photos for consideration via acelist at aceweekly.com, or tag us on twitter, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, or instagram. Your photo may be shared with Ace readers in every possible digital and print format, including those not yet even conceived of, so be sure to include your name and a photo title  (we might make you famous, and we will register you for swag, baubles, gew-gaws, whatnot.)

Ace Daily Photo 9.1.2012

“Friday Night Lights”

Photo by Ian Davis

Submit Lexington Daily Photos for consideration via acelist at aceweekly.com, or tag us on twitter, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, or instagram. Your photo may be shared with Ace readers in every possible digital and print format, including those not yet even conceived of, so be sure to include your name and a photo title  (we might make you famous, and we will register you for swag, baubles, gew-gaws, whatnot.)

Subscribe to the Ace e-dition newsletter for weekly Lexington Daily Photo favorites, movie passes, more cool stuff.

Ace’s Lexington Daily Photo 8.30.2012  “Bluegrass”

Photo by Kristina Rideout, of Rideout Photography

Submit Lexington Daily Photos for consideration via acelist at aceweekly.com, or tag us on twitter, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, or instagram. Your photo may be shared with Ace readers in every possible digital and print format, including those not yet even conceived of, so be sure to include your name and a photo title  (we might make you famous, and we will register you for swag, baubles, gew-gaws, whatnot.)

Subscribe to the Ace e-dition newsletter for weekly Lexington Daily Photo favorites, movie passes, more cool stuff.

BY KAKIE URCH

If you go to to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, where Alltech President Pearse Lyons was once a master brewer, you end your tour in the Gravity Bar, rocketing to the top in a glass elevator, to the all-glass pub with a 360-degree of the city.

There, they will pour you the Guinness, rich and dark, made there forever, timed just right in the glass. And the view. You’re looking at the new Ireland post-Tiger, higher than the stalled cranes and cathedrals themselves, higher than Croke Park.

The view is so entrancing that I once sort of stumble-kicked actor Paul Rudd out of my way, without even recognizing him. Looking out over the city, it is only as afterthought that you notice the words. Etched into the glass panels, at the precise corresponding point to the city, are the words of James Joyce: “rivverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay…” And then you gasp. Because there out the window, is the river, the Liffey running through the heart of Dublin and Adam and Eve’s, the church running through the heart of Ireland and beyond, the bay.  And over there is 7 Eccles Street. Words etched in glass from Ulysses. And over there is Trinity College. Words etched in glass from Dubliners.

Which is a roundabout way of saying every Irishman’s got a story and it’s all connected. And Pearse Lyons is an Irishman.

In introducing his brand-new Town Branch distillery as the newest stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, Lyons invoked the story of the thing throughout the event and also obviously throughout the planning of the distillery and the spirit it makes.

Rivverrun.

“If we have to pump the water a half mile… If we have to truck the water in, so be it,” because that Lexington Town Branch water is “part of that story” of the Lexington distillery and bourbon tradition and part of the story of how the Scots-Irish of the Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion were sent to Kentucky by Jefferson and used that branch water to make the whiskey.

By God, Pearse Lyons will have that Town Branch water in his flavor, as soon as his engineers figure it out. That’s what he told reporters as he concluded the tour of his $6 million distillery, the first to be built new in Lexington in more than 100 years. That water runs through Lexington like bourbon runs through its history and that water will be in the new bourbon like the Liffey is in the center of Dublin just like the story says.

The history of the Whiskey Rebellion, the fact that his family made whiskey barrels for four generations in Ireland, the story of Lexington’s distillery-rich past,  the story of starting Alltech in a shed in Nicholasville and the fact that, in the James Bond movie “Goldfinger,” Sean Connery as 007 gets out of a plane at the then-Bluegrass Field and tells Pussy Galore that she is now in the heart of bourbon country and there is only one drink: “Bourbon and branch water.” Yes, Pearse Lyons told that story — his son caught the scene on TV just the other night and called him over to the set — at the announcement. And, as Lyons says,”When JR Ewing says, ‘Give

me a bourbon and branch,’ ” well it’s that tradition and that richness of a story that his new craft bourbon tells in its first, second and finishing notes.

And the Town Branch, don’t you know, is connected to the contemporary evolving legend of the Blue. Lyons told the group: “This is Title Town, right?” Home of the NCAA Men’s Basketball title winners, this year and maybe, well, riverrun….

So of course that storied team will have a “Title Town” special batch blue label bottle of Town Branch signed by University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari.

Even the Visitors Center, the historic preservation of the “Icehouse” building that was once an engine room for a distillery and later the studio of photographer/writer James Baker Hall and a lively performance art space with much furtive flavor, lets Lyons tell a story.

Designed by Deirdre Lyons, the renovated center mimics a Dublin street, with the colored pub fronts named after actual Lyons’ ancestors — Eddie Byrne, Tommy Dunne — and the contractor who did the superfine work of the Icehouse renovation — McNamara’s.

Some guys, when they make it, it’s the Formula One. Other guys, the racehorses, and blessings be upon them throughout the Bluegrass. For Dr. Pearse Lyons, biochemist founder of a $700 million a year international company, it ‘s two pure copper pots from Scotland and the mystery of the 51% corn mash and limestone-rich water.

Standing in his distillery, the entrepreneurial success out of the County Louth held the Kentucky Bourbon Trail t-shirt that now features the silhouette of his own Town Branch craft bourbon….and goes into a reverie… “just to be on this shirt with the names of these distillers,” pointing to each and reciting, like a rosary, “Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey, Four Roses…Jim Beam.”

Riverrun.

There is always time for a story and a sip. And there always will be.

By Kakie Urch

The Town Branch bourbon distillery will be added to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, becoming the first distillery in Lexington and the seventh in the state along the current route, Kentucky Distillers’ Association, state tourism officials and  Alltech president  Pearse Lyons  announced this morning.

“Having a distillery here is something of a homecoming,” Lyons, originally of County Louth in Ireland, said, telling the tale of the Irish/Scots of Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion being granted 60 acres in Virginia (now Kentucky) on which to make their whiskey by Thomas Jefferson.

“And on my mom’s side for four generations there were barrelmakers — coopers– and they were proud to actually make barrels not for beer, but for whiskey,” Lyons said.

“When we are talking about the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, we are talking about Kentucky’s history,” Lyons said.

Situated in the cluster of Alltech buildings at the junction of West Maxwell Street, Versailles Road and Oliver Lewis Way, the new distillery produces Town Branch bourbon, named after the underground aquifer that runs through downtown Lexington and feeds some of the Lexington water supply.

After comments by Eric Gregory, president of the KDA, Jeff Conder, KDA chairman and vice president of Americas Operations for Beam, Inc., Vice Mayor Linda Gorton spoke, also citing Lexington’s history. “Lexington was a hub for bourbon distilleries,” she said. Now, with the Town Branch Distillery on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in Lexington just adjacent to the Rupp Arena area for redevelopment and the home of the early Lexington distilleries, “We will pull tourists right into downtown,” she said.

Mike Mangeot, Kentucky’s new commissioner of travel and tourism praised Lyons for his “big thinking”  and said “As we’re out selling Kentucky, we need something unique, and there’s nothing more Kentucky than bourbon,” Mangeot said.

Jim Browder, the new president of the Leixngton Convention and Visitors Bureau praised Lyons for all he and Alltech have done in Lexington. Browder commented on Lyons’ efforts that brought the National Horse Show to Kentucky after more than 100 years in New York City, and his contributions to the World Equestrian Games 2010. Browder also noted Alltech’s annual symposium, which brings 3,000 people from 23 countries to Lexington.

And then, at 10:25 a.m., with the advisory that it was after 5 p.m. somewhere, the Irishman raised a glass of the Town Branch and cleared his throat. “Here’s to Lexington and Here’s to Lexington coming back again” with a distillery, Lyons said, leading those in the room who could dare to toast the newest addition to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail with the craft bourbon from his distillery.

The other distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail are: Four Roses, Lawrenceburg; Heaven Hill, Bardstown; Jim Beam, Clermont; Maker’s Mark, Loretto; Wild Turkey, Lawrenceburg and Woodford Reserve, Versailles.

Tourists are encouraged to set aside at least two days to “do” the entire Kentucky Bourbon Trail. With the Kentucky Bourbon Trail “Passport” program, visitors collect stamps on a passport at each visit and receive a not-available-in-stores t-shirt that celebrates the achievement.

At the Town Branch announcement, KDA President Gregory presented Lyons with the revised Kentucky Bourbon Trail passport, turned to the Town Branch page, and had him issue the first Town Branch distillery stamp.

First articulated in 1999 by the KDA, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail has hosted more than two million visitors in one five-year period, according to its website.

With the rise of premium small batch and single barrel bourbons, production of the spirit increased more than 11.5% from 1999 to 2010, according to the KDA.

KDA figures show that 95 percent of the world’s supply of bourbon is made in Kentucky and that there are now more bourbon barrels in the state that there are people. (More than four million).

Bourbon was declared America’s only native spirit by Congress in 1964. It gets its name from Bourbon County, one of the original three counties that made up Kentucky when it was still part of Virginia. To be considered a bourbon, a spirit must be more than 51 percent corn and be stored in new oak barrels which are charred.

Town Branch, which some whiskey experts note is a spirit that, like Maker’s Mark, has wheat as its second grain, is 80 proof, is one of the products of Lyons Spirits, a company created by Alltech CEO Pearse Lyons. Lyons Spirits also produces Pearse Lyons Reserve whiskey and Bluegrass Sundown (an Irish coffee liqueur).

Town Branch Distillery was the first new distillery added to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association since 1880, according to the group. Historical documents show that scores of bourbon brands were once produced at Lexington distilleries.

The distillery, which is still under construction and will open next month, sits in something of an Alltech compound at the corner of West Maxwell Street and Versailles Road, at the gateway to the state TIF development area known as Lexington’s Distillery District, which mostly runs along Manchester Street nearby.  The Icehouse, formerly an art and performance space in a historic distillery engine room, has been transformed into a visitors’ center for the concern and there is a pub facility and a banqueting hall in a separate building.

Lyons led the gathered officials and members of the press on a tour of the Visitors Center, with a central hall designed as a Dublin street with brightly colored pub fronts bearing names of Pearse and Deirdre Lyons’ ancestors. The Visitors Center was designed by Mrs. Lyons. The tour then continued into the distillery itself, with Lyons getting up on the platform supporting the two copper stills from Scotland, animated as he showed reporters how the system works.

Bourbon distilling royalty was on hand for the event as well. Jimmy Russell, 78, of Lawrenceburg, Master Distiller at Kentucky Bourbon Trail site Wild Turkey for approaching 58 years, was on hand for the toast and the tour. Russell, of course, has left his legacy. He has got his young son Eddie, 52, already trained should he need to step aside.

Lyons, a Ph.D. in biochemistry who was once part of the Guinness brewery team in his native Ireland, built Alltech, now a diversified $700 million revenue international concern based in Lexington, from a small shed operation in Nicholasville. The company founded in 1980 now employs 2,800 people and operates in 128 countries.  In addition to its agricultural products, Alltech produces the Kentucky Ale line of beer. The company was the major sponsor of the Alltech World Equestrian Games held in Lexington in 2010 and is a major cultural donor in the city.

In early 2010, the New Orleans-based company that owns the Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort and the Tom Moore Distillery in Bardstown resigned from the KDA. Its distilleries were removed from the Kentucky Bourbon Trail promotion.

On September 28 at the Alltech site Coach Calipari will sign a special blue label edition of Town Branch Bourbon, commemorating UK’s NCAA title.

Selected Ace Bourbon Archives

Woodford Reserve to Celebrate 200th Anniversary

Cheers to National Bourbon Day

Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2010. Cooking with Bourbon

Chef Tom’s Basil Hayden Bourbon Margarita

Wrapping Up the James Beard Celebrity Chef Series at the World Equestrian Games

This Year’s Models: Alltech’s Pearse Lyons Ace 12.08.2008

Beaux Arts Ball to Christen Lexington’s Distillery District 4.05.2007

View Kentucky Bourbon Trail in a larger map