Iconic Henderson food, ingredients and a bourbon brand will be featured at one of the premium events at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown in September.
The festival, now in its 35th year, is one of the premier annual events of the bourbon world, with about 67 distilleries represented.
This year, some 6,000 ticketed guests from 44 states and 15 foreign countries are expected to attend Sept. 10-13, according to a spokeswoman for the festival. VIP tickets sold out in three minutes when they went on sale in April, and all weekend passes were sold in three days.
One of the premium events at the festival this year will be the one-hour “Go West for the Best of Kentucky Food and Bourbon” on Saturday, Sept. 12. Attendees will pay $100 to dine on four classic Western Kentucky dishes that are paired with four Western Kentucky whiskies.
The dishes will be prepared by Michael Ervin, managing partner and executive chef at Henderson’s Cap & Cork restaurant, who also selected the whiskeys to serve with them.
Ervin isn’t the event’s only Henderson connection. Two dishes will feature barbecue and beans prepared by Thomason’s Barbecue, whose owner, Kevin Gibson, made connections with bourbon folks while he lived in Louisville; he has been serving Thomason’s products at the bourbon festival for several years. Gibson recruited Ervin to elevate that a few notches this year.
Meanwhile, two of the dishes will be paired with whiskeys from Silk Velvet, the reborn Henderson brand featuring spirits produced by Western Kentucky master distiller Jacob Call.
A catfish dish will be prepared with Henderson’s own Colonel Jim’s seasoning.
And one of the condiments will feature peaches from Henderson’s Cardinal Farms.
“We’ve got a heavy, heavy influence of Henderson in it,” Silk Velvet President Zach Hargis of Henderson observed.
Here are the four pairings:
- Colonel Jim’s spicy fried catfish + soon-to-be-released Silk Velvet rye
- Thomason’s Barbecue baked bean and smoked chicken dip + Ingram Flagship full-proof bourbon
- Thomason’s Barbecue “chip” (mutton and pork “burnt ends”) slider with peach jam aioli + Silk Velvet single-barrel bourbon
- Tipsy transparent pie + Jackson Purchase full-proof bourbon
A native of Alexandria, Alabama, Ervin “got into food at any early age,” he said. “I grew up in an ‘ingredient household’ with my mother and grandmother.” The understanding was, “If you want (something to eat), you’ve got to cook it.”
He got his first restaurant job at age 16. When he attended the University of Alabama, he got a job as a line cook at Epiphany Café, moved up to sous chef and hired on at the 300-seat Chuck’s Café, considered by some to be the best restaurant in Tuscaloosa.
“Epiphany is where I learned to cook,” Ervin said. “Chuck’s is where I learned to run a restaurant.”
Ervin moved here with his wife, Danielle, from Atlanta in 2021. He soon made friends with Aaron Nelson, who moonlighted running the tasting bar at Beverage Barn liquor store. Nelson and Beverage Barn owner Brian McDaniel began brainstorming about opening a bourbon bar, and talked with Ervin about preparing food for it.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do it, we’ve got to be a restaurant that serves drinks, not a bar that serves food,’” Ervin said. From that ethos, Cap & Cork was born, with those three and their wives as partners.
Ervin insisted that he didn’t lean into Henderson products for the bourbon festival event merely out of new-found allegiance to his adopted hometown.
Thomason’s Barbecue has proven its popularity by being in business since 1960; national food journalists such as Jane and Michael Stern have raved about its sweet-and-meaty barbecue beans for years.
Colonel Jim’s Breading Co., which grew out of a popular Henderson fried chicken and fish restaurant dating back to the 1950s, today distributes breading to individual restaurants and national chains across the country. “I used their stuff in Alabama,” Ervin said. “Every fish restaurant in Alabama uses them.”
Cardinal Farms peaches aren’t merely locally popular. “I lived in Georgia long enough that I know peaches,” he said, and Cardinal Farms grows splendid ones.
And Silk Velvet was an instant hit when it debuted at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival last year.
“It was a great experience,” Silk Velvet’s Zach Hargis said. This year, they hope to debut their new rye at the festival.
“We’re just excited to get to share Henderson and Western Kentucky at KBF again,” Hargis said.
Add in Ervin’s mastery in the kitchen, and some bourbon festival attendees could be in for some Western Kentucky magic.
“We had a preview where some bourbon festival people came (to Cap & Cork) and sampled (the dishes and whiskey pairings), and they said it was freaking awesome,” Thomason’s Gibson said.
Abby Dixon, executive director of the Henderson Tourist Commission, said exposing dozens of bourbon festival attendees to terrific food and spirits could entice some to visit Henderson and Western Kentucky.
“You get a little taste, literally, and if you’re impressed, you want more,” Dixon said.
“In tourism,” she said, “we say, the way to a visitor’s heart is through their belly.”
Local event will replicate the experience
Tickets to this year’s Kentucky Bourbon Festival are sold out, so unless you’re already holding a ticket, there’s no way to sample the Western Kentucky-themed food-and-whiskey pairing there.
But Cap & Cork will replicate the experience with a preview event featuring the same dishes and spirits at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1.
Tickets are $99 per person and are available through the restaurant’s Facebook page.
Master distillers and blenders are scheduled to be on hand.
