The Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History is Bardstown's best stop for bourbon before it became lifestyle branding. Housed in Spalding Hall, it displays old bottles, advertising, documents, Prohibition material, and the odd relics that accumulate around a national habit.
The collection is eccentric in the right way. George Washington's mill stone, medicinal whiskey prescriptions, and Carrie Nation material all help show bourbon as politics, commerce, medicine, vice, and local pride at once.