Ever had a Caipirinha or Batida? How about a Cojito or a Paloma? Or what about a Moscow Mule or a Smoked Old Fashioned?
Cocktails and specialty signature drinks like these make for memorable visits to Danville, where local distilleries are producing America’s native spirit – bourbon – as well as another spirit that is popular in Brazil, but not as well known in the United States.
Let’s start with that Brazilian spirit, which is called cachaca (KA-SHAH-SAH). You can’t get cachaca just anywhere, but you can find it at Danville’s Blue Rook Distillery and their adjacent restaurant, The Still, which features signature cocktails made with this unique, clear spirit.
Distilled onsite in a copper still, cachaca is made from fermented sugar cane. The Still uses Blue Rook’s cachaca in seven different cocktails, from the Classic Caipirinha (cachaca, lime, sugar) to the Cavaliero Chair Lift (cachaca, house made chai liqueur, orgeat, cream, soda).
Blue Rook touts themselves as “the most unique distillery experience in Kentucky” and The Still serves some of the most unique cocktails, which you won’t find on most menus. So “when in Danville,” take the opportunity to try a cocktail you can only get here.
Kentucky is Bourbon country, though, and Danville has plenty of that to offer and several places that put the aged brown water to use in their own signature cocktails.
If you want a little show with your drink, order the bourbon-based Smoked Old Fashioned at Copper & Oak in downtown Danville and ask them to prepare it for you at the table. Classic Old Fashioneds and Prohibition Era Old Fashioneds are also on the menu and are good ways to enjoy a bourbon cocktail.
Just a few steps down the street from Copper & Oak, the kitschy craft cocktail and bourbon bar Boogie Knight’s is doing its own thing with drinks like the Smoked In Cherry Old Fashioned (Woodford double oaked, Woodford cherry and bitters, and sugar) and the Cojito (Bacardi, Cachaca, mint, lime juice, and simple syrup).
Bourbon, vodka, cachaca, gin and whiskey cocktails with their own unique twists can also be found at Bricks and Brews, Morley’s Backyard, Smoke n’ Bourbon, The Nook, Paint Parties and other establishments in Danville. So, choose your cocktails to sample and sip your way around town during your next visit.
