Baz Luhrmann’s 3D version of “The Great Gatsby” opened this weekend, and earlier this week, Rich Copley of the Lexington Herald-Leader had a nice story about the novel’s ties to Louisville - Daisy Buchanan is from the city, and she marries Tom in the “Muhlbach” Hotel, obviously a stand-in for the Seelbach Hotel.

Like Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald was briefly stationed at Camp Taylor, southeast of Louisville, during World War I. “He was a second lieutenant, doing some military training, and on occasion, he would come to the Seelbach Hotel, and on several occasions, he would be asked to leave because he was drunk,” Seelbach historian Larry Johnson told Copley.

Folks here in Louisville, Ky., are still buzzing about Lonely Planet’s designation of our fair city as the top U.S. travel destination for 2013. Or maybe we all just had too much bourbon celebrating Repeal Day yesterday. Either way, it’s all about bourbon, and if you haven’t experienced the warm hospitality, top-notch restaurants and amazing bourbon bars here, I encourage you to follow Lonely Planet’s suggestion and visit us next year.

If you’ve been thinking about joining the Bourbon Women Association, or just getting a taste of what the organization is about, tonight (Dec. 6) is a great opportunity. From 5:30 to 8 p.m., the BW will hold a holiday shopping event at the Liquor Barn in Springhurst, 4301 Towne Center Drive. You can enjoy samples of Four Roses and purchasea special BW bottle hand-selected by Bourbon Women board members. Four Roses master distiller Jim Rutledge will be on hand to autograph the bottles. Attendees receive a 10 percent discount off all liquor and beer (excluding domestic brands) and a 15 percent discount off food, wine and party goods. The event is free for Bourbon Women members and just $25 for non-members (or $50 if you also want to purchase a year’s membership). I hope to see you there!

Tickets are now on sale for WhiskyFest Chicago (and New York and San Francisco). These events, sponsored by Whisky Advocate, offer tastings of more than 250 whiskies from around the world and the chance to meet distillers and master blenders. I am very excited about attending my first WhiskyFest in Chicago in April. While I’ve tasted probably 100 bourbons, I’m far less educated about other whiskies, and this will be a perfect way to taste some Scotch without actually having to buy any. For details on how to get your tickets, click here. 

HAVING WORK DONE: Business in downtown Louisville yesterday took me past the Fort Nelson Building, which is being restored by Michter’s as the site of a boutique bourbon distillery. The building is beautiful, but it needs a lot of work. Kudos to the company for saving a historic structure along Louisville’s Whiskey Row for its new enterprise.

Bardstown has the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. Now, Louisville has the Bourbon Classic.

The Classic, touted as “a connoisseur’s weekend celebrating all things bourbon” and intended to become an annual event, will debut March 22-23, 2013, at the Kentucky Center for the Arts and will feature a World’s Best Cocktail competition featuring mixologists from across the country; a panel showcasing master distillers; “Bourbon University” sessions on topics such as bourbon and food pairings and entertaining with bourbon; and tastings of fine bourbons and gourmet food.

“This will be an experience like no other – a showcase of the art and enjoyment of bourbon,” Tony Butler of FSA Management said as he and The Bourbon Review announced the Classic at a Wednesday afternoon cocktail party in the Center’s lobby. With its rich bourbon heritage and sophisticated bar and restaurant landscape, Louisville is “the ideal host city” for such an event, he said.

The Urban Bourbon Trail is the Classic’s welcoming sponsor; other sponsors are Buffalo Trace, Blanton’s, Four Roses, Maker’s Mark, Michter’s, Old Forester and Woodford Reserve.

To give “a taste of what’s in store in March,” as the Review’s Seth Thompson put it (disclosure: I’m a regular contributor to the magazine), 610 Magnolia chef and “Top Chef” finalist Edward Lee prepared a salad with rock shrimp, sorghum croutons and bourbon vinaigrette, while Silver Dollar co-owner Larry Rice and bartender Susie Hoyt created a welcome punch using Old Charter 10-year-old; an Old Fashioned with Four Roses; and a Bourbon Buck using Weller Antique and ginger beer.

Tickets for the inaugural Bourbon Classic are now on sale at $135 standard/$175 VIP for Friday’s events and $155/$195 for Saturday’s. Packages are also available. For all the details, visit www.bourbonclassic.com.

Photos: Top, Chef Ed Lee and Bourbon Barrel Foods’ Matt Jamie prepare the salads. Center, Silver Dollar’s Larry Rice and Susie Hoyt at the bar. Bottom, Justin and Seth Thompson, co-publishers of The Bourbon Review.

Several Kentucky establishments are highlighted in the August issue of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, on newsstands now. 

Proof on Main in the 21C Museum Hotel at 702 W. Main St. is among the editors’ picks for the 100 Best Wine Restaurants in the country, and its bison burger is also featured in a roundup of the best burgers at said establishments (pair it with Palazzo’s Cabernet Franc from Napa, suggests general manager Rachel Cutler).

Elsewhere in the magazine, chef Jonathan Lundy of Lexington favorite Jonathan at Gratz Park (he co-created a fabulous James Beard-sanctioned bourbon dinner in Lexington a couple of weeks ago) gives tips on how to pair bourbon with:

Seafood: Basil Hayden’s high rye content goes well with smoked salmon

Chicken: Elijah Craig 18-Year-Old Single Barrel’s high levels of smoke and oak work well with grilled chicken (or beef)

Red meat: Woodford Reserve Double Oaked, with its dry finish, pairs great with roasted lamb and mint julep jelly

Veggies: Old Charter 8-Year-Old works here with its corn content and pepper notes

Dessert: Four Roses Limited Edition 2011 has a strong cocoa scent that is “perfect” with chocolate cake

Read the entire article, and find a recipe for Lundy’s Bourbon Alexander (hint: ice cream!), here.

Finally, Justin Pike, head bartender of the Tasting Kitchen in Venice, Calif., creates the cocktail of the month, the “Free Love,” using Buffalo Trace Bourbon and Meyer Lemon-Fennel Syrup. Anything that requires 2-3 hours to make is too much work for me, but if you try it, let me know how it turns out!

Inspired by the storied history and recent resurgence of Louisville’s Whiskey Row, Kevin Yates and Katie Kelty, who met while both were students at Bellarmine University, have started a new line of products that celebrate that heritage: Bourbon Built.

Their high-quality T-shirts (most $24) feature archival images of city scenes and are printed right here in Louisville. I purchased the shirt that shows a streetcar navigating Market Street circa 1900-1910. Another design depicts the elaborate fire escapes of brick buildings along Main Street. More designs are in the works.

Also available: a set of four coasters ($9) that say, “With a splash of water,” printed by Hound Dog Press of Louisville.

“We are just two college friends who wanted to show our love of this great city, its history and its connection to that Southern elixir of the gods,” Kelty says.

Place your order here. Bourbon Built is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Louisville is getting serious about reclaiming its bourbon heritage. Today, Heaven Hill Distilleries, the largest independent family-owned and -operated distilled spirits supplier in the United States, announced plans for a new artisanal pot-still distillery and interactive tourism experience at its 528 Main St. office along Louisville’s historic “Whiskey Row.”

Work on the multimillion-dollar Evan Williams Bourbon Experience is to begin June 15 with a projected opening date of September 2013, in time for Bourbon Heritage Month, distillery officials announced at a standing-room-only news conference with Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson and Mayor Greg Fischer. In attendance were several members of the Shapira family and Parker and Craig Beam, Heaven Hill’s father-and-son master distillers. 

The Evan Williams Bourbon Experience will include an interactive exhibit on distilling, a Whiskey Row-themed tasting room, a retail store and a “speakeasy”-themed banquet room. Its facade will be dominated by a dramatic five-story Evan Williams bottle that will become three dimensional in the two lower floors and form a “bourbon fountain” in the lobby.

The attraction is named for Heaven Hill’s flagship bourbon brand, which in turn is named for “Kentucky’s First Distiller,” a Welsh immigrant who built his commercial distillery at what is now Sixth Street at the Ohio River in 1783. Evan Williams was also a city trustee known to bring a jug of his finest to trustee meetings and Louisville’s harbormaster - a job with a lot of power in the days when the city was the major shipping port for whiskey headed to New Orleans and other points south. Visitors to the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience will be able to view exhibits that recreate his original distillery.

“We welcome back ‘the spirit’ of Evan Williams,” Heaven Hill executive VP Harry Shapira said.

Heaven Hill knows how to build a tourism destination. Its gorgeous Bourbon Heritage Center, with a bourbon-barrel-shaped tasting room, draws more than 60,000 people per year to Nelson County, where the company has its headquarters, warehousing and bottling operations. Its bourbon and whiskeys are produced at the Bernheim Distillery in Louisville. Like the Heritage Center, the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience was designed by Solid Light Inc. of Louisville (president Cynthia Torp is a founding member of the Bourbon Women Association).

The Heaven Hill project is the latest in a series of projects celebrating Louisville’s “urban bourbon” heritage. Michter’s plans to open a boutique distillery in the Old Fort Nelson Building at Eighth and Main, about two blocks west of the Heaven Hill site. Last year, Four Roses partnered with BBC to open the Four Roses Bourbon Barrel Loft at 300 W. Main, which has a view of the Whiskey Row Lofts in the 100 block, where other former distillery-related buildings are being rehabbed into restaurants and bars. 

Mayor Fischer called the Heaven Hill project “another exclamation point” on Louisville’s food and beverage industry. “We call bourbon a food group around here,” he said to laughter.

Admission to the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience is projected to be $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and $5 for children under 21.

(Rendering courtesy of Solid Light)

Louisville freelance writer Dana McMahan spent a whole day drinking along the city’s Urban Bourbon Trail and lived to blog about it. My favorite revelation: President Harry S Truman purportedly started his day with a meal of toast, eggs, bacon, fruit, milk and a shot of whiskey. I knew I liked that guy.

Students from the Yale School of Architecture are coming to Louisville to research a project on designing a contemporary urban bourbon distillery. They will study Louisville’s Whiskey Row and visit area distilleries including Woodford Reserve and Four Roses.

Read more about the project in a Courier-Journal story here.

Gill Holland, co-owner of The Green Building at 732 E. Market St. in Louisville’s NuLu District, wants to establish Louisville as the “Gateway to Bourbon Country.” And now a new bike rack sculpture in front of the building is pointing the way.

The bourbon-themed sculpture, designed by artist Jacob Heustis and dubbed “As the Old Crow Flies,” shows the actual direction and distance of each of the six distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Four Roses, Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Marker’s Mark, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve.

Holland, whose wife, Augusta Brown Holland, is the daughter of a former Brown-Forman CEO, said he was inspired by way-finding signs he saw on a trip to Nantucket: ”You know, the ones that say, ‘Oslo: 7,000 miles that way; Los Angeles, 8,000 miles that way.’ I had this very kind of rustic street sign in mind, like you might find in the country. I gave that idea to Jacob and he turned it into this amazing art. And since we are the ‘Green’ Building, I thought it should be a bike rack.”

Heustis built the piece from wood and steel from barrels sourced from the distilleries and burned the names onto each sign. The sculpture was dedicated on Jan. 6 during the First Friday Trolley Hop with several master distillers in attendance.

“People love it!” Holland said. “We came up with this idea that it’s good luck to splash bourbon on it, and we hope that will become a new tradition.”

(Photo: Jacob Heustis)