by By Brian G. Miller
If you’re a bourbon enthusiast, this might be your dream job: organize a nearly weeklong party that celebrates all-things Kentucky bourbon, where 50,000 of your friends come from more than 40 states and 20 countries.
The Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KBF), “America’s premier celebration of the nation’s official native spirit,” announced a new leader earlier this year whose job is to do just that.
Heading into its 29th year this fall, the festival’s Board of Directors named Randy Prasse the KBF’s President and Chief Operating Officer.
Bardstown, known as the Bourbon Capital of the World, plays host to the KBF. The event features many activities on The Great Lawn and around town featuring food, music, arts and crafts, bourbon tastings and food pairings, historical and educational presentations, the unique World Championship Bourbon Barrel Relay race, and the annual Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame ceremony. The KBF also features a wide range of activities including special tastings and tours at the many local distilleries.
Randy, the new man heading it all up, “brings more than 25 years of high-end festival and event management, operations, and marketing experience to the job,” according to the news release announcing his appointment. Randy is now in charge of the festival’s daily operations and is being asked to guide the festival’s future growth.
Randy was most recently the Senior Director of Operations at Churchill Downs in Louisville, directing all operations functions for the last four Kentucky Derbys. His career has included managing events and festivals in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin, where he’s originally from.
I had a chance to talk with Randy via Zoom recently and here’s an excerpt of our conversation:
TBT: First, I’m sorry we’re not able to have this conversation in person. How are you and everyone on the KBF staff faring in these tough times?
RANDY: “We’re doing well. Safety first. We’re alternating dates that we’re in the office. As much as I appreciate the ability to work from home, there really is something to be said about being in Bardstown. I get out of my car at the office and you can smell the bourbon in the air. I’ve been going in twice a week. “
TBT: Congratulations on the (relatively) new position. How is the transition, coming from Churchill Downs and the Derby, from “the greatest two minutes in sports” to “the greatest five days in Bourbon” going?
RANDY: “This is my 31st year of doing festivals and events. This is back where I’ve spent much of my time, it’s my comfort zone, where I can actually affect the outcomes and influence the decisions without the corporate structure, so that’s kind of nice.”
TBT: What drew you to the job at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival?
RANDY: “I spent a number of years developing a craft beer festival (in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania). I believe that same type of experience and knowledge that I’ve grown there can be applicable to bourbon…the quality of the experience, the exclusiveness, and the experiences (people) can’t get elsewhere.
“They brought me in…to help the event live up to its potential. It’s a 29-year event that has a lot of success and a lot of heritage, but they realize it hasn’t been keeping up with the times or keeping pace with the distillers and this bourbon boom.”
TBT: Why do you think bourbon and its culture are so important to Kentucky?
RANDY: “For Kentucky, it’s like what beer, and brats, and cheese are to Wisconsin. It is not only the big industry, but it’s in people’s blood. Generations of people have been involved with the bourbon business. Just take a look around Bardstown and see what that impact has been from a business standpoint. But I also think it’s a fun thing to promote from a tourism standpoint. Everything we do is economic development. We’re trying to see something that is unique to our area, our town, our Commonwealth. Bourbon…is the unique factor, the wow factor.”
TBT: I know the festival is still more than 5 months away and lots will change. How is the current health crisis affecting the planning you’re doing right now?
RANDY: “It’s affecting how we’re planning everything going forward. This is a game-changer, it changes how we plan, how we sell tickets, how many tickets we sell, how we get people in and out of a venue. There is no playbook to go to. We are trying to be as unique and individual with our planning to what Bardstown is and what this event is.”
TBT: I think most people would be surprised to know that this fall will be the 29th annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival. How has the festival grown and where do you see it going in the future?
RANDY: “We talked about the Gala (The Great Kentucky Bourbon Tasting & Cocktail Party) and the history of the festival and how it started as a kind of industry celebration. Locally it’s been called the Bourbon Prom. It really was a celebration of the locals, the distillers, and their employees. You had the Hall of Famers, some of the early rock stars of the bourbon industry that were there.
“I went down to New Orleans for the New Orleans Bourbon Festival (which turned out to be canceled). I had this opportunity… to have one-on-ones with people like Tracy Napolitano (Executive Director of the New Orleans Bourbon Festival). Tracy told me we’re really two of the only true bourbon festivals in the country. A lot of events have bourbon, and a lot of the distilleries are doing events. But as far as an organized festival and doing this kind of programming (we’re unique.) So that’s exciting. But we’ve got to grow up quick.
“Being involved with the horse industry and thoroughbreds for the last couple of years, it’s always been about horses. And now all of a sudden it’s like horses and bourbon. It’s going to be a photo finish.”
TBT: Are there any major changes or surprises for this year’s Festival that you can tell us about now?
RANDY: “What we want to do is leave no doubt to people that they’re coming into Bardstown, the Bourbon Capital of the World. And that this is clearly an event of experiences that they’re not going to get elsewhere; unique, authentic experiences.
“What we’re trying to do is expose new people to bourbon, seasoned people to new bourbons, and give them experiences with bourbon as the core piece that they can’t get anywhere else, other than in Bardstown. I look at this as more of a year-round tool versus one weekend in September and then going away. You’re going to see and hear more from the Festival year-round as we celebrate and promote bourbon.”
TBT: Have you always been a bourbon drinker, at least since you came to Kentucky? Do you have a favorite bourbon or do you have to not play favorites?
RANDY: “Bourbon was not my drink of choice or the thing I was collecting. I’ve only been in this world for two months, but I’m immersing myself. I definitely became a student of, and more interested in bourbon, when the Woodford Reserve sponsorship took over the Derby.
“But as far as loyalty to any of them, no. I really enjoy doing the blind taste tests. I can tell a difference between a $15 bottle and a $100 bottle in the smoothness and the finish. I enjoy drinking it neat in a Glencairn class. I have read that you put it in a highball glass and add a drop of water and it opens the flavor, so I’m experimenting with that.
“I’m really enjoying the journey. Just like everything else I’ve done: I didn’t know anything about the battle of Gettysburg, those three days, and now I do. I didn’t know anything about craft beer, and now I do. And I didn’t know that much, admittedly, about bourbon five years ago…but I’ve jumped in and immersed myself and I’m having a lot of fun with it.”
TBT: Do you have any anecdotes about meeting or working with some of the celebrities, or rock stars as you call them, of the bourbon world you can share?
RANDY: “Nothing against the craft brewing people, but they are so fiercely competitive and so loyal to their own product, if they walk into a social environment and they don’t have their product available…they’ll drink water.
“In bourbon it’s different. Week two on the job I was at the Kentucky Distiller Association offices in Frankfort. I walk in and there’s a table of 50, 60, 70 different bottles. It was a reception with all the distilleries. Literally, there’s a “who’s who” of the distillers in the state. They’re all there and they all bring bourbon to share. It’s like a big bourbon potluck. I’m sampling and talked to a few of them, and I said, ‘If you don’t have your product available, what are you drinking?’
“The answers were like, ‘We love bourbon. We’ll drink anyone’s.’
“It’s not the standoffish, competitive, ‘I can’t drink my competitor’s product.’
“That was really refreshing. I’d heard of the brotherhood and sisterhood, so to speak, within the bourbon industry. But it was really demonstrated right there. And they meant it. They said, ‘We enjoy this and we enjoy that. We’re always learning, we always collaborate, and we compliment each other on our products.’ That is the fun part of what I’m learning.”
The glue that brings us together
Randy closed our conversation with a story about a woman he met on his trip to New Orleans who told him something that puts bourbon in perspective for him:
“She said, ‘I may not remember what specific bourbon I’m drinking. I won’t remember how much it cost. But I do remember that I met a new friend over enjoyment of this bourbon.’
“It really made an impact on me. It doesn’t matter if you’re drinking Woodford, or Michter’s, or Blanton’s, or Larceny, or Heaven Hill. You met a new friend or maybe you reunited with an old friend and bourbon is kind of that centerpiece. That’s kind of the spirit I’m taking forward as we plan a very social event. The industry is social, the festivals are social, humans are social. And bourbon is really kind of the glue that brings us all together.”
If you haven’t made the trip to Bourbon’s Mecca before during this special time, make sure you put it on your calendar for this fall. Kentucky Bourbon Festival 2020 is scheduled for Sept. 16 through Sept. 20. Tickets will be available sometime this summer. Click here to check out the Kentucky Bourbon Festival website for the latest information.
Photo credit: The Kentucky Bourbon Festival
