Riding along a ridge 30 stories above the Kentucky River bed in his Jeep, Archaeologist Nicolas Laracuente explains there were once 200 stills on the tax records in Woodford County, Kentucky, alone. There were even more that weren’t on the tax records, he points out, because the one we’re headed to doesn’t show up in any tax records he’s yet seen. He found the site we’re heading to referenced in a lawsuit filed well over a hundred years ago.

The Beginning of Bourbon Archaeology

Laracuente became fascinated with archaeology during an elective class he took as an undergraduate at university. A…