It is not often these days that I get to return to the Beaumont, an old inn in the Kentucky Bluegrass first visited half a century ago. The cliché that time and distance make the heart grow fonder has truth in it, as I have relearned this season.
The Beaumont has been in the food and lodging business since 1917. It is owned and operated by branches of the Dedman family whose roots reach back to the early days of trans-Appalachian settlement.
The original building dates from the 1840s and was once a girls’ finishing school. The young ladies in crinolines are long gone, but not a certain air of gentility. The Beaumont has a worthy watering hole — the Owl’s Nest — refashioned from an old carriage shelter in 2003 when liquor-by-the-drink finally came to Harrodsburg. Getting a drink before then, though illegal, was not impossible.
This was because of the Dedmans’ graciousness and sensitivity to the desires of their guests. The triangle roughly from Louisville to Lexington to Harrodsburg is home to some of the finest whiskey in the world: true bourbon. Over the dry years of local prohibition, a ritual was enacted each night at the Beaumont that went like this:a white-jacketed porter placed trays of ice-water in the hallway at the bottom of the staircase. This was the signal to guests-who-knew that the “bar” was open. It consisted of one’s own flask, a glass of the inn’s ice-water and a seat under the white-columned front portico. When sixth-generation Dixon Dedman spearheaded winning the wet vote and construction of the Owl’s Nest, he also revived the distilling business of ancestor Charles Mortimer Dedman, who back in the 1870s called his whiskey “Kentucky Owl: the Wise Man’s Bourbon.”
It has been said that Kentucky culture distils down to thoroughbred horses, beautiful women and bourbon whiskey. Book the Beaumont for Derby Weekend in May, settle in at the Owl’s Nest, and see if you don’t agree. Every sip will come with a shot of history: the dining room serves Robert E. Lee cake and Jefferson Davis’s likeness hangs in the parlor.
This past season I had plans to return to the Beaumont with the whole family but was frustrated by the logistics of busy lives. Next year, God willing and the creeks don’t rise, we’ll make it good again.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2023 World edition.
