I am excited to announce my involvement with the upcoming Bourbon & Beyond event, featuring Stevie Nicks, the Steve Miller Band, many other great bands, iconic chefs and me. Along with celebrity chefs Ed Lee and Chris Cosentino, I’ll be curating the bourbon bar and creating tasting-and-history curriculum.

Bourbon & Beyond is part music, part culinary expedition and all bourbon. You’ll see culinary celebrities, such as Chris Cosentino, Tom Colicchio and Jose Salazar, and a star-studded music lineup.

As with everything I do, my goal is to educate people on bourbon’s importance to this country and display its wonderful flavor profiles.

It’s September 23-24, which falls right in the thick of Bourbon Heritage Month.

Buy tickets here.

The event includes:

• The Big Bourbon Bar: A 20,000-square-foot bar featuring bourbon cocktails presented by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
• The Hunter’s Club: Experimental, rare, and hard-to-find bourbons.
• The Bourbon Barrel Cooperage: A behind-the-scenes look at how coopers craft the oak barrels used to age bourbon.
• The Distillery: An interactive experience to discover the life of a master blender, taster, and distiller.
• Bourbon Workshops: Access to bourbon’s best and brightest in a series of free and intimate distilling, bartending, pairing, and cooking workshops.

On the culinary side, Bourbon & Beyond presents local fare from: Baxter’s 942 Bar & Grill, Boss Hog’s BBQ, Doc Crow’s, Gospel Bird, Seviche, The Manhattan Exchange, Whiskey Dry  and more to be announced later.

In addition, it’s a who’s who of chefs appearing throughout the weekend, including Tom Colicchio, Carla Hall, Edward Lee, Chris Cosentino, Amanda Freitag, Jose Salazar, Cosmo Goss & Erling Wu-Bower, Kevin Ashworth, Anthony Lamas, Anthony Falco and more.

As for the music, well, the artists are some of my favorite:

            Stevie Nicks, Eddie Vedder, Steve Miller Band, Band of Horses, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., Paul Rodgers, Amos Lee, Buddy Guy, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, G. Love & Special Sauce, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, ZZ Ward, Nikki Lane, Shawn James & The Shapeshifters, Fantastic Negrito, Kiefer Sutherland, Dave Cavalier, bluegrass favorites curated by The Bluegrass Situation and more.

I’m stoked to be a part of this incredible event.

It’s presented by Danny Wimmer Presents, an acclaimed music festival company with shows all over the country. DWP runs the popular Louder than Life event in Louisville.