Old Jim Beam Distillery visitor center.

Jim Beam American Stillhouse (In Transition)

Clermont, Kentucky

In competition for the booming bourbon tourist market, Jim Beam spent millions in 2012 to replace its old visitor center with the Jim Beam American Stillhouse (The old center is now the tasting room). Built to evoke the 1930s, the Stillhouse quadrupled the size of the original building. Known as "bourbon Disneyland," the Stillhouse has an elevator that resembles a giant still, and is the starting point for an hour-long up-close guided tour of everything from mashing to fermenting to bottling. For some reason bourbon-making isn't subject to the same keep-your-distance controls that ended many food factory tours; here you can actually peek into vats. Maybe whiskey is self-sterilizing?

In 2014 Jim Beam unveiled a life-size bronze statue of its namesake that now stands at the Stillhouse entrance.