Nashville Brewery & Distillery vs Whiskey Golf Cart Tour

Two of the five Nashville golf cart tour options on this site are drink-focused: the Brewery & Distillery Cart Tour and the premium Bootleg & Barrels Tennessee Whiskey Tasting Cart. They look adjacent — both are two-hour cart tours, both stop at distilleries, both have you sipping local spirits between landmarks — but they are priced almost three times apart and they do very different things with that price gap. This guide compares them side by side so you can pick the right one for your trip.

Quick verdict

Side-by-side comparison

(All figures from the live booking page for each tour.)

The pricing question — and what the $106 difference buys

The $165 versus $59 gap is roughly 2.8× — substantial for two tours that look similar on the surface. Here is where the difference actually lands.

The Brewery & Distillery Cart Tour at $59 gets you the ride, the driver-guide, and access to four local breweries and distilleries. The tastings themselves are paid separately — you order a flight or a sample at each stop, typically in the $10-20 range per venue, and you keep total spend flexible. A guest who tastes lightly might leave the day around $80-90 all-in; a guest who orders a flight at every stop might land closer to $130. The model is “the ride is cheap, the drinks scale with you.”

The Bootleg & Barrels Tennessee Whiskey Cart at $165 flips it: the whiskey tastings are included in the price. There is no separate bar tab at each stop — you have already paid. That tends to suit travellers who want a curated, no-decisions experience and dislike the running mental math of a bar tab; it does not always suit travellers who would have tasted lightly and paid less.

Net of the in-built tastings, the marginal premium on the Bootleg & Barrels tour buys a curated whiskey experience with an operator (Nashville Tours, distinct from Joyride) that has built its brand around the Tennessee whiskey story.

What the ratings actually tell you

Both tours rate excellently — but the sample sizes are very different.

Brewery & Distillery Cart at 4.7/5 from 66 reviews. A 66-review sample is large enough that the rating is genuinely reliable. You can read the actual review text on GetYourGuide before booking and see the range of experiences.

Bootleg & Barrels at 4.9/5 from 9 reviews. A 4.9 is excellent, but a nine-review sample is small. The early reviews are uniformly positive, which is a good signal — but it is the sort of signal you’d treat with more confidence at 60 reviews than at nine. If you are risk-averse, this is one to read all the existing reviews before booking; if you are happy to be an early adopter on a high-rated boutique tour, the signal is plenty.

For context, the featured Sightseeing Cart Tour at 4.7/5 from 202 reviews is the largest-sample cart on the site. The Street Art & Instagram Cart at 4.8/5 from 83 reviews is the second-largest. Neither of the drink-focused tours has that volume yet.

A note on Tennessee whiskey — why “Bootleg & Barrels” picked it

It is worth understanding what makes Tennessee whiskey distinct from bourbon, since the premium tour is built around the difference. Tennessee Code § 57-2-106 sets out the legal definition — to label a product Tennessee whiskey it has to meet seven requirements:

1. Manufactured in Tennessee
2. Made from a mash bill of at least 51% corn
3. Distilled to no more than 160 proof
4. Filtered through maple charcoal before barrelling — the Lincoln County Process
5. Aged in new, charred oak barrels in Tennessee
6. Placed in those barrels at no more than 125 proof
7. Bottled at no less than 80 proof

The Lincoln County Process is the distinguishing step — the new spirit is dripped through several feet of sugar-maple charcoal over three to seven days before going into the barrel, mellowing it into the smoother style that defines the category. One distillery, Prichard’s, was grandfathered out of the requirement and can label its product Tennessee whiskey without the charcoal step; every other Tennessee whiskey on a shelf has been through it.

Jack Daniel’s is the household name today, but the historical scale is worth knowing because it reframes the modern Nashville scene. In 1885, Nashville’s own Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Greenbrier, TN, was producing around 380,000 gallons of whiskey a year — roughly 16 times Jack Daniel’s output of about 23,000 gallons the same year. Charles Nelson had bought the distillery in 1870; after his death in 1891 his wife Louisa ran it (a rare position for a 19th-century American woman) until Tennessee’s statewide Prohibition shut the doors in 1909 — more than a decade before the federal ban. The brand stayed dormant for over a century before Charles’s descendants Andy and Charlie Nelson relaunched it in Nashville’s Marathon Village (adjacent to Germantown) on November 23, 2014.

That 1909 closure was the end of Tennessee distilling for nearly a century. The modern Nashville restart is a precise window: state legislation cleared the way in 2010, Corsair Distillery opened a Nashville location that year, Yazoo Brewing (already trading since 2003) was joined by Pennington Distilling and Jackalope Brewing in 2011, Tennessee Brew Works in 2013, and Nelson’s Green Brier reopened in 2014. That is the “early 2010s” the modern craft scene refers to — a narrow legislative-and-reopening window between 2010 and 2014.

If your travelling group is more into craft beer, IPAs, or local sours than they are into brown spirits, the Brewery & Distillery Cart is the better fit — that tour leans into the breweries as well as the distilleries, and Nashville’s craft-beer scene has grown rapidly through that same 2010–2014 window and after.

What stops do the tours actually visit?

Neither operator publishes a fixed venue list on the GetYourGuide product page — partly because the Brewery & Distillery itinerary varies with venue capacity and operating hours, and partly because the whiskey tour rotates through Nashville’s tasting-room circuit. Confirm the day-of stop list with the operator when you book.

Likely candidates, based on geography and reputation, include venues in the Marathon Village / SoBro / Nations corridors — Tennessee Brew Works on Ewing Avenue (a six-block hop from the downtown pickup) and Nelson’s Green Brier in Marathon Village are the strongest geographic candidates, with Pennington Distilling in The Nations and Jackalope and Bearded Iris also plausible. Take the list above as a candidate set, not a guarantee.

Group economics — running the numbers

For a couple ($59 × 2 = $118 vs $165 × 2 = $330), the differential is real but absorbable. For a group of four, it widens sharply: $236 versus $660. That is a fair question for the trip budget — what else does $424 buy on a Nashville weekend? Dinner for two at a top-rated Nashville restaurant, or a great show ticket, or another half-day tour.

For a bachelorette or bachelor party of six, the Brewery & Distillery total of $354 (plus tastings) versus the Bootleg & Barrels total of $990 is a different conversation again. Both fit the format — six is the cart’s maximum capacity — but most groups of six at the higher tier will be doing the premium tour because the special-occasion framing is the entire point.

Which tour wins for your trip

Pick the Brewery & Distillery Cart if:

• You want a budget-friendly drink-focused cart with strong reviews
• You like the flexibility of paying per tasting
• Your group is mixed beer/spirits drinkers
• You’d rather spend the saved $106 per person on dinner or a show
• You want the larger review sample (66 reviews vs 9)

Pick the Bootleg & Barrels Tennessee Whiskey Cart if:

• You specifically want a curated Tennessee whiskey experience
• You like the all-inclusive model — no per-stop math
• It’s a special occasion (anniversary, milestone birthday, bachelor party)
• You’re happy to be an early reviewer on a small-sample, highly-rated tour
• Premium positioning matters to the way your group wants the day to feel

Or — what about just the Sightseeing Cart Tour?

A genuine alternative: if you are unsure between the two drink tours, the Top-Pick Sightseeing Cart Tour at $54 covers 35+ landmarks in 90 minutes and gives you the guide’s personal nightlife shortlist at the end — which means you go drinking on the evening’s best honky-tonks and bars based on insider intel, but at a venue and pace of your choosing rather than a fixed circuit. For some travellers that combination — daytime sightseeing on the cart, evening on Broadway by the guide’s shortlist — is the most satisfying split of all. See the what-to-expect guide for the full breakdown of the featured tour.

Ready to Book?

Whichever drink-focused cart fits, all five Nashville cart tours we list — including the featured Nashville golf cart tour — are bookable on the homepage with free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Check live availability for your dates and pick the one that matches your trip.