Louisville Distillery Tours

In the last twenty-five years, Louisville’s distillery scene has changed dramatically. At the turn of the century, there were no distillery tours available. The only distilleries in the city were Bernheim and Brown-Forman distilleries and neither of them offered tours. Then about fifteen years ago or so, Michter’s announced that they had bought the Fort Nelson building and were going to open an artisan distillery in the building. The problem was that the building was in worse shape than they had thought and it took major construction efforts and cost to rehab the building into a distillery. To Michter’s credit, they spent the money and saved the building when many other companies would have abandoned the building and gone somewhere else. In 2015, Michter’s opened a distillery in Shively. Kentucky but did not offer tours except by invitation only. The following year they opened the Fort Nelson Distillery and they offer tours there. It is an exceptional distillery tour that I highly recommend.

Michter’s was the first to announce that they would build a distillery on Main Street, but they were not the first to open one. In 2015 Heaven Hill opened the Evan Williams Distillery on Main Street and offered tours of their artisan distillery. It is an excellent tour with a lot of Louisville history included in the tour and it is another tour I highly recommend. About the same time, there was a boom in distilleries opening in Kentucky and Louisville was not left out. Copper & Kings brandy distillery opened in 2014 and offers tours. In 2015 Kentucky Peerless Distillery opened and offers tours. This is another excellent tour with a lot of history included in the tour. If you are lucky, Corky Taylor will be at the distillery and start the tour with a description of his family’s history in the distilling industry. I recommend that you take the tour for that history alone and they are making great whiskeys there as well.

In the next decade several other distilleries opened in Louisville. Rabbit Hole Distillery has a tour that is unique in that you get a complete look at the distilling process. The distillery was designed with tourism in mind and you get to see the distilling process up close and personal. Angel’s Envy has a very good tour and is just a short walk away from Rabbit Hole. Their tour is interesting because of the finishing process that they use in bottling Angel’s Envy and they go into detail about the process. Buzzard’s Roost Distillery is located on Main Street, a short walk from either Evan Williams or Michter’s. They are unique in that they do not ferment at the distillery but instead purchase new-make whiskey and re-distill the whiskey before aging it. Their tour is short but interesting.

Stitzel-Weller does offer tours now. It is a silent distillery but offers a tour of the old distillery grounds and has many interesting bits of history about the distillery and some of their brands. There are also many tasting rooms from other distilleries in the city that offer a history of their brands.Louisville is a very different city when it comes to distillery tours compared to what it was twenty-five years ago. The city now offers a plethora of distillery tours and experiences.