A Trip To Whiskey Thief Distillery

Matt and I visited the Whiskey Thief tasting room back in June 2025. Lisa Wicker had just taken the job as Master Distiller at Whiskey Thief and we talked with her about visiting the distillery then, but we just got around to making arrangements for the visit at the Old Treasure bottle release party. Rosemary and I visited the distillery last week.

The distillery is just north of Interstate I-64 near Frankfort, Kentucky. It is on a gravel road and is set back about a mile and a half from the Interstate. We drove up and followed the signs to the distillery. It is a very good tour and they have reserved a certain number of places for walk-in tours. This is good to know because many distilleries don’t allow for walk-in tours for the spur of the moment visitors. We, however, had a tour scheduled with Lisa.

We met Lisa at the distillery and she started our tour in their warehouse. It does not have a rick system, but uses two barrel racks like they use in the wine industry for storing traditional barrels on their sides. This is similar to what Ted Huber uses at Starlight Distillery in Indiana. Lisa was briefly the Master Distiller there and she started her career in the wine industry, so she was pleased that they were using this system for storing barrels and not pallets. The advantage of these racks over a traditional rack system is that you can move them with a fork lift and they are less labor intensive. They also lead to fewer injuries from moving the barrels. Ted Huber had a rack system until his employees got hurt moving the barrels and he tore them out to replace them with these racks. It works well with a small distillery, but does not when you have tens of thousands of barrels to store.

We then moved to the distillery which is a single hybrid still with fermenters. There Benjamin Eaves, the distiller, joined the tour. We had some discussion about the whiskey and he pulled a sample of their new make whiskey for us to taste during lunch. We went and ordered lunch from their food truck – I had a bratwurst sandwich and Rosemary had a pulled pork sandwich, and both were excellent. While we waited for the food to arrive, we tasted the new make whiskey. It was excellent with a nice buttered corn and pepper flavor and thick mouthfeel. We ate lunch and then moved to the tasting “room”. This is in the same barn as the distillery and is five barrels laid out on the floor with whiskey thieves. Like the tasting room in Louisville, they give you a glass and you take a sample from each barrel to taste. I liked all of the barrels and was most pleased with barrel number three. It has a nice peach flavor that I liked. I like a fruity Bourbon. Every barrel has whiskey that was made at the distillery. Lisa of course did not make these whiskeys because they were all at least four years old and Lisa was quick to point that out, but they were all excellent whiskeys. They pulled a bottle of barrel number three for me to take home and the review will come out as soon as Matt gets back from Paris, France in a couple of weeks.

Benjamin then let me taste samples that will be their next release of Mayday Rye. They were all high proof because that is what they want to bottle as Mayday Rye. I liked sample two the best, but I believe that the favorite from the distilling crew is sample three. At lunch, we were joined by Kelley Tennile, their Gin Master. They offered to give us a gin tasting, but we passed on that tasting as Rosemary, the gin fan, was driving. We promised to come back for a gin tasting in the near future instead.

Our tour over, we returned home. It was a very good trip. We met several other people involved in the company, including the owner, Walter Zausch and others too many to list here, but all fine people who love their jobs. I would recommend a tour at Whiskey Thief Distillery whenever you are in the Frankfort area.