Executive Bourbon Steward
Louisville, KY · John & Shauna were there
Where we are.
John and Shauna are at Moonshine University in Louisville for the Executive Bourbon Steward certification — the bourbon industry’s sommelier-equivalent credential, and the structural foundation for everything Drunken Unicorn would later build.
This is the day the teaching company starts. The Executive Bourbon Steward is the most rigorous credential the Stave & Thief Society offers; carrying it puts John and Shauna among the educators recognized by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association as qualified to teach bourbon at a professional level. The Drunken Unicorn philosophy — help ordinary people with ordinary budgets find their personal Unicorn — was built on this foundation.
Coverage on The Cut Daily reflects the through-line: from this credential to every class, every distillery visit, every bottle decision the show makes.
The detail.
What is the Executive Bourbon Steward?
The Executive Bourbon Steward is the advanced certification from the Stave & Thief Society — the bourbon industry’s first credentialing program and the Kentucky Distillers’ Association’s official bourbon education course. The Society was founded in 2014 at Moonshine University at the Distilled Spirits Epicenter in Louisville, with Peggy Noe Stevens — the world’s first female master bourbon taster — as a founding figure.
The Society runs two consumer/professional tiers: Certified Bourbon Steward (entry-level, self-study with proctored exam) and Executive Bourbon Steward — the day-long, hands-on workshop taught inside an operating teaching distillery. Students do hands-on mash, fermentation, and distillation work alongside sensory training and management-level curriculum. More than three thousand individuals and around one hundred fifty establishments globally carry the Stave & Thief credential.
Across the bourbon industry, this is the credential serious educators, bartenders, retailers, and brand ambassadors carry to back up what they know. It is the bourbon world’s analog to a sommelier credential.
What the certification covers.
Two halves — the structured curriculum that earns you the lapel pin, and the capstone exam that earns you the title.
The Nine Modules
The course walks the entire arc of bourbon — the law, the production, the history, the sensory framework — with hands-on work inside the teaching distillery between modules.
- Classification of whiskey
- Anatomy of a label
- Why bourbons taste different
- The science of bourbon production
- The craft of aging and mingling
- The history of a national spirit
- Why Kentucky is bourbon’s birthplace
- The art of tasting and flights
- What it means to be a Bourbon Steward
Exam, Title, Pin
The certification closes with a written and sensory exam. Pass it and you carry the lifetime professional title Executive Bourbon Steward, recognized by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.
- Final written and sensory examination
- Lifetime title in the Stave & Thief Society
- Crossed-thieves lapel pin
- Stave & Thief challenge coin
- Recognized by the KDA as professional-grade bourbon education
The credential that built the show.
Carrying the Executive Bourbon Steward credential is what makes the rest of the catalog possible.
The Drunken Unicorn class series — Bourbon Fundamentals, the bottle shares, the trivia nights — rests on this credential. The teaching framework that John and Shauna use in the Leavenworth tasting room (the Four S’s, the bourbon-defining ABCDEFG mnemonic, the tasting wheel methodology) is the curriculum the Stave & Thief Society codified, adapted for the bourbon-curious adult instead of the trade-side professional.
The KDA recognizes Stave & Thief as the official bourbon education program for the industry. Earning the Executive Bourbon Steward title means John and Shauna are the educators the bourbon industry itself recognizes as qualified to teach the spirit. Every Cut Daily story, every Beyond The Cut episode, every Drunken Unicorn class is grounded in this day.