John is at Rabbit Hole in NuLu. The building alone is worth the visit, and the upstairs bar program runs sharper than most people realize. Rabbit Hole is the modern Louisville distillery in form and program both.

What is Rabbit Hole Distillery?

Rabbit Hole Distillery in Louisville’s NuLu district at 711 East Jefferson Street is the architecturally striking glass-and-steel facility founded in 2012 by Kaveh Zamanian, a former clinical psychologist. Pernod Ricard’s New Brand Ventures took a majority stake in 2019.

The four core expressions each carry a Louisville or personal story: Cavehill is a four-grain bourbon (corn, wheated malted barley, honey malted barley, malted barley); Heigold is the high-rye bourbon, named for German immigrant Christian Heigold; Boxergrail is a Kentucky straight rye named for Muhammad Ali; Dareringer is the PX-sherry-finished wheated bourbon, named for Zamanian’s wife Heather. Each is aged in wood-fired toasted-and-charred new American oak.