Rabbit Hole — Lineages: Dareringer
Louisville, KY · John & Shauna onsite
Where we are.
Both of us are heading to Rabbit Hole Distillery in Louisville’s NuLu district for Lineages: Exploring the Artistry of Dareringer — a Dareringer-only curated tasting that puts three distinct expressions of the same wheated, sherry-finished bourbon side by side, capped by a signature Dareringer Black Manhattan.
The format opens with a tour of the distillery, then moves into the carefully curated tasting that gives the visit its name — tradition (the original release), innovation (the single-barrel cask-strength selections), and the founder’s personal vision (the Founders Collection). The cocktail at the end harmonizes the lineage in a single glass.
Expect coverage on The Cut Daily across the visit, plus a Beyond The Cut episode unpacking the trajectory of Dareringer as one bourbon told three different ways — and what the Founders Collection does for that conversation.
The detail.
What is Rabbit Hole Distillery?
Rabbit Hole Distillery, at 711 East Jefferson Street in Louisville’s NuLu district, is the architecturally-striking glass-and-steel distillery founded in 2012 by Kaveh Zamanian — a former clinical psychologist who built the operation as a tribute to the city he came to love through bourbon. Pernod Ricard’s New Brand Ventures took a majority stake in 2019.
The standard one-hour tour walks production-floor to rickhouse to the Overlook lounge, the rooftop tasting space with panoramic views of the Louisville skyline. The Lineages experience builds on that foundation but narrows the close to a single bottle’s lineage.
Three expressions, one cocktail.
Each pour is the same wheated bourbon at a different point in its arc — entry-level expression, single-barrel cask strength, and the Founders Collection at the top. The Black Manhattan brings the trio back into balance.
Dareringer — Original Expression
The standard release and the entry point to the lineage. Wheated bourbon aged in alligator-char American oak, then rested in hand-made Pedro Ximenez sherry casks from Casknolia Cooperage in Spain. Award-winning at this proof point because the wood does the talking.
- Nose — sherry, cherry
- Palate — raisins, currants, almond, vanilla
- The baseline of the lineage
Dareringer Single Barrel Cask Strength
The single-barrel program at full strength — same mashbill (65/25/10 corn / wheat / malted barley) and same PX-sherry finish, but pulled from a single barrel and bottled without dilution. Each barrel reads differently; the Artist Series releases trend toward dark chocolate, cocoa, and roasted-nut character.
- Nose — chocolate, cocoa, roasted chestnuts, leather
- Palate — dark chocolate, candied orange peel, lavender
- Single-barrel variability is the point
Dareringer Founders Collection
The Founders Collection release — up to fifteen barrels blended, drawn from older stock, finished in PX casks made from rare 60-year-old wood that previously aged PX sherry, brandy, and PX sherry again across three of Spain’s oldest sherry producers. Cask strength, individually numbered, the platform Kaveh signs his name to.
- Nose — custard, walnut, brown sugar, baking spices
- Palate — cinnamon, oak, tobacco, stone fruit, signature floral
- Finish — toffee, toasted pecans, light spice
The Dareringer Black Manhattan
The Black Manhattan is the modern Manhattan variant that swaps sweet vermouth for amaro — bitterer, deeper, more aromatic. Built on Dareringer, the PX-sherry character of the bourbon plays directly into the bittersweet structure of the amaro and bitters. The cocktail closes the tasting as a Dareringer expression in liquid form.
- Dareringer base, amaro instead of sweet vermouth
- Designed to harmonize the three expressions tasted
- Venue-exclusive recipe at the Overlook
Why the Founders Collection matters.
Three Dareringers in a row tells a complete story only if the third bottle is doing something the first two can’t. The Founders Collection is what makes the “Lineages” framing work.
The Founders Collection is the limited-release platform Kaveh Zamanian launched in 2020 — the place where the most ambitious, most personal expressions of the Rabbit Hole program live. Each release is bottled at cask strength, drawn from older or specially-curated stock, and released bi-annually in tightly limited editions. (The 2024 Boxergrail Founders Collection, by way of scale, was capped at 1,200 bottles.) Bottles are individually numbered, capped with a heavy gold cork, and presented in a wooden display box with magnetic panels.
The platform is built around two principles. First, show what’s possible when production constraints are removed — older wood, more barrels, longer rest, no chill filtration. Second, let the founder’s personal vision drive each release. Any distillery can ship a flagship; the Founders Collection is where Kaveh signs his name to the bottle.
Among the wave of sherry-finished American bourbons released in the last five years, the Founders Collection Dareringer is one of the most respected. That’s the “so-what” of the Lineages event — understanding the trajectory from the standard release to the founder’s personal expression of the same bottle, and what each step reveals about how Dareringer was designed.
Learn more
The Dareringer page on the Rabbit Hole site has the full release lineup — original, single-barrel, and Founders Collection.
Visit rabbitholedistillery.com →