The Best Louisville
Distillery Tours 

The Old Forester tour is undoubtedly one of the best Louisville distillery tours. While it mostly serves as a visitors center and demo distillery for its larger Brown Forman plant, the Old Forester tour has a little bit of everything. You really can’t ask for much more from an urban distillery, as you can see aging, barrel building, and several aspects of production all under one spacious downtown roof. The tasting at the end is fantastic, too. Oh, and the history! If there’s something from the portfolio you want to try that wasn’t on the tour, then check out George’s bar downstairs. There are a lot of reasons this ended up on our list of best Louisville Bourbon tours! 

Another very highly rated tour on our list of best Louisville distillery tours is none other than Angel’s Envy. Dubbed by our team as the “working-est” distillery in downtown Louisville, you will see where all of the Angel’s Envy’s internationally-renowned bourbon is made. Angel’s Envy runs a lot of tours throughout the day, and goes a little later than the others. So, this is one of the distilleries you may have a good chance of getting into. The products are also extremely approachable, so it’s a good stop for newbies or those who aren’t so into whiskey in your group. With this one, maybe plan to visit the  second floor bar after, as the tasting at the end only has a few samples. But even with the light tasting, this one absolutely makes our list of best Louisville bourbon tours.

For this tour, you have to leave the downtown area and head into the working-class area of West Louisville to visit the Stizel-Weller campus. With all of the Ubers and tour companies (like us!) in the city getting there isn’t too hard. But the history here is fantastic and the campus is absolutely gorgeous. You’ll hear about the impacts of the Stitzels, Weller & Sons, and Jullian Van Winkle Sr. on a tour here while seeing what became of their bourbon visions. While the namesake whiskeys of these founding fathers of bourbon are no longer here, there are some great bourbons that found a home here in the Diageo Portfolio that you can try. These are some of our reasons why Stitzel Weller has made our list of the best Louisville Distillery Tours! 

Just west of Whiskey Row and Museum Row sits the Kentucky Peerless Distillery. With history dating back to the 1880s, Peerless has a fantastic revival story and family history. Peerless tells a story of commerce, family, the life cycle of a historic whiskey (that didn’t come from one of the large legacy distilleries), and much more. The Peerless Distillery calls a beautiful industrial-era brick building home - this building allows you to thoughtfully wind through history, production, aging, and tasting in one swoop. Peerless is the only medium-scale bourbon distillery where all the products are kosher and are made with a sweet-mash production method. In short, we love this place. And are glad to have it on our list of the best Louisville Distillery tours! 

We’re often asked which distillery has the best bourbon. While we like something from everywhere and that is entirely subjective, our owner, Chuck, will always tell you that he thinks Michter’s has the best flagship lineup on the trail. Which means, everything here is good! The brand itself dates back to the American Revolution, and has quite the legacy. It also tells a story of the effects of prohibition, the decline of bourbon, and the renewed interest in the 90s and 2000s. The current  Michter’s has a gorgeous building downtown, a 2nd floor bar with a great view, and a solid tour. While the tour is small comapred to the larger Shively operation (which is not tourable), it contains some fantastic knowledge and history, and the whiskey is too good to deny. These are the reasons Michter’s is on our best Louisville distillery tour list! 

We really enjoy the Kentucky Artisan Distillery each time we go. They have a great staff and the location is fantastic, especially on a nice Kentucky day. Just a few minutes from a great indoor/outdoor brewery and botanical gardens, you can spend a whole day in this area alone. KAD tells a great story of a former bourbon executive who decided to give his passion another shot as an entreprenuer. Eventually, this small distillery ended up being the first contract distiller in Kentucky with “bottle your dreams” as its slogan. Jefferson’s bourbon owes a lot of credit to KAD, and while it has since moved on, opening its own distillery, the two created something special in bourbon history. But between the staff, location, friendly layout and informative tour, we absolutely had to include Kentucky Artisan on our list of best Louisville distillery tours. 

The Evan Williams Bourbon Experience was the first bourbon tour experience to open up in Louisville during the Urban Bourbon Trail renewal. While this distillery experience is more on the “museum-ey” side of things, it has developed into a very nice experimental distillery that releases some really good products. In addition, this is a great stop for fans of the legendary Heaven Hill product line, as you can try most of the Heaven Hill products at their bar and purchase a lot of them in their gift shop. If you enjoy thoughtful replicas and reenactments in a winding, historic, well-curated downtown building, this is a fantastic stop for you. We love all of these things, which is why this place is on our list of the best Louisville Distillery Tours!