Rabbit Hole Spirits

In Louisville's NuLu district, behind glass walls that let visitors watch every stage of production, Rabbit Hole Spirits distills bourbon and rye built on mash bills that break from Kentucky convention. Founded in 2012, the distillery does not chase the standard corn-rye-barley formula. Instead it builds each expression around specialty malted grains, a decision that traces back to its founder's unusual path into whiskey.

History & Heritage

Kaveh Zamanian, a former clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, founded Rabbit Hole in 2012 after leaving his practice to pursue whiskey making. That background shows up in how the brand talks about its work: deliberate, almost clinical attention to how grain, wood, and proof interact. The company opened its 55,000-square-foot distillery at 711 East Jefferson Street in Louisville's NuLu neighborhood in 2018, built with an open-concept design and glass walls so visitors can see fermentation, distillation, and barreling in progress from the moment they walk in.

In 2019, Pernod Ricard, one of the largest spirits companies in the world, acquired a majority stake in Rabbit Hole. Kaveh Zamanian retained a significant share of the company and continues to operate it, so the distillery is, as of July 2026, majority owned by Pernod Ricard while remaining under Zamanian's operational direction. That arrangement is worth stating plainly for anyone tracking who actually stands behind a bottle: the whiskey is still made under the founder's original philosophy, inside a facility built for that purpose, even though a global spirits conglomerate now holds the controlling stake.

The Whiskey

Rabbit Hole's defining feature is its mash bills. Rabbit Hole Cavehill Four Grain Triple Malt Bourbon runs 70% corn, 10% malted wheat, 10% malted barley, and 10% honey malted barley. Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey is 95% rye and 5% malted barley, an unusually high rye percentage built around a malted rye base rather than the raw rye most producers use. Rabbit Hole Heigold High-Rye Double Malt Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey uses 70% corn, 25% malted rye, and 5% malted barley. Rabbit Hole Dareringer Sherry Cask Bourbon takes a finished bourbon and rests it further in Pedro Ximénez Sherry casks sourced from Casknolia in Spain.

Production runs through a custom-built 24-inch copper column still from Vendome Copper & Brass Works, standing 48 feet tall with 19 filtration plates. Rabbit Hole enters whiskey into new charred American oak barrels, sourced from Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville, at a deliberately low entry proof, 110 for Boxergrail and Cavehill, 115 for Dareringer, to pull more sugar and complexity from the wood during aging. Batches never exceed 15 barrels, and every release is non-chill filtered. The distillery also uses proprietary yeast strains and the sour mash technique, and beyond whiskey it produces Bespoke Gin and Liddell Vodka.

Why It Matters

Rabbit Hole's small-batch, grain-forward approach has drawn consistent recognition. The brand took Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in both 2023 and 2024, Double Gold and Gold at the New York World Spirits Competition in 2023, and Best in Show for its Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey along with Double Gold for its Kentucky Straight Rye at the NY International Spirits Competition in 2017. Heigold won Gold for Best Kentucky Small Batch Bourbon at the 2022 World Whiskies Awards. For a distillery still under fifteen years old, that record places it among the more decorated newer names in American whiskey, and it reflects a mash-bill-first approach that stands apart from the majority of Kentucky Straight Bourbon on the market.

Visiting the Distillery

Rabbit Hole is part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and runs tours Tuesday through Saturday, roughly 10am to 5pm, in small groups capped at 8 to 10 people, lasting about an hour. Reservations are encouraged. The tour moves through the open-concept production floor before ending at the distillery's rooftop bar and tasting room.

The Sentinel Room carries 6 expressions from Rabbit Hole Spirits in its Reserve Whiskey Library, including Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey, Rabbit Hole Cavehill Four Grain Triple Malt Bourbon, and Rabbit Hole Dareringer Sherry Cask Bourbon.