Remember the first time you tasted whiskey straight from the barrel? There’s nothing else quite like it. Usually, it’s a privilege reserved for distillers and their pals. But at Whiskey Thief Distilling Company, even casual visitors can experience the incredible aromatic and flavor density of uncut, unfiltered whiskey directly from the cask.
Whiskey Thief Distilling Co. was founded in 2012 by Ross Caldwell on his family’s 127-acre grain farm outside of Frankfort, Kentucky. Walter Zausch, a Bay Area architect who missed his Kentucky roots, started his own non-distiller producer bourbon brand in the 2010s and hired Whiskey Thief to make his products. When Caldwell decided to retire in 2020, he wondered if Zausch might be interested in taking over. “He said, ‘I think most days you like this place better than I do,’” laughs Zausch. So Zausch agreed, and in 2021, he became the official owner of Whiskey Thief Distilling Co.
Zausch’s architecture career focused on high-touch retail spaces like Apple and Microsoft stores that leverage hands-on experiences to build brand loyalty. He’s applying the same principles to create memorable, visitor-centric tourism experiences built around tasting whiskey straight from the barrel — “the way nature intended,” he says. In 2022, Whiskey Thief joined the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour, and the brand has just opened a second location in Louisville’s NuLu neighborhood to welcome more visitors. Here’s Zausch on why Whiskey Thief is doubling down on tourism, what he’s learned from introducing thousands of people to their first pour of cask-strength spirits, and why a laid-back attitude can be a key to success.
What’s a visit to Whiskey Thief like?
We’re a 127-acre farm in rolling hills in the middle of the heart of Kentucky in Franklin County, not far from Frankfort. We grow our own corn we use in our bourbons and whiskeys, and we also recently built our first barrel warehouse to hold about 4,600 barrels, so now we have everything on property. When people come to the farm, they get to see the whole process. We have a 600-gallon Vendome pot still with a column and 1,200-gallon cookers and fermenters, so we get two distillations per cook, which makes about four barrels. We get to show the customer every aspect of the process, and often our distilling team is there and can interact and talk to customers about what they’re doing. You kind of get an all-access pass to see everything in action.
Then we head to the warehouse and taste out of five distinct barrels, which give us a lot of variability of flavor and tasting notes. No two bourbons are alike, and we give customers all the information about the proof, mash bill, and age so they can understand what they’re drinking. That usually leads to great discussions about what they’re tasting and why, so people really enjoy that. And if they fall in love with it, they can fill a bottle from the barrel using a whiskey thief. We do the same thing at our new location in Louisville — there are five barrels there.
How do people react to the chance to taste straight from the barrel?
A friend told me one time that ‘whiskey thief isn’t for beginners.’ We help people understand drinking bourbon at barrel strength. It’s usually a bit of an adjustment. We do provide guests with water so they can proof it down if they want. For some people, it might be the highest proof whiskey they’ve ever had. But after the first barrel, I think most of our guests have developed a taste for it and really enjoy it. And people really appreciate getting a chance to do that, tasting what the spirit is really like uncut and unfiltered, straight out of the barrel.
Why is tourism so important to you?
We can only make about 1,000 barrels per year, so tourism is very important to us. Because we have kind of limited production being a small craft distiller, we focus on single barrel, uncut, and unfiltered products. As long as we focus on single barrels, we have the flexibility to really experiment, explore, try things, and change up mash bills, yeast, and barrels.
The growth in tourism in Kentucky, especially around the bourbon trail, has gotten to where you really need reservations almost everywhere you go, and many book out early in the year. But there are a fair number of people who just arrive and want to go see some distilleries, and they have difficulty getting in if they haven’t planned in advance. We keep a percentage of our tours and tastings open for walk-ins, so they’re a big part of our biz.
We’re also much more relaxed on scheduling. Tours start every half hour, but people can come and stay. We have live music every weekend, an incredible food truck, a patio with a bar area, and a fire pit, so we encourage people to come and enjoy bourbon at their own pace and spend the afternoon if they want.
