Going to Louisville? Make Sure to Add Peerless Distillery to Your Itinerary

There are a lot of distilleries to visit on the Bourbon Trail.

Actually, there are a lot of distilleries to visit just on Whiskey Row in downtown Louisville: Evan Williams, Old Forester, Michter’s, and even a few more. That doesn’t even take into account the awesome whiskey bars and craft cocktail joints that line the streets in the downtown area. So there’s already a lot to do in Louisville, and you don’t have to look hard to have a good time.

Just off the main drag however, on a side street, you will find Peerless Distilling Co. They are still right in that downtown area but not directly on Whiskey Row where you’ll find all the rest of the big players.

Do yourself a huge favor and stop off there.

Some of our readers may know this is obvious and we’re so happy you found Peerless too, because that means you had a similar positive experience with them. At the time that we went, however, we’d only had one experience with them, tasting their Straight Bourbon Whiskey. At the time we were rather impressed with the pour, but it was still so new (back in 2019) that we really didn’t think about looking into them. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake.

Fast-forward to last year when we were finally able to get back to Kentucky after all the lockdowns, travel bans and general looming fear of death in 2020. When planning out our trip, we put Peerless on the itinerary this time around. We got online and ordered some tour tickets for the day we planned on showing up. Here’s the breakdown of everything we experienced on our visit.

A really clean, modern look (and gift shop).

Immediately when you walk in, you are greeted with a really nice gift shop and waiting area (if you’re waiting for your tour to start). It has that clean, somewhat industrial modern look with a nice brick backdrop all over the place.

A small delight was when we discovered a little friend just hanging out on the couches in the gift shop:

We later learned that this was Rye, the distillery cat. After waiting for a few minutes (and a few pets for Rye), we were ready to start our tour and learn more about Peerless Distilling.

The Tour is relatively short but informative.

The tour begins with a chat about the history of Peerless, and I’ll be sure not to give anything away but the history of how they got their DSP number is pretty interesting. During the history portion of our tour, the Founder/Owner of the distillery himself, Corky, dropped in to say hello and to explain some things about the distillery. It was actually really nice to hear from him and get that personalized greeting.

Like every tour, you’ll get the obligatory look at the still with a general explanation of how distilling works, and naturally the rickhouse as well, which is always a perfunctory part of any distillery tour. Of course that’s not what makes Peerless worth your while; in the end, it’s the whiskey.

The tasting will spark your love for Peerless.

And now we get to the best part of the experience at Peerless – the tasting. Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that we had a great tour guide who also walked us through the tasting as well. We really can’t stress this enough; the whiskey was incredible. All of it. We didn’t have a single pour we felt even remotely ambivalent about.

All in all, we were able to sample five whiskeys, which included their small batch bourbon and single barrel bourbon, as well as their small batch rye and single barrel rye. Each one was exceptional.

Give Peerless a shot next time you’re in town.

When we first started our whiskey journey, we were dead set on going to the behemoths in the industry, and so we totally overlooked Peerless in the beginning of our whiskey education. Don’t be like us. Go ahead and explore a bit, because you’ll never know what you might find – maybe it’ll be a gem like Peerless Distilling.

To take a tour just like we did, you can book a tour on Peerless’ website.

Cheers, Friends!