An Afternoon at Kentucky Peerless Distilling? Time Well Spent
Do distillery tours make you want more bourbon? Yeah, me too. Photos (except where noted) by Kevin Gibson
During my first visit to Kentucky Peerless Distilling about three years ago, I got to meet much of the staff, in addition to Master Distiller Caleb Kilburn and CEO Corky Taylor. I hadn’t even tasted a Peerless product at that point, but I was hooked by the warmth and friendliness I encountered.
Then a pandemic happened.
I finally made it back, and I got hooked again by the friendly atmosphere. And I have a lot more experience with the whiskey now than I did the first time, which helps.
I recently went on the distillery’s tour of the facilities along with my friend Shona, who had never been on any distillery tour before. I think she’s hooked now too.
The tour is a lot like most such tours: you start out with a history of the distillery, and with smaller distilleries like Peerless, that often is a brief history. But visitors to Peerless will learn that there is a long history that began in Henderson County with a young man named Henry H. Kraver, who bought E.W. Worsham Distilling in 1889.
The distillery’s key product was, of course, Peerless Whiskey. Under Kraver’s ownership, production boomed and Peerless became a well known product. He would incorporate his business in 1907 under the name Kentucky Peerless Distilling Company.
Prohibition, of course, forced the closure of the distillery, and while Peerless whiskey was still sold by prescription, the next big hit was the Great Depression. Kraver would die in 1938.
Kentucky Peerless is a small distillery with a big story. Courtesy of Kentucky Peerless Distilling.
The story picks up, of course, with Taylor – who is Kraver’s great-grandson. He and his son Carson would acquire the trademark and in one of the more interesting notes our friendly tour guide Gwen made during her presentation was that they managed to acquire the original Kentucky Distilled Spirits Plant Number from the first Peerless Distillery in Henderson: DSO-KY-50. (Modern numbers are in the 20 thousands.)
The room where the tour starts with the history talk also bears plenty of memorabilia and photos to help tell the story. As we listened, Corky himself stepped through the door and greeted everyone personally, asked us where we were from, etc. He also noted that during his stint in Military School, he had some pretty fun roommates: the Allman Brothers.
From there, Gwen took us through the distilling process from explaining the mash (which smells incredible, by the way) and method behind Peerless’ sweet mash technique as engineered by Kilburn, to the still, the aging warehouse (or rickhouse) and then the bottling room (which unfortunately was not operating at the time). Mind you, the distillery is small enough that all of this is in the same facility at 120 N 10th St. in downtown Louisville.
Like most distillery tours, the tour wraps up in a cozy tasting bar, with Gwen leading us through tastes of five different Peerless products. We began with the flagship Small Batch Bourbon and a discussion of the whiskeys themselves, which are bottled at barrel proof. We then proceeded to the distillery-only single barrel Saloon, a 113.7 proof bourbon; signature Small Batch Rye, single barrel Ginger Snap Rye, and finally a choice of either Peerless’ third retail product, Small Batch Double Oak, or single-barrel Absinthe Finished Rye (Shona and I chose the former).
The Ginger Snap was Shona’s favorite, so she grabbed one of the last available bottles ($124), while I had to go with the Double Oak as my choice for best of the flight which, to be fair, I had tasted previously.
One thing I find whenever I do a distillery tour is that it just makes me want to keep drinking bourbon; the tasting was maybe two ounces total, so I don’t think it was a whiskey buzz making me feel that way. I think the atmosphere, the history, the warmth, the aromas, etc., just make you want it to never end. Heck, there’s even a sweet distillery cat roaming around (we noticed him sleeping inside a Peerless Rye box, which is pretty much the perfect bed). Not bad for under $30.
If you get the itch to take a Kentucky Peerless Distilling Co. tour – which I would obviously recommend – you can do so at KentuckyPeerless.com.
