People have been tasting whiskey about as long as they have been aging spirits in new charred oak barrels, and now it’s become the hottest guest experience at many Kentucky distilleries.
To find out more, I visited the distillery that kick-started the trend: Whiskey Thief Distilling Co., a tiny but growing distillery nestled in a pastoral setting west of Frankfort. The distillery was founded in 2012 on a 127-acre farm; current owner Walter Zausch bought it in 2021 and has added a tasting room in Louisville.
Whiskey Thief was one of the first, if not the very first, to let customers pull whiskey directly from a barrel using a whiskey thief, which is a long copper pipe inserted into a barrel to pull up a quantity from inside — just like you do with a straw in a glass of tea…