Rabbit Hole
Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
by Brian Donnelly
Overview
Rabbit Hole was founded by Kaveh Zamanian, an Iranian-born Ph.D. psychologist with zero experience in whiskey making or the spirits industry. After growing up in Southern California, Kaveh moved to Chicago, where he met his wife Heather, a Louisville native passionate about bourbon. Heather is credited with converting Kaveh from his love of scotch to bourbon, the native spirit of her hometown. Kaveh saw a need for more transparency and authenticity in the bourbon industry since, historically, a handful of distillers had churned out dozens of brands with no clear differentiation between the brands and labels. He obsessively learned as much as he could about making bourbon and eventually told his wife that he wanted to give up an 18-year career as a psychiatrist, move to Louisville, and launch his bourbon brand. Heather told him he was taking the family down a rabbit hole from which they could never return, which inspired the brand's name, "Rabbit Hole." Kaveh thought he could bring exciting innovation to the category and create a modern interoperation of bourbon. He founded the business and developed the recipes for the whiskies in 2012, sourced contract whiskey based on those recipes in 2014, broke ground on the Rabbit Hole Distillery in 2016, and officially opened the distillery in 2018.
Unlike most Kentucky commercial distilleries, Rabbit Hole is located in the heart of the city in Louisville's trendy NuLu (New Louisville) neighborhood. The facility looks and feels more like an industrial-chic art museum than a distillery. Designed by local architect Doug Person with bourbon tourism in mind, the $15 million, 55,000-square-foot distillery represents the brand's founding principles of modern and transparent innovation. The contemporary design gives visitors an immersive experience. Rabbit Hole is officially part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and offers a fantastic tour and tasting experience. Kaveh is very conscious of the environmental impact of whiskey making. The distillery was built using locally sourced metal and wood. The exterior uses a wooden wrap that screens and reduces radiant heat.The heart of the building is a large open room that includes cookers, fermentation tanks, and stills. This room features a v-shape or inverted butterfly design ceiling that takes the hot air generated during production and recirculates it throughout the facility. This process acts like lungs and allows the main room to remain cool and comfortable, even during peek production, but enables the facility to be as energy-effective as possible. The distillery operates 365 days a year and runs 24/7. All Rabbit Hole products, except the Dareringer and Bespoke Gin, are distilled grain to glass at the Rabbit Hole distillery.
Production
The tour was quiet because the facility uses a cage mill instead of the industry-standard hammer mill, which is very loud. They only mill what they need, one batch at a time. The brand utilizes specialty grains like Honey Malted Barley, Malted Wheat, and Malted Rye. They sourced corn from Kentucky and Indiana, rye from Canada, and barley from Montana and Minnesota. The distillery has a much larger production capacity than one might think. When I toured the facility in 2021, there were nine open-top fermentation tanks, and there are plans to add three more. The brand uses a sour mash technique, the industry standard for Kentucky bourbons.
Sour Mashing, sometimes referred to as backset, takes some of the residue from the first distillation run and places it back in the fermenter for use in the next round of fermentation. The backset is very acidic and essential in fermentation because local water can have a high alkaline content, which would otherwise interfere with the yeast. The sour mashing process assists in creating a consistent product from one batch to another. The starches from the grains are converted into fermentable sugars, which take around 8 to 9 hours. The sugary mash ferments for three days, and the sugars are converted into alcohol. Cooling coils in the 8,000-gallon fermentation tanks keep the fermenting mash at 74°F to prevent it from dying off prematurely. After fermentation, the mash, referred to as distiller's beer, is around 6-8 % ABV. Our tour guide joked, "What do whiskey makers call brewers? Quitters..." The distillery can empty three tanks a day, which can fill 60-75 barrels. The distillery has a continuous Vendome column still with a doubler that is 48 feet tall and 24" wide with 19 filtration plates.
Rabbit Hole sources all their barrels exclusively from family-owned Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville, Kentucky, which was established in 1963. It was essential for Kaveh to partner with a family-owned business. The new American oak barrels are toasted on low heat for about 20 minutes, then charred with wood-fired furnaces to a level #3. The barrel-entry proof is 110 (55 % ABV), the small batch size never exceeds 15 barrels, and the whiskeys are always non-chill filtered to preserve the full flavor. All processes are done in-house, including filling barrels, dumping barrels, and bottling. The distillery can be located in the heart of Louisville because all maturation is done off-site. The aging warehouse, or rackhouse, is about 30 minutes from the distillery in Henry County. Each building is 15,000 square feet, constructed entirely of steel, free of electricity, and contains no lights, plugs, heat, or air conditioning. The brand hopes to build a new warehouse yearly to keep up growth.
The Dareringer is the only expression that is aged in two different barrels. The first barrel, a new American oak barrel, is toasted and charred with a #4 level char, known as an alligator char. The new make spirit enters the barrel at 115 proof (57.5% ABV). Next, the whiskey is cask-finished for six to nine months in an Ex-Pedro Ximénez Sherry cask, sourced from the Casknolia Cooperage in Montilla, Spain (an hour south of Córdoba by car). These are a combination of first-fill and second-fill sherry casks, and before filling, the staves are continuously checked to ensure the cask will impart a significant amount of flavor. The Dareinger whiskey is never artificially colored or flavored, so there may be a slight difference from batch to batch.
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Rabbit Hole Heigold, High Rye Double Malt, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
First released in 2019, this expression is a high-rye bourbon named for Christian Heigold, a German immigrant and stone mason who settled in Louisville around 1850. His work can still be seen on Main Street, but his most famous work was the ornate symbols he craved on the façade of his landmark home, which was saved from the city dump after a flood damaged the house and can still be visited today. This product is a tribute to all immigrants because Kaveh, the brand's founder, is an immigrant from Iran. Heigold has a mash bill of 70 % corn, 25 % malted rye, and 5 % malted barley, has a barrel-entry proof of 110 (55 % ABV), is aged in # 3, wood-fired, toasted & charred new American oak barrels for a minimum of 3 years. This product is non-chill filtered and bottled in extremely small batches that never exceed 15 barrels at 95 proof (47.5 % ABV).
Rabbit Hole Cavehill, Four Grain Triple Malt, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
This expression is a four-grain bourbon that features a unique mash bill of malted grains. Cavehill pays homage to generations of proud Louisville distillers and builds on the legacy of those bourbon pioneers. The name comes from the historic Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, where many famous Kentuckians are buried, such as boxing legend Muhammad Ali and KFC's Colonel Harlan Sanders. Cavehill has a mash bill of 70 % corn, 10 % malted wheat, 10 % malted barley, and 10 % honey malted barley, has a lower barrel-entry proof of 110 (55 % ABV) for more flavor, is aged in # 3, wood-fired, toasted & charred new American oak barrels for a minimum of 3 years. This product is non-chill filtered and bottled in extremely small batches that never exceed 15 barrels at 95 proof (47.5 % ABV).
Rabbit Hole Dareringer, Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in PX Sherry Casks
This expression is a wheated bourbon cask finished in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks. Distilled in Indiana, Dareringer is the only expression the distillery does not distill themselves. This product was inspired by the founder Kaveh's wife, who not only converted him from Scotch Single Malt whiskey, typically cask-finished in sherry casks, to bourbon but also "dared" him to follow through on his vision of starting his bourbon brand. Dareringer has a mash bill of 68 % corn, 18 % wheat, 14 % malted barley, has a barrel entry-proof of 115 (57.5 % ABV), is aged in # 4, wood-fired, toasted & charred new American oak barrels for a minimum of 5 years, and cask-finished for 6-8 months in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks sourced from the Casknolia cooperage in Montilla, Spain. This product is non-chill filtered and bottled in extremely small batches that never exceed 15 barrels at 93 proof (46.5 % ABV).
Rabbit Hole Boxergrail, Sour Mash Rye, Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey
This expression is the brand's rye whiskey, which pays homage to the long and rich local boxing heritage in Louisville, including famous fighters such as Muhammad Ali and Greg Page. The Boxergrail has a mash bill of 95 % rye and 5 % malted barley, has a lower barrel-entry proof of 110 (55 % ABV) for more flavor, is aged in # 3, wood-fired, toasted & charred new American oak barrels for a minimum of 3 years. This product is non-chill filtered and bottled in extremely small batches that never exceed 15 barrels at 95 proof (47.5 % ABV).
Rabbit Hole Bespoke Gin
The Bespoke Gin is not distilled by Rabbit Hole, but instead sourced from G&J Distillers in London, the largest gin distiller in England. This product is a London dry-style gin cask-finished for six to eight months in Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Kentucky Rye barrels and bottled at 89 proof (44.5 % ABV). There is no significance to the name.
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