Rabbit Hole Distillery’s Bet on Innovation Over Tradition Is Paying Off

(Photo: Rabbit Hole Distillery)

In a state known for tradition, Rabbit Hole has bet on disruption. Since being founded in 2012 in Louisville by former psychologist Kaveh Zamanian, the Kentucky whiskey distillery has developed original mashbills, prioritized cutting-edge modern design and built a distillery based on transparency and innovation — not one reliant on legacy.

Rabbit Hole emerged not from the lineage of a whiskey dynasty but from a vision shaped by California wine country, modern design and hospitality. From the start, the goal was to bring fresh perspective and disruption to an industry steeped in tradition.

“I wanted to make my own recipes,” Zamanian told us. “I did not want to just source and blend — not that there’s anything wrong with it — but I wanted to essentially have original whiskey expressions. Because for me, bourbon is one of the most exciting, versatile, creative whiskey expressions.”

Making Whiskey Worth Tasting in a Place Worth Seeing

Rabbit Hole’s signature facility opened in 2018 on the site of an old tire warehouse in downtown Louisville. Designed by architect Doug Pierson, a Frank Gehry protégé with no previous distillery experience, the building was conceived not just as a place to make whiskey, but as a way to elevate it.

“Nobody’s really made manufacturing look attractive and sexy,” Zamanian said, “and we wanted to make whiskey-making look attractive.”

Mission accomplished. The facility, tucked away in Louisville’s trendy Nulu neighborhood, is a stunning, modern, must-visit stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

At just 55,000 square feet, the distillery punches above its weight, producing around 26,000 barrels per year (the barrels are stored off-site, making the relatively small distillery space feasible). Zamanian likens the open layout to a racetrack: functional for distillers, intuitive for visitors and deliberate in allowing each side to do their thing without getting in the way of one other.

Founder Kaveh Zamanian poses at the Rabbit Hole Distillery.

Guests are lifted off the production floor via an elevated catwalk, offering an aerial view of open fermentation tanks and column stills. It’s one of the few distilleries where you can actually see the top of a still. The design is visually satisfying while also functional; it keeps touring guests out of the way of the workers, and vice versa.

“You get all the sights, the sounds and all the smells and everything,” Zamanian said. “All the sensory elements are heightened so you can really appreciate what we’re doing.”

Even the ventilation system was purpose-built. As Zamanian put it to us while we stood in the sprawling, open room: “There are no big-ass fans here.”

Instead, a “butterfly” ceiling design circulates air quietly and efficiently, ensuring guests stay cool without the noise or unseemly sight of ceiling fans.

Recipes That Break the Mold

With no interest in sourcing, Rabbit Hole began laying down its own whiskey in 2014. But it wasn’t easy. “Back then, people would sell me barrels in bulk, but they would not alter their operation schedule to make my recipes,” Zamanian said. After about a year and a half of searching, he found a Northern Kentucky facility that agreed to produce to his specs until Rabbit Hole’s cutting-edge space was ready for production.

From the start, Zamanian rejected the idea of sticking with one or two mashbills — an approach he believes is common among Kentucky bourbon brands but lacks innovation.

Before Rabbit Hole existed, Zamanian and his wife would make a game of surveying the offerings at bars and restaurants and counting how few different mashbills were actually available in all of those bottles. He describes what they found to be “a sea of monotony.”

“That was really the beginning of thinking, ‘I don’t want monotony,'” he said. “Because as a consumer, you really deserve to get something unique, rather than same rinse and repeat in a different package or different proof.”

Zamanian believes many Kentucky bourbon brands have made their livings off just one or two mashbills, but he had no interest in that approach.

“Old Forester is an example of that,” he said. “I think it’s a great liquid … but when I look at the Old Forester lineup, it’s basically the same liquid at different proofs. To me, that’s not real innovation.”

Each of Rabbit Hole’s four core expressions is distilled from a different mashbill. There’s Cavehill, made from corn, wheat and two types of barley; the high-rye bourbon Heigold, which uses malted rye; and Dareringer, a PX sherry-cask-finished wheated bourbon. As for the flagship rye whiskey, Boxergrail, it’s distilled from the classic 95% rye, 5% malted barley recipe that most distilleries simply source from the Indiana giant MGP. But Rabbit Hole, of course, makes it in-house, an homage to Larry Ebersold, the distiller behind the original 95/5 rye recipe and a mentor to Zamanian and the Rabbit Hole team.

What makes Boxergrail stand apart, according to Zamanian, are the barrels it ages in, which are both toasted and charred at Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville. “You can taste the depth and character that toasting brings: spice, floral notes, complexity,” he said.

Rabbit Hole’s whiskeys enter the barrel at 110 proof, significantly lower than the 125-proof maximum. Zamanian believes proofing down whiskey before it enters the barrel helps open up a new world of flavors: “Water is to whiskey what oxygen is to wine,” he explains. “It opens it up early in the maturation process.”

Matt Gandolfo, one of Rabbit Hole’s earliest hires and now a master taster at Pernod Ricard, added that they much prefer to add that water on the front end, rather than proofing way down post-maturation.

Each batch of Rabbit Hole’s whiskey — even the core expressions — consists of around 22 to 23 barrels. “Extreme small batch,” as Zamanian describes it.

The brand is also developing American single malt whiskey, waiting for the right time to unveil it. “It’s not under wraps,” Zamanian said. “It’s more just waiting until the liquid is ready.”

Packaging as Statement

Rabbit Hole stands out on crowded shelves thanks to its elegant packaging.

The design-forward philosophy that’s so clear to see in Rabbit Hole’s facility extends to its packaging, which frequently draws praise for its sleek, premium aesthetic. Zamanian drew the original bottle design on a napkin, wanting to his whiskey to live in vessels that could appeal to every sort of drinker.

“I wanted something with both masculine and feminine attributes,” he explained. “It’s tall, it’s sturdy, … it’s substantial — but it’s got a taper and a sash.”

Raising the Bar for Everyone

Rabbit Hole didn’t just influence consumers. Zamanian believes his brand has raised the bar across the industry, especially in Louisville.

He says he’s heard similar feedback from legacy producers like Beam and Brown-Forman: “Rabbit Hole raised the bar for hospitality and packaging and liquid — all three of them.”

At Rabbit Hole, every new product comes from a place of curiosity and risk. Starlino, a fun, delicious limited-edition bourbon finished in vermouth barrels from Hotel Starlino, got great feedback internally: “I knew this was going to be a hit when we first released it and everybody at the distillery, everybody who works here, was lined up to buy a bottle,” he said.

The crew was on to something, it turns out. We tasted this one with Zamanian and were impressed by the blend of rye and vermouth flavors. Essentially, it takes like one hell of a spirit-forward Manhattan — no mixology required. Click here to check out our full review.

That experimental spirit is apparent in every bottle that comes out of the distillery series, with finishes like oloroso sherry, maple brûlée and French oak.

“For me, the approach is very culinary,” Zamanian says, noting that his persona as a self-described foodie and experience working in the restaurant industry have been a source of inspiration for him.

“[Restaurant] experience set the tone for what we’re doing at Rabbit Hole, in the sense that every element to me is like an ingredient.”

A New Kind of Legacy

A view of Rabbit Hole’s scenic Overlook Bar.

A psychologist from California, Zamanian credits his outsider background with helping Rabbit Hole see what legacy brands couldn’t. “Initially, it was quite honestly very surprising how few people really knew about bourbon and Kentucky in the way that I discovered it,” he said. “I felt like I needed to be a part of it, and I need to be able to really champion it.”

That’s why Rabbit Hole was built in the city, not the countryside: “I knew that Louisville was going to be the heart of the bourbon trail in a lot of ways and a gateway, if you would, to the bourbon trail,” he said.

Gandolfo, who cut his teeth at the industry-steeped legacy producers like Beam and Wild Turkey before joining Rabbit Hole in its infancy, said that mindset shaped the culture of Rabbit Hole from the early days. He believes that while there’s a beauty in the history and legacy of family-owned legacy distilleries, that tradition breeds blind spots.

“The most common answer to questions about production methods is ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it,'” he said.

Not at Rabbit Hole.

“To start someplace from day 1 and be able to shape the character of the product through those various decisions of how we do things, it’s been an awesome experience,” Gandolfo said. “We all bought into the vision that Kaveh had.”

A phrase painted on a wall of the distillery in the early days still sticks with him: “Manufacturing is repetitive, but creation is personal.”

More than a decade since its founding, Rabbit Hole continues to chart its own course, and Zamanian doesn’t plan on slowing down. He has built something truly special in the heart of Louisville, and he knows it — even if Rabbit Hole doesn’t always get the due he believes it’s owed.

“I do have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder,” Zamanian admitted. “I feel that Rabbit Hole has not gotten the real accolades and the recognition that it deserves.”

If you asked him to describe Rabbit Hole in a word, there’s a good chance Zamanian would choose innovative. 

“To me, innovation is: Are you able to take the risk on something on the front end and really put the time and energy and the resources to be able to get it to the finish line and create something that’s genuinely unique?”

Many distillers aren’t willing to do that. After all, it requires a great amount of trial and error, and the “error” side of the equation means lost time, resources and money when an idea doesn’t work out. But at Rabbit Hole, experimentation is what they live for. And we expect Zamanian and company will continue innovating for as long as they can. We’re excited to see what comes next.