Angel's Envy offers distillery tours and tastings of their finished whiskeys in Louisville, within easy distance of other downtown attractions!
Angel's Envy is one of several Kentucky Bourbon Trail distilleries located in downtown Louisville. You could easily make your own mini Bourbon Trail itinerary out of these spots alone! A few of them are less than a mile apart.
The Bourbon District of Louisville is also just a short walk from the NuLu district, where you can visit Lou Lou (a Cajun restaurant) and Quills Coffee.
Wondering what sets Angel's Envy apart from other distilleries? Here's what we found on a recent visit!
For more tips on Kentucky distilleries, read our Bourbon Trail guide!
Distillery Facts
The Angel's Envy location is on Main Street, right across from Louisville's baseball stadium.
There are no rickhouses on site, but you'll be able to tour all other aspects of the distilling process.
Angel’s Envy focuses on finished whiskeys — traditional bourbons and ryes that are aged from four to six years and then poured into a port wine barrel or rum cask to age for several more months.
The name "Angel's Envy" is a playful take on the term "Angel's Share," which is the small amount of whiskey lost to evaporation during the aging process.
In other words, the angels got their share, but what’s left is for the angels to envy.
Touring Angel's Envy
The Signature Tour lasts about an hour and includes a couple of tastings. They keep each tour group small, so booking in advance is a good idea.
You could instead opt for the Private Select Tour, or a more in-depth tasting, or a bottle-your-own experience. There are also cocktail classes sometimes.
We chose the Signature Tour, which started with a brief history of the distillery.
Next we walked through the area with the mash tanks and distilling tanks. We got to taste their sour mash (it was extremely sour).
The guide also educated us on the bottling line, the large still, and the spirits safe.
Whiskey Tastings
We were given samples of a bourbon and a rye.
The bourbon (finished in a port wine barrel) was paired with an orange chocolate.
The rye whiskey (finished in a rum barrel) was paired with a white chocolate. (I liked this one a lot: the rum barrels made the rye a little mellower.)
Pairing whiskey tastings with chocolate is a fun trend that some distilleries have jumped on board with: Lux Row in Bardstown and Limestone Branch in Lebanon do something similar.
We ended the tour in the gift shop.
There we browsed rye flavored coffee, barrel aged honey, drinkware, and Angel's Envy merch.
If you're planning to be in Louisville, I hope you get to tour Angel's Envy! Their approach to double-matured whiskey makes them a bit out of the ordinary, and worth a visit.
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