By Richard Thomas
(Credit: Parlor Room)
Notwithstanding sales for American whiskey being on the downslide, bourbon tourism in Kentucky looks set to stabilize or perhaps even continue growing (even modestly). The numbers for 2025 are not available yet, but I expect the Kentucky Distiller’s Association will report on last year’s tourism numbers soon and that report will reflect a more stable picture than sales overall (tourism is not directly affected by tariffs, but sales are). Their economic report showed strong growth over 2024-25, and 2024 was a record year for Kentucky Bourbon Trail tourism, clocking 2.7 million visitors. All that during a period when sales went from softening to slumping.
Yet one of the longstanding deficits in that tourist picture is its lack of independent looks at Kentucky bourbon. Distillery and festival tastings are, understandably, marketing. Ordering a flight at a bourbon bar in Kentucky may get you a well-curated slate of whiskey to explore and enjoy, but bartenders are busy and often accompany them with one abbreviated story at best. Tasting presentations made by knowledgeable folks who earn livings outside the industry are often attached to business events or ticketed fine dining, and even in Louisville those are rare (and the former even more rarely open to the public).
But towards the end of last year, that deficit was addressed when Whitney Eversole, aka Whitney Rye, opened The Parlor Room in Bardstown. She is host, unpretentious tasting guide, storyteller and bartender all rolled into one, and although a given event will probably be focused on just one distillery, the Parlor Room’s calendar as a whole is not.
Eversole, who also hosts The Mash Bill podcast, is a Bardstown native who cut her teeth in talking bourbon with patrons while tending the bar at The Rickhouse Restaurant. “The owner, Jason Heath, took our team on six distillery tours in just two days, an experience that fundamentally shifted how I saw whiskey,” said Rye. “Walking onto Maker’s Mark’s campus in particular was a turning point. It showed me that the experience itself, the sense of place, craftsmanship, and intention, matters just as much as the taste of the bourbon.”
Working in hospitality took her to Lexington, then Louisville, and eventually back to Bardstown. During the decade or so between The Rickhouse and The Parlor Room, Eversole continued to polish her whiskey education (she holds a WSET Level II) and try to find a way into the industry. “Each time, I was told I was either underqualified or overqualified for the available roles.”
But like everyone who has ever found that answer frustrating, persistence and some lateral thinking eventually finds a way through. Barton 1792 closed their visitor center in 2022, and Rye put feelers into the gap following the closure by starting a guided tasting experience for the 1792 brand. Barton’s master distiller heard about it, was impressed, and that led to her putting on her 1792 show for a senior group Barton and parent company Sazerac. That vote of acceptance gave her the last nudge to starting her own company. The Mash Bill began production in late 2024, and The Parlor Room followed in summer 2025.
(Credit: Richard Thomas)
When I called on The Parlor Room last month, it was for a Blanton’s tasting, but the session began with Eversole telling a story about how Stephen Beam started out as a landscape designer and how that played into the gin he is now making at Limestone Branch, before presenting a cocktail made with that gin to an attendee who was staying on the sidelines as a designated driver. As we moved through Blanton’s Gold, Straight From The Barrel and Special Reserve, she pointedly avoided speaking to tasting notes, rightly pointing out that those are subjective. Insofar as the tasting itself was concerned, she prefers to focus on the hard data points of the how and why to do it, rather than what flavors and scents one should be getting from doing so. Her manner is gregarious and her storytelling humorful.
The Blanton’s tasting was almost a packed house, mostly with folks from Ohio. It is a staple of The Parlor Room’s calendar, but hardly the only brand slate being run there. Just for the remainder of February and speaking to Buffalo Trace alone, there is a Col. E.H. Taylor tasting, two different takes on the wider Buffalo Trace line-up. Moving beyond trace is a Heaven Hill tasting and a slate of Old Fitzgeralds. All that is on top of scheduling a private, curated slate for your group.
The location is convenient too, tucked behind the main street and a stone’s through from the Old Courthouse roundabout so familiar to anyone who has been in old Bardstown. Given that anyone coming and going through the “Bourbon Capital of the World” is probably stopping for either lunch or dinner just a few minutes walk from The Parlor Room’s front door, there really is no excuse to not check the schedule and see if a tasting there fits into your plans.
