A Kentucky distillery tour that’s not about whiskey
By Tom Adkinson
October 1, 2021

Bottles of Kentucky brandy slide down the bottling line at Copper & Kings in Louisville. Image by Copper & Kings.

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky – Everyone knows you can tour whiskey distilleries in Kentucky. There’s a historic concentration of them in central Kentucky around Bardstown, and they now stretch from Owensboro on the western edge to Pikeville in the mountainous east.

It’s the intellectually curious traveler, however, who seeks out a different type of Kentucky distillery and visits Copper & Kings in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood.

Copper & Kings does incorporate whiskey barrels in its process, but its product is – wait for it – brandy.

The orange and black repurposed shipping containers that house Copper & Kings rise behind a butterfly garden. Image by Tom Adkinson

Yes, brandy, that wine-based distilled spirit that is an ingredient in a variety of interesting cocktails and often is consumed in a dimly lit room while soft music plays in the background.

Music, but not soft music, actually factors into production of Copper & Kings brandies. After the spirit goes into oak casks – once-used whiskey casks for most varieties – Copper & Kings turns on the music.

Indeed, it turns up the music, because the casks rest in spaces rocked by a substantial sound system that features five major sub-woofers. The distillers call the process “sonic aging” that they say is not vibration, but pulsation that genuinely affects the spirit.

Copper & Kings products are available at the distillery by the bottle and at a bar named Alex&nder. Image by Tom Adkinson

“Aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels. Matured with rock ‘n’ roll,” is a Copper & Kings catch phrase.

Music plays other roles at Copper & Kings. The owners say that the company name is meant to sound like a band in the fashion of Kings of Leon, Shovels & Rope, Band Of Horses and Iron & Wine.

Taking it another step, some cocktails at Alex&nder’s, the rooftop bar, sport musical names. Examples: Strawberry Fields, Purple Haze and Down in Kokomo. A sampling flight of four of its core products is called the Fab Four.

Meet the three stills of Copper & Kings named for women in Bob Dylan songs – Sara, Magdalena and Isis.

Even the distillery’s pot-stills, which appropriately were built nearby at Louisville’s Vendome Copper and Brass Works, have ties to music. They are named for women on Bob Dylan’s “Desire” album. They are Isis (1,000 gallons), Magdalena (750 gallons) and Sara (50 gallons).

Copper & Kings pulses music through its maturation spaces after its brandies are put in oak casks. Image by Tom Adkinson.

Copper & Kings is one of several visitor magnets in the Butchertown neighborhood, which early in its history was home to stockyards, meatpacking facilities and German immigrants. In recent years, the mixed industrial/residential area has been morphing into a place for condominiums, shops and even the Lynn Family Stadium, the home of professional soccer’s Louisville City FC.

Copper & King both fits in (it is a complex of repurposed shipping containers, giving it an industrial look) and stands out (its bold orange and black exteriors are quite visible).

The classic Sidecar cocktail has only three ingredients – brandy, orange liqueur and lemon juice. Image by Copper and Kings.

When you tour the distillery, you quickly realize that Copper & Kings has a strong sustainability ethic.

It starts with the shipping container construction and continues with 42 solar panels to supplement its energy supply, two closed-loop water recycling arteries and the fact that the aging/maturation spaces are at ambient temperatures, meaning there’s no HVAC system.

For an added touch, you can get a half-price tour ticket if you arrive on a bicycle instead of in a car.