By Kevin Gibson

During the meteoric rise of bourbon tourism, distilleries are amping up their efforts to draw visitors. And Angel’s Envy in Louisville, which opened for public tours in 2016, offered up a media sneak preview to a new 13,000-square-foot expansion in advance of a planned June 14 grand opening.

The $8.2 million expansion to the distillery, which originally was an elevator company, will help the distillery accommodate more than 60,000 additional visitors annually; as it is, Angel’s Envy routinely has to turn as many people away in a year’s time as it has the capacity to host.

An example of how the new space is being used is the addition of five new tasting rooms – previously, when visitors finished their tour of the distillery, they would end up in a lounge area to do their tasting. At times, there were other activities going on and/or people in the adjacent bar. Now, tours are finished upstairs in private rooms with dedicated tasting bars.

Speaking of the bar, that has been expanded and updated, while the lounge area can now be used without concern of disturbing tour guests. And in that same area of the expansion is a special events room with its own bar as well as a kitchen. The room can be rented, although Dee Ford, Angel’s Envy’s Brand Home General Manager, said there are plans for pairing dinners and other distillery events.

The space is complete with lounge seating as well as tables to accommodate anything from meals to meetings to guest speakers.

On the main floor of the distillery is a bottle and souvenir shop that is greatly expanded from the original – as in, it looks like it may be three times the size it used to be, and is stocked with shirts, hats, glassware and a wall of nothing but bottles of Angel’s Envy bourbon. It is the first part of the expansion to be open to the public.

In addition, the main floor includes another tasting room as well as a new bottle-your-own option, wherein tourists can choose from one of three single barrel bourbons which they can bottle and take home in a decorative box. There’s even a photo-op space where visitors can pose with their personally-bottled whiskey.

But one of the highlights is an added area where tours will begin – previously, visitors would wait in the main lobby. Starting June 14, however, tours will begin in this new space, with high ceilings and beautifully-adorned double doors that lead into the distillery operation. The doors open automatically, giving one a sense of being about to enter a castle or even another dimension.

“It feels a little Willy Wonka,” Ford said as the doors yawned open to reveal the inner workings of the distillery.

For more information, visit https://www.angelsenvy.com/.