Lux Row Distillers

Lux Row Distillers sits on a 70-acre property at 1 Lux Row in Bardstown, opened spring 2018 by Luxco — the St. Louis spirits company that had built brands like Ezra Brooks, Rebel Yell, David Nicholson, and Daviess County for decades as a non-distiller producer before deciding to put up their own stills. Construction broke ground in May 2016 after the family announced the property purchase in April that year, and the name nods both to the founding Lux family and to the row of trees lining the entrance drive. The 18,000-square-foot production facility sits on the front of the lot; six rickhouses and a five-acre lake fill the back.

The ownership story matters because it's why people get confused about whether Lux Row "really" makes its own bourbon. The short version: Luxco bottled sourced whiskey for the first several decades of each brand's existence. Lux Row started filling barrels in 2018. That means the Ezra Brooks or Rebel on shelves today is a moving blend — older sourced stock at the back end, Lux Row's own juice coming up from behind. Then in January 2021, MGP Ingredients announced a $475 million acquisition of Luxco, completed April 1, 2021. MGP then rebranded its longtime Lawrenceburg, Indiana operation as Ross & Squibb Distillery. In 2023, Luxco/MGP acquired Penelope Bourbon for an upfront $105 million plus earn-out. So today, Lux Row in Bardstown is one production node in a portfolio that includes Ross & Squibb in Indiana and the entire Penelope lineup.

The visit

Lux Row currently sits at 4.8 stars across 661 reviews on TripAdvisor — ranked #1 of 29 things to do in Bardstown. That's not a typo. They lead Bardstown's distillery tour rankings.

The tour menu: a standard production tour around $13 per adult, a Production Tour at $18 with a 4-whiskey tasting, and a premium tour at $35 (active and retired military $20). The walk-through covers the production floor, the rickhouse interior, and a tasting room with brand-by-brand pours that lets you compare the wheated Rebel against the rye-recipe Ezra Brooks side-by-side — a comparison most distilleries can't offer because most distilleries don't run both mashbills. A 2025 visitor on the "Grain to Barrel" tour with guide Izabelle flagged that tasting samples were "numerous and tasty" and all came in at 100+ proof, including a distillery-only 12-year double single barrel. An April 2026 reviewer named guide Alexis as patient through "endless questions." The praise pattern is consistent and specific: knowledgeable guides, multiple-brand depth, the lake and grounds make for a relaxed visit.

Bottles worth knowing

• Blood Oath Pact (annual) — the flagship limited release. $130-150 MSRP, ~50,000 bottles, allocated. New finish every year. Pact 10 (2024) double Bordeaux finish; subsequent pacts continue the experimental cadence.
• Daviess County Kentucky Straight Bourbon — wheated mashbill, the standout from the everyday Lux Row lineup according to most reviewers.
• Rebel 10 Year Single Barrel — Rempe's premium wheated single-barrel pick, allocated.
• Ezra Brooks Old Ezra 7 Year Barrel Strength — overlooked value play in the rye-recipe lineup, generally falls under $40.
• David Nicholson 1843 — wheated, 100 proof, $30-ish. Solid old-fashioned bourbon for the price.

Bottom line

Lux Row punches well above its weight as a distillery tour — the #1 Bardstown ranking on TripAdvisor isn't accidental, and the brand-by-brand tasting structure offers more variety per dollar than most stops on the trail. The bourbon itself is still in transition as the 2018-onward Lux Row-distilled stock matures into the blends, and the older sourced juice in some bottles makes vintage-to-vintage comparison tricky. The Blood Oath Pact series is the one Lux Row release that consistently gets bourbon press attention. Pair it with Heaven Hill and a stop at the Oscar Getz Museum a mile away in downtown Bardstown for a full day on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.