Second Sight Spirits, LLC

Second Sight Spirits is the Ludlow, Kentucky distillery founded by two former Cirque du Soleil designers — a backstory that explains essentially everything about the operation's visual identity, tasting room theatrics, and the magical-themed branding that runs through every product label. Rick Couch and Carus Waggoner, both alumni of Cirque du Soleil's design departments, founded Second Sight in 2014 in a converted industrial building in Ludlow, just across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. The "second sight" name itself plays on the mind-reading and clairvoyance themes from classical stage magic — and the distillery's still, the bar room, the bottle designs, and the on-site tour all lean hard into the same aesthetic.

The technical reality behind the theatrics is genuinely small-craft. Second Sight built much of its production equipment in-house, with the founders' Cirque du Soleil design backgrounds put to direct use in fabricating a still and supporting equipment from sourced parts and Craigslist finds — a story the tour leans on as both production history and brand origin. The flagship Oak Eye Kentucky Bourbon (the brand's anchor product, named for the symbolic single eye that appears on the bottle and on the distillery's signage) is column-still distilled and aged in standard 53-gallon new charred oak. The rum line — distinct from the bourbon and one of the few Kentucky distillery rum programs at any scale — uses molasses-based distillation and shorter-barrel aging in used bourbon casks.

The product range expands well beyond bourbon and rum. Second Sight produces craft absinthe (one of the few Kentucky absinthe operations at production scale), bourbon-finished rum, several flavored spirits, and a rotating range of seasonal and limited releases. The on-site cocktail bar at the distillery has become a destination in its own right for the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky bar scene, with a cocktail program that uses the full Second Sight range plus local sourcing for syrups, bitters, and garnishes.

The Ludlow visitor experience is one of the most distinct stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — the magical-themed tour is genuine and unforced, the on-site bar program is taken as seriously as the distillation, and the proximity to downtown Cincinnati (a 10-minute drive across the river) makes Second Sight a natural pairing with a Cincinnati food-and-drink weekend. It's also the most architecturally photographable small distillery in Northern Kentucky and one of the few places where the brand identity, the production reality, and the visitor experience all converge into a single coherent statement.