LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Bourbon enthusiasts looking to take their whiskey knowledge beyond the bottle now have a new way to earn credentials, as three longtime spirits industry professionals have launched American Whiskey Scholars, a three-level online education and certification program covering bourbon, rye, Tennessee whiskey and other American whiskey styles.
The program was created by Peggy Noe Stevens, Colin Blake and Susan Reigler, bringing together decades of experience in whiskey education, sensory training, hospitality, distilling and American whiskey history.
American Whiskey Scholars, or AWS, is designed for a broad audience ranging from serious bourbon enthusiasts to bartenders, restaurant and hospitality professionals, retailers and people looking to enter the spirits industry.
Unlike programs focused primarily on production or whiskey facts, AWS combines whiskey history and production with sensory education, cocktails, food pairing and the broader culture surrounding American whiskey.
“We designed this three-tier credentialed program to not only be challenging, but fun and approachable,” Stevens said. “This is the next level and evolution of educational whiskey learning.”
Stevens is a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame and founder of the Bourbon Women Association. She spent 17 years at Brown-Forman, where she helped create the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in 1999 and worked on experiential marketing for brands including Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve.
She later founded Peggy Noe Stevens & Associates, a strategic and experiential marketing firm specializing in the spirits and hospitality industries.
Joining Stevens is Blake, former director of Moonshine University and creator of the Stave & Thief Society certification program. Blake currently serves as vice president at Peggy Noe Stevens & Associates.
Reigler brings both scientific and historical expertise to the program. She is the author or co-author of seven books about American whiskey and an adjunct professor of bourbon, beer and spirits at Eastern Kentucky University. She also previously taught biology at the college level.
Together, the three have spent more than a year developing a curriculum intended to make whiskey education useful whether someone is working behind a bar, building a retail whiskey program or simply trying to better understand what’s in the glass.
The self-paced program will ultimately consist of three certification levels containing written and video instruction.
Level 1 is now available and consists of 10 modules designed to establish a foundation in American whiskey.
Students study whiskey flavor, important bottle profiles, raw materials, distillation, food pairing and the history of American whiskey from pre-colonial America through Prohibition.The program also teaches participants a standardized whiskey tasting protocol and how to distinguish among bourbon, rye and Tennessee whiskey. Students are expected to learn how to identify and articulate tasting notes for 30 key whiskey bottles.
The sensory component is one of the distinguishing features of the curriculum. Rather than simply memorizing legal definitions, dates and production terminology, participants are taught how production decisions translate into what they smell and taste in the finished whiskey. Science also plays a significant role.
Reigler said even the first level goes into considerable detail about subjects such as limestone-filtered water and its role in whiskey production, including the geological processes responsible for the formation of limestone.
“As a former college biology professor and current college spirits industry professor, it’s been a joy to combine my love of science, bourbon and teaching into the coursework for AWS,” Reigler said.
“Part of the challenge, and to be honest, the fun, of teaching is to present information in a way that is interesting and memorable, not stuffy and boring, and we feel we’ve achieved that balance in AWS.”
Level 1 also introduces the relationship between whiskey and food, cocktails and hospitality — areas that will become increasingly important as students progress through the program.
Levels 2 and 3 will move into more advanced territory, including fermentation, distillation, sensory analysis of common flavor profiles, food and cocktail pairing, master taster training, mash bill development and whiskey still design.
Blake said the objective was to build a program that complements existing whiskey education programs while taking a more practical approach to how people actually use their knowledge.
“We designed this program to fill in the gaps of the other programs in the market,” Blake said. “There are so many programs out there, and they are all good. But we built this for people who are looking to integrate whiskey into their lives, with a focus on sensory, cocktails, food pairing and menu building, not to mention a much deeper dive into history.”
Blake said the goal is to make whiskey knowledge functional rather than purely academic.
That approach could make AWS particularly relevant for bartenders, restaurant employees and retailers, where understanding whiskey is only part of the job. Being able to communicate those differences to customers, recommend a bottle, construct a whiskey menu or suggest a food pairing can be just as valuable.
At the same time, the program is being marketed to the increasingly knowledgeable bourbon enthusiast.
Stevens said today’s whiskey consumer enters the category with considerably more knowledge than bourbon drinkers did decades ago, creating demand for increasingly sophisticated education. “I’ve watched this industry evolve over the last 30-plus years, and our consumers are more educated than ever and craving additional knowledge about spirits,” Stevens said.
“Instead of offering just hard facts, AWS focuses on the history and lifestyle of the industry. This is an entirely different program from anything else on the market.”
Students completing a certification level and passing the final examination receive an American Whiskey Scholars certificate and AWS lapel pin. Individual modules also can be purchased separately, allowing people interested in a particular topic to take a course without completing the entire certification level.
Level 2 is expected to become available around the 2026 holiday season, while Level 3 is scheduled to launch in spring 2027.
Although American Whiskey Scholars is primarily an online program, its creators also plan to offer customized in-house seminars for corporate groups and industry teams. Beginning in October, AWS plans to hold monthly online office hours, giving students an opportunity to ask questions about the coursework and program.
The arrival of American Whiskey Scholars comes as bourbon education has grown alongside the whiskey itself. Distillery experiences have become increasingly sophisticated, consumers routinely discuss mash bills and maturation techniques, and professional whiskey credentials have found a place within restaurants, bars, retailers and the broader hospitality industry.
For enthusiasts, that means becoming a serious bourbon student no longer requires working inside a distillery.
And with three veterans of Kentucky’s whiskey education world behind the curriculum, American Whiskey Scholars is betting there are plenty of drinkers ready to move from enjoying American whiskey to understanding why what’s inside the glass tastes the way it does.
