A New Standard for American Whiskey Knowledge: Inside the Launch of American Whiskey Scholars
The American whiskey world has never lacked for passionate drinkers. What it has lacked — at least in any formally credentialed, broadly accessible way — is a rigorous educational framework that treats bourbon, rye, and Tennessee whiskey with the same intellectual seriousness that wine has long demanded of its devotees. That gap is about to close. 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, known as AWS, arrives at a moment when the category's consumer base is more curious, more discerning, and more hungry for real knowledge than at any previous point in history.
This isn't another weekend seminar or a distillery marketing pamphlet dressed up with a certificate. AWS is a structured, credentialed program built the way a real certification should be: grounded in federal regulation — the TTB's actual Standards of Identity — the science of fermentation and barrel aging, and three centuries of the history that shaped what's in the glass, not just adjectives for a tasting sheet. That distinction matters more than it might first appear, and understanding why requires a close look at who built this program and what they set out to accomplish.
The Team Behind the Program: Three Decades of Combined Authority
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. Each of the three founders brings a distinctly different set of qualifications to the table, and the resulting curriculum reflects that breadth in ways that previous American whiskey education programs have not managed to achieve.
Peggy Noe Stevens: The Industry Pioneer
Peggy Noe Stevens is not a peripheral figure in the bourbon world — she is, in many respects, one of its architects. Stevens is the world's first female Master Bourbon Taster, who was working at Woodford Reserve, a title that carried enormous significance in an industry that was, for much of its modern history, a deeply male-dominated space. Her contributions to the category extend well beyond sensory expertise. Three women co-founded the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — a novel idea at the time that has since been copied across the country — including Stevens. That trail is now one of the most visited agritourism destinations in the United States, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity each year for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Stevens is a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame and founder of the Bourbon Women Association. She also co-authored, alongside Susan Reigler, the book Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon? — Setting the Table for Tastings, Food Pairings, Dinner, and Cocktail Parties, released in 2020. That collaboration with Reigler foreshadowed the partnership that would eventually produce AWS. Stevens understands the consumer side of this category — what drinkers want to know, how they want to learn it, and what makes whiskey education stick rather than evaporate after the glass is empty.
Her vision for AWS is clearly shaped by that consumer-facing orientation. "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." That's a meaningful pedagogical choice. History without context is trivia. Facts without culture are a spreadsheet. AWS is aiming at something more useful and more enduring.
Colin Blake: The Curriculum Architect
Joining Stevens is Blake, former director of Moonshine University and creator of the Stave & Thief Society certification program, who currently serves as vice president at Peggy Noe Stevens & Associates. His background is particularly well-suited to the structural challenges of building a tiered certification program from scratch. Moonshine University, based in Louisville, is one of the most respected professional spirits education institutions in the country, offering distillery startup courses and professional development programs that have sent graduates into distilleries and industry roles nationwide. Blake knows how to translate complex technical knowledge into teachable, testable curriculum — and he knows where the gaps in existing whiskey education tend to be.
Blake currently serves as Vice President at Peggy Noe Stevens & Associates, a firm specializing in brand development, experiential design, education, and whiskey services. His dual background in professional spirits education and industry consulting gives him a practical perspective that keeps the AWS curriculum grounded in real-world application rather than abstract theory. The goal has never been to produce people who can ace a trivia contest about barrel char levels — it has been to produce people who can do something useful with what they know.
Susan Reigler: The Scholar's Scholar
If Stevens brings the industry pedigree and Blake brings the educational architecture, Susan Reigler brings the kind of deep, methodical expertise that turns a good program into a great one. She's the author or co-author of eight books on bourbon and American spirits, an adjunct professor of Beer & Spirits at Eastern Kentucky University, and a working spirits judge, which means she's spent decades doing exactly what this course teaches you to do, at a level most drinkers never reach.
Her body of written work alone is remarkable. Among Reigler's books are Kentucky Bourbon Country: The Essential Travel Guide, The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book, and The American Whiskey Tasting Notebook. From 1992 to 2005, Reigler was restaurant critic and beverage columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, a tenure that trained her to communicate complex sensory experiences to general audiences — a skill that translates directly into making whiskey education accessible without dumbing it down. Reigler is past president of the Bourbon Women Association and has hosted tastings and been featured in whiskey festivals throughout the United States, including in Chicago, New Orleans, Savannah, Seattle, Louisville, and Smithfield, Virginia.
Reigler's scientific background adds another layer that distinguishes AWS from programs built primarily by marketers or enthusiasts. 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. That prior career in science education means she approaches fermentation chemistry and barrel aging not as talking points but as teachable biological and chemical processes — the kind of grounding that allows students to understand the why behind what they're tasting, not just the what.
What the Program Actually Covers: Beyond Tasting Notes
The most important thing to understand about AWS is what it refuses to be. Most whiskey education stops at tasting notes. American Whiskey Scholar goes further. That's a pointed observation about a real problem in the spirits education space. There is no shortage of courses that will teach someone to identify vanilla and caramel in a glass of wheated bourbon or to describe the finish of a high-rye mash bill. What has been harder to find is a program that explains, with rigor and depth, how those flavor compounds got there — and why they matter in a bar program, a retail setting, or an enthusiast's home collection.
American Whiskey Scholars 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. That breadth is intentional and represents one of the program's structural strengths. A bartender in Nashville needs different knowledge than a whiskey buyer for a multi-unit restaurant group in Chicago, who in turn has different needs from a passionate home collector in suburban Ohio. AWS is built to serve all three, and the modular structure of the curriculum makes that possible.
The Three-Level Structure
Level One is the foundation of the program: ten modules across three learning tracks, built for bartenders, retailers, hospitality professionals, and serious enthusiasts who want real expertise, not a marketing pamphlet dressed up as a class. The self-paced, online delivery model removes the geographic and scheduling barriers that have historically limited access to professional spirits education. You don't need to be in Louisville or Lexington to study American whiskey seriously. The online education is built to be taken at the best pace — yours. Whether you carve out a weekend to complete the course or pick at it over several weeks, there is no wrong way to complete the American Whiskey Scholar course.
Complete all ten modules, pass the final exam, and you're certified as an American Whiskey Scholar, Level One, with a certificate and an official AWS membership lapel pin to show for it. That lapel pin is a small detail but a meaningful one — it signals membership in a credentialed community in a way that self-study and casual reading never can. Every module is also available on its own, which allows someone with specific knowledge gaps — say, a bartender who understands production but has never formally studied American whiskey history or food pairing — to target exactly what they need without committing to the full certification track. Future levels are already in development for scholars who want to keep going beyond the fundamentals.
What the Curriculum Actually Teaches
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. That integration of culture and lifestyle alongside technical knowledge reflects a sophisticated understanding of how people actually use whiskey knowledge in the real world. A whiskey director at a fine dining restaurant doesn't just need to know how a Kentucky Straight Bourbon is legally defined — they need to know how to pair it with a braised short rib, build a whiskey flight for a table of four with varying experience levels, and communicate that knowledge to a server who has never tasted rye.
American Whiskey Scholar goes deeper on history than most whiskey courses, and treats sensory training, food pairing, cocktail application, and menu building as core curriculum, not an afterthought. Menu building as core curriculum is a particularly forward-thinking element. The intersection of whiskey and food — once the province of a handful of adventurous chefs and a few pioneering bourbon writers — has become a legitimate and rapidly growing corner of the food and beverage industry. A program that treats it seriously is a program that respects where the market is actually heading.
The sensory training component deserves particular attention. Reigler has judged whiskeys against each other by the hundreds, trained hospitality students on the science behind every barrel, and turned some of the industry's driest regulations into stories people actually remember. That combination of scientific grounding and narrative skill is precisely what makes sensory education land. Anyone can hand someone a flavor wheel and a glass of bourbon. Teaching them to systematically evaluate what they're smelling and tasting — and to connect those perceptions to specific production decisions made at the distillery — requires an instructor who has done exactly that work at a professional level for decades.
Why This Moment, and Why It Matters
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. That observation cuts to the heart of why AWS arrives when it does. The bourbon boom of the past two decades didn't just expand the consumer base — it educated it. The enthusiast who started drinking Old Forester in 2012 has had fourteen years to go deeper. They've read the books, visited the distilleries, followed the releases, and listened to the podcasts. They're ready for something more structured and more credential-bearing than what the market has offered them.
The timing also reflects broader trends in professional development across the hospitality industry. The wine world has long had the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. Scotch has the Scotch Whisky Association and a variety of professional certification bodies. American whiskey, despite being the most culturally resonant spirit category in the United States, has lagged behind in terms of formal, accessible, multi-tiered credentialing. AWS represents a direct effort to close that gap — built not by a trade association with a commercial interest in the outcome, but by three independent industry experts with credibility earned over careers spanning more than thirty years combined.
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. A year of curriculum development for a multi-tiered certification program is a significant investment — it signals that this isn't a hastily assembled product looking to capitalize on bourbon's popularity, but a considered and methodical effort to build something that will hold up over time.
The Competitive Landscape: How AWS Fits Into Existing Whiskey Education
AWS enters a field that already has some notable players. The Council of Whiskey Masters, for example, has launched a four-level study and certification program for aspiring and established whiskey professionals. Level One provides an introduction to the world of whiskey via a Scotch track or a Bourbon track, after which candidates can pursue the Level Two exam leading to the Certified Whiskey Specialist designation. At the top of their structure, the total fees for the Master of Bourbon course, including all study instruction, ongoing guidance, on-site examination, social program, room and board, plus diploma and lapel pin, are USD 8,450. That pricing positions it firmly in the professional certification space — something a distillery employee or a serious career hospitality professional might pursue, but largely out of reach for an enthusiast looking to formalize their knowledge.
AWS's modular, self-paced, online architecture positions it differently. By allowing individual module purchases alongside the full certification track, it creates multiple entry points that serve both the casual enthusiast and the serious professional. The three-level structure — with higher levels already in development — also gives the program room to grow alongside its students, rewarding continued engagement rather than functioning as a one-and-done credential.
The program has already attracted attention in industry circles. The AWS Certification Program Seminar was featured at the 2026 Bourbon Women SIPosium, described as an opportunity to learn about the new certification program designed by Susan Reigler and Colin Blake, with special discounts for members. The Bourbon Women Association, of which Stevens is a foundational figure and Reigler a past president, represents exactly the kind of engaged, knowledgeable community that AWS is built to serve — people who have moved beyond casual drinking into genuine expertise and are looking for a structured way to formalize what they know.
Historical Parallels: What Wine's Education Model Tells Us About Whiskey's Future
The closest historical parallel for what AWS is attempting is the rise of structured wine education in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Before the Court of Master Sommeliers established a meaningful American presence, wine knowledge in U.S. restaurants was inconsistent, often self-taught, and highly variable in quality. The introduction of credentialed education programs changed the culture of wine service in this country in ways that are still unfolding. Restaurant wine programs became more sophisticated. Consumers became more demanding. The overall quality of the wine drinking experience in America improved measurably.
Bourbon and American whiskey are positioned at a similar inflection point. The category is enormous — generating billions in revenue annually and dominating the premium spirits shelf in ways that would have seemed impossible thirty years ago. What it has not yet fully developed is the kind of credentialed expertise infrastructure that wine built. A diner in a good restaurant can reasonably expect their sommelier to hold a recognized credential. The same expectation does not yet reliably apply to the whiskey buyer, the bar manager, or the retail specialist behind the bourbon counter. AWS is one of the most ambitious efforts yet made to change that.
Stevens herself has watched this evolution in real time across her career. "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." Those words carry weight coming from someone who helped build the Kentucky Bourbon Trail from nothing, who earned the first Master Bourbon Taster designation awarded to a woman, and who has spent three decades watching the category grow from a regional tradition into an American cultural institution.
What It Means for the Enthusiast, the Pro, and the Industry
For the serious enthusiast — the guy who has worked through every expression in a major distillery's lineup, who reads release notes with the attention most people give to box scores, who can talk confidently about mash bills and rick house positioning and the effect of warehouse location on maturation — AWS offers something genuinely new: a way to translate hard-won knowledge into a recognized credential. The program doesn't require you to already work in the industry. 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. Entry-level enthusiasm and professional ambition are both welcome.
For bartenders and hospitality professionals, the credential carries a different kind of value. An AWS certification on a resume or a bar program description signals to employers and guests alike that the person holding it has put in the work — that their whiskey recommendations come from a place of structured, tested knowledge rather than personal preference or brand familiarity. The goal isn't to help you pass a test. It's to give you knowledge you'll actually use, behind the bar, at home, and everywhere in between. That practical orientation distinguishes AWS from credentials that look impressive in a bio but don't change how someone actually does their job.
At the industry level, the launch of AWS signals something important about where American whiskey stands in 2026. Three of the biggest names in the American spirits industry have joined together to introduce American Whiskey Scholars. That three figures of this stature chose to invest more than a year of their careers in building an education program — rather than consulting, writing, or brand work — reflects a genuine belief that the category needs this infrastructure and is ready for it. The market has matured to the point where formal credentialing is not just possible but necessary.
The self-paced, online delivery model also carries implications for geographic equity in whiskey education. Louisville and Lexington have long been the centers of gravity for serious bourbon learning — home to the distilleries, the events, the industry professionals, and the informal networks that have historically been the primary pathways to deep whiskey knowledge. AWS breaks that geographic monopoly. A whiskey director in Phoenix, a bar manager in Portland, a passionate collector in rural Virginia — all of them now have access to the same structured, credentialed curriculum that was previously available only to those close enough to the industry's epicenter to learn by proximity.
The Credential That American Whiskey Has Been Waiting For
There is a version of this story that gets told as a simple announcement — three industry figures launch an online course, here are the details, check back when Level Two drops. That version misses what's actually happening. AWS is an attempt to institutionalize expertise in a category that has, for all its commercial success and cultural resonance, operated largely without one. The bourbon boom produced millions of new drinkers. It produced a secondary market, a collector culture, an agritourism industry, and a global export category. What it has not yet produced at scale is a professional credentialing framework robust enough to match the category's ambitions.
Students completing a certification level and passing the final examination receive an American Whiskey Scholars certificate and AWS lapel pin. That pin will eventually mean something — not just as a symbol of individual achievement, but as a signal of a shared standard of knowledge across the American whiskey professional community. Whether it takes five years or fifteen, the category is moving toward a future where that standard exists. AWS is one of the most serious efforts yet made to build it.
For anyone who has ever sat across a bar from a whiskey menu that listed thirty bourbons with no guidance, or stood in front of a retail shelf trying to figure out which high-rye expression actually backs up its marketing claims — for anyone who has wished the person across the counter knew as much about what they were selling as a good sommelier knows about wine — this program represents something worth paying attention to. American whiskey finally has a scholars program worthy of the name.
