The Woman Who Made It Legal for You to Sip Bourbon at the Bar

Photo Credit: The Office of Mayor Greenberg

Before there was an Urban Bourbon Trail®, there was Dixie Demuth.

In 1968, long before it was cool for women to order a bourbon neat at the bar, Dixie owned a little spot downtown called Dixie’s Elbow Room. It had music, cocktails, and plenty of character. What it didn’t have—at least legally—was the right to serve a woman sitting at the bar. That was actually against the law in Kentucky at the time.

Dixie thought that was ridiculous. So she did what any good troublemaker would do: she ignored the rule, hired a female bartender, and served a drink to a woman right at the bar. That one pour turned into a legal fight all the way to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where Dixie won in 1972. The court ruled the law was “invidious and arbitrary,” striking down decades of gender discrimination in the state's liquor laws.

It might seem hard to believe now, sipping your way through the Urban Bourbon Trail or enjoying a craft cocktail at one of our award-winning bars—but none of that would be the same without Dixie’s gutsy stand.

Louisville recently installed the first of its new city historical markers, and we think it couldn’t have gone to a more deserving local legend. Sponsored by Bill Samuels, Jr. (yes, that Samuels—from Maker’s Mark), the marker now stands where Dixie’s Elbow Room once welcomed rebels and rule-breakers at 516 South Fifth Street.

Dixie passed away in 2020 at the age of 102 (yes, really—maybe bourbon does help with longevity), but not before she was inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2023 and lived to see generations of women raise a glass at the bar, thanks to her.

We’re raising one for her, too.

Cheers, Dixie. You changed the game.