Barrel Making
Barrel Making
We aren’t just putting our whiskey into barrels. We entrust it to them. Our whiskey will spend a good amount of time in a barrel, drawing from it all of its rich amber color and much of its distinctive flavor. Barrels are such a big part of our whiskey’s character which is why we proudly age our whiskey in new, handcrafted white oak barrels, the same way we’ve been doing for more than 150 years
Barrels are made of mainly two materials—American White Oak and meticulous American craftsmanship. They aren’t held together by glue or nails, but by the sheer pressure of the wood’s precise arrangement. 33 separate wood staves, to be exact. No two the same size. It’s a task far too meticulous to be carried out on an automated assembly line. Once assembled, the barrel’s interior is toasted and charred to coax the wood’s natural sugars out and caramelize them. Those sugars are such an important part of where our whiskey flavor develops.
All this precision and hands-on effort for a barrel we use once. After the barrels are finished imparting their flavor to our whiskey, they’re reused by hot sauce makers, beer brewers, and Scotch whisky distillers. Because these barrels were once home to our Tennessee Whiskey, we like to think we’ve done our part to help make those products just a little better. We're proud to go a step further by doing our part to promote sustainability by protecting and preserving the supply of the white oak wood required to make the barrels.
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