The Bourbon Industry Is in Turmoil. Could Tech Provide the Shot It Needs?

If you’ve ne'er toured a whiskey distillery, nan acquisition tin beryllium uncommonly old-fashioned. While newer distilleries thrive connected automation, galore still tout their “by hand” operations arsenic a defining characteristic, a practice that gives them thoroughfare cred. Many distilleries are downright smug astir nan deficiency of computers aliases moreover ambiance power successful immoderate facet of their operations—even if this intends things don’t ever spell according to plan. Easily preventable errors are chalked up arsenic a costs of doing business, possibly adding to nan romance of whiskey-making while draining nan budget.

Mandell says that while nan power of a seasoned maestro distiller is great, there’s a existent consequence successful eschewing exertion erstwhile it comes to nan vanished product. “What galore of nan different guys get is conscionable inconsistent,” he says, “because they person little power complete nan process.” And that inconsistency, he adds, tin often beryllium felt down nan line, successful nan value of their whiskey.

Contract Negotiations

Like galore industries, whiskey is very incestuous, and nan distillery named connected nan explanation whitethorn not really make nan liquid wrong nan bottle. In fact, that distillery whitethorn not beryllium astatine all. For example, you can’t sojourn Redemption Whiskey’s distillery, because location isn’t one; nan marque sources each its banal from MGP Ingredients successful Indiana.

There are 2 superior ways to get whiskey without distilling it yourself. Sourcing usually involves buying barrels that person already been made by personification else. Contract distilling happens erstwhile whiskey is distilled to bid for a client’s specifications. Both are commonplace.

Mandell is simply a seasoned of Bardstown Bourbon Company, a good regarded cognition he helped to motorboat successful 2014. Bardstown made (and still makes) its ain whiskeys, but for illustration galore distillers it besides produces for others connected contract. These statement distilling services are wherever nan accelerated money is made. Whiskey produced coming won’t beryllium sold until it’s decently aged—for years—but dissimilar consumers, statement customers person to salary up front. Bardstown has been capable to thread nan needle and do some sides successfully—though without its thriving statement accumulation business and nan hiring of Hargrove (who now leads nan Whiskey House accumulation team) to hole immoderate value issues, Mandell implies that Bardstown mightiness not person been truthful fortunate successful its early days.

When Mandell and Hargrove departed Bardstown astir nan clip of a backstage equity buyout a fewer years ago, they sewage to activity connected a caller business almost immediately. The concept, Mandell says, was simple: “What if we could commencement over, return everything that we learned, and create nan distillery and nan strategy from scratch,” he says. “What’s needed retired there? What problems tin we solve?”

It turns retired location were a batch of problems to solve, and a batch of demand. After all, nan galore alleged non-distiller shaper brands—including astir of nan “celebrity” whiskeys that now crowd nan market, for illustration Beyonce’s SirDavis—have to beryllium made somewhere.