Whiskey by the Barrel

[Phil]

I've got people asking me to sell full barrels of whiskey to them. I'd have to sell it to my wholesaler first and they'd sell it to the retailer.

My question is does anyone do this? Sell full barrels?

Thanks,

Phil

[Ralph at Tuthilltown]

You may NOT sell whiskey in oak, unless under bond to a license holder with a bonded premises and transferred in bonded carrier. Read the regs. Spirits can only leave the plant in sealed glass containers with approved label and Fed taxes already paid. You may ship goods in oak overseas, as export, to a licensed recipient.

It is a question of both tax and the reliability of the information on the label upon which the consumer makes his decision to buy. There is no way to get a full accurate measurement of alcohol content on goods in oak. They must be proofed accurately in order for you to pay taxes on the alcohol you made. The porous nature of the wood does not make for stable alcohol content. It would change in transit, and the consumer, the buyer, would not be assured that what they paid for they actually got.

You could bottle up a single barrel and then sell the customer all the bottles from that individual cask then also include the cask itself as part of the deal.

R

[porter]

Nice if you could sell in quantity like that, keeps overhead down.

Couple of questions you need to look into though. I don't know Ark law on sales by manuf, but in Missouri we can sell directly out your door with the correct state permit. You might look into that. You would avoid the markups of having to wholesale it first.

Also, what are the buyers going to do with the barrel when finished? Are they going to move it to their own storage units? You might look at a barrel buyback or something.

Remember if you are barreling at above prooof it could be a fire hazard for the end buyer, so you would want to make them aware of that to avoid your liability. 50gal of 70% alch is getting into haz-mat category up this way if stored in a garage. Home-based automotive shops have to watch how much they keep on hand to stay below a set limit.

Good luck, and keep them folks happy down there, we love your twisty roads on 2 wheels.

[porter]

You may NOT sell whiskey in oak, unless under bond to a license holder with a bonded premises and transferred in bonded carrier.

You could bottle up a single barrel and then sell the customer all the bottles from that individual cask then also include the cask itself as part of the deal.

R

TUT- So is this what folks are doing when they pre-sell their barrel product? I've seen some discussion on here about pre-selling and holding till aged properly.

[Valley Spirits Lee]

I am interested in a bond to bond transfer. No middle man markup that way.

give me a call.

Lee2094840311

[Phil]

Thanks for the quick response!

Cheers,

Phil

[coop]

TUT- So is this what folks are doing when they pre-sell their barrel product? I've seen some discussion on here about pre-selling and holding till aged properly.

What we are doing here is pre selling a right to a finished bottle after aging has occurred, the bottle is then signed and dated, bottle# and barrel#. The customer gets a bottle out of that barrel signed and numbered and is a finished product that is legally manufactured. Coop

[Beauport Bob]

Porter, of course that would be if you could barrel whiskey, and that is what the subject is about , at 70%ABV.

[delaware_phoenix]

Of course, Ralph is right, the Federal regulations specify specific sizes of BOTTLES that are allowed to be sold.

However...

There's nothing to say you can't sell the contents of a barrel in BOTTLES with all the proper labels from a single barrel. I know Four Roses does this. You get to sample say 8 different barrels, go through a tasting with their master distiller about each one, and pick which barrel you want. The producer bottles it all up and it's sold through a retailer. You probably get a special price for buying 150 bottles (or more) at a pop. Buffalo Trace also does this. I know of at least one bar in NYC that uses BT juice as their well whiskey and they "buy by the barrel" when they can. It arrives all in bottles, everything is legit, and they get a free empty whiskey barrel for display purposes, signed by the master distiller.

Plus, because the distillery has already determined that the barrel is ready to be bottled (and will get bottled regardless) you don't have to worry about how much is in the barrel, it'll be what it will be and the customer will pay for what they get, and all will be right with the world.

[EuanCShand]

From a Scotch Whisky perspective, anyone can buy a cask under bond i.e. within a bonded warehouse. Many distillers sell new fill in cask and provide a bottling service at the end of maturation. In Scotland there are companies such as www.quartercasks.com and other private broking firms who make the process much easier for anyone who wishes to buy a cask and have it bottled. Scotch single malts from next year can only be bottled in Scotland therefore casks of single malts can not be transferred out of Scotland. However, anyone from any country worldwide can and do buy casks of Scotch whisky under bond.

[Beauport Bob]

As Ralph leads to, questions like these are another reason to be intimate with your BAM from the TTB. It is all in there and not a hard read at all.

This shows the tremendous value of the TTB Expo in Cinncy where all this is available.

[delaware_phoenix]

From a Scotch Whisky perspective

A reason to suggest to the political powers that be, that it can be done without causing drunken mayhem in the streets. It's just that in the US, pre-Prohibition, a lot of the ills of poor whiskey quality were attributed to sales of whiskey by the barrel, and it's subsequent adulteration and dilution.

[Ralph at Tuthilltown]

Phoenix is correct. We bottle single barrels and sell the entire lot as a single batch, including the (emptied) barrel it was aged in. This is perfectly okay. Another alternative is to sell "whiskey futures", the right to purchase a particular barrel when it is taken out of oak and bottled, but we've no takers on that one yet.

R

[cowdery]

To add to this, you can pre-sell even a specific barrel but the contents have to be delivered to the buyer in standard-size bottles with proper labeling, etc. Since the barrel now contains no alcohol, there is no restriction on its sale. You can only sell whiskey in the barrel to other licensed producers.