Laura Cooper

A lot of folks are trying to kind of recalibrate with taking their stills offline for a period of time and putting less liquid in barrels as the others come to maturity because they need to be able to figure out where they will sell that in the future.

Yeah.

So bourbon is America's native spirit.

I decided to focus on it because it was in quite a boom, especially after COVID.

We saw a lot of money pour into Kentucky.

You can see it in the infrastructure.

You can see it in the contract distillers that kind of popped up.

And

Because so many folks were interested in stocking their bar carts, a lot of liquid was put into barrels in Kentucky that would eventually become whiskey.

And obviously, that's a many years process.

So that whiskey is coming to maturity into a very different market than it went into the barrel.

Yeah, so a lot of the players generally have turned off their stills, whether it was last year, whether it's now.

I chose to focus on Jim Beam, which is the best selling brand in the world of bourbon.

And they have put their 65 foot still in Claremont on a pause.

They've moved a lot of production to a different place.

But this is, you know, on the main site of Jim Beam.

Because of that, a lot of folks are trying to kind of recalibrate with

taking their stills offline for a period of time and putting less liquid in barrels as the others come to maturity because they need to be able to figure out where they will sell that in the future.

I would say that generally, and I cover beer, wine, and spirits across the board, it's a tough time.

And if you were having a tough time, you might want to consider merging with somebody else.