This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
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What is the significance of Buffalo Trace in this episode?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. We have a lot to get through today. I'm Amy McGrath, and I'm here with my co-host, Denver Riggleman, a former Air Force vet, a former congressman from Virginia, and very successful AI business CEO and founder of a multimillion-dollar company. So just thought I would throw that out there. Wow. Happy to be with you today. But we do have a ton to get through. And like all of our episodes, we're going to start talking about whiskey and bourbon a little bit. Why? Because it's fun and because we love it. That's why. Well, truth in the barrel, right, Amy? Truth in the barrel. That's right. That's what this is all about. And the first episode that we did, Denver, I brought out Buffalo Trace. Why? Because that distillery is right down the road from me. And normally, for our episodes, we're going to do a different whiskey or bourbon every episode. But for this one, we're going to bring in Buffalo Trace yet again. Why? because they are dealing with the double whammy right now.
The Kentucky River has flooded to extreme levels in Frankfurt, right near where Buffalo Trace Distillery is. They're cresting at 48.2 feet. And what does that mean? It means that the entire distillery is basically underwater. So they're dealing with a lot of stuff right now. And they're also dealing with these tariffs that President Trump is instituting or enacting.
How do Trump's tariffs affect the whiskey and bourbon industry?
And so that's why I'm drinking Buffalo Trace again, because they need some help right now. They do. And we love them. But Denver, tell us about these tariffs and how they affect the whiskey and bourbon industry. It's a cascading effect of brutal, you know, when you're talking about tariffs, taxes, supply chain issues, because all that actually sort of is bundled up in one bad thing that happened to Buffalo Trace. So let's go through everything they're going through. You know, floodwaters. They're losing whiskey. They have insurance, obviously, millions and millions of dollars of insurance. Let me just give you an idea. For me, on my distillery, my barrel house, we have about probably $5 million in insurance just in our barrel house. Now, not counting our distillery and all that kind of stuff. Their insurance has to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, right? And if you look at me, my insurance costs are $24,000 per year just on my barrel house.
Now, I want you to think about that, people out there. That's just a small craft distillery. So first, Buffalo Trace gets hit with a flood. Um, they've lost, probably lost product. Uh, the insurance is going to be, you know, going through the insurance claim stack. But there's another thing that happened to FEMA, right? As FEMA gets defunded, what happens with any help there? And then there's that other whammy you talked about, Amy, which are tariffs. Tariffs are a tax on everything, right? That you're actually utilizing if it's coming from other countries. So let me just give you an idea of this, Amy, and I think you'll really love this. When we were looking for glass, when we first started our distillery, there was only one real glass company called OI that was an American-owned company. All the other companies, right, were actually sourcing glass from China, Mexico. I think we looked at one, I think, in Portugal. So we're looking everywhere for glass. I think we even looked for glass in France.
I mean, this is, you know, even cheaper than OI glass here in America. So what we found was, is that American glass was so much more expensive. So we actually got our glass out of Shanghai initially. Well, when COVID hit, they put on COVID surcharges, which were sort of applicable to tariffs, which actually upped our supply chain costs to a point that were ridiculous. The problem you have with tariffs, which is sort of shooting yourself in the face for maybe one of the biggest, right? When you're looking at bourbon, you're looking at whiskeys, it's so beautiful. You're shooting yourself in the face by adding cost to every single part of your supply chain. And you're like, well, Denver, what would that be? Stupid things like corks. Yeah.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the significance of Buffalo Trace in this episode?
0:04–1:48
2
How do Trump's tariffs affect the whiskey and bourbon industry?
1:48–4:53
3
What are the economic implications of Trump's tariff retreat?
4:53–16:27
4
How is the global perception of the U.S. affected by recent policies?
16:27–27:51
5
What impacts do tariffs have on American farmers?
27:51–42:16