350. Discover Barrel Global

Welcome to another great episode of The Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Brian, where they talk bourbon and, of course, drink bourbon. Grab yourself a pour, kick back, and enjoy another trip down the Bourbon Road.

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Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here.

I hope I didn't butcher your name too bad.

No, no, you got it good actually. Surprisingly. Yeah, it's like much better than most.

Well, we are sipping on a little bit of whiskey today. So today I'm drinking a single barrel expression out of Dooling Grounds Distillery out of Franklin, Kentucky. And this is a cast-strength barrel. Pretty darn tasty. I've had this on the show before, but I have to say that this particular single barrel from a very small distillery, very crafty little distillery, got my attention and almost made it to bourbon of the year last year. So I was pretty excited to try this. Yeah. An excellent single barrel. I haven't had more than one of theirs. So this may be a, you know, what do they call them? A unicorn, but nevertheless, it's delicious. It's wonderful.

So is that the, is that a bottled and bond one or is it the normal one?

No, this is the, this is actually the cast strength, a four year old single barrel. Okay. The bottle and bond is good as well. I have had that. This one is 120 proof.

Yeah. I picked up a few when I was at the distillery last time I got the bottle and bond and one of the higher proof ones.

So you're sipping on a little bit of bourbon too, and you may not want to mention the distillery it's from, but it's certainly one of the distilleries that you're working with, right?

Yeah, it's actually a sample. I mean, actually, I think it's fine. It's from the Neely family distillery. I bought a few samples of their stuff. I mean, I've seen the one bunch of awards for the Jet Brothers stuff they've done. I've seen their Absinthe wins tons of awards, which is really interesting. It's like they have this Absinthe product that does really well. And yeah, I'm having a 4 years and 3 months wheat and bourbon sample of theirs, which is really good.

Fantastic. I think I've had their Absinthe bourbon. I've had a couple of Absinthe bourbons and they always tend to ruin your palate for the rest of the day. They're wonderful when you drink them, but they need to be your last glass of the day though, don't they?

Yeah. A good experiment that'd be like, you know, like Isla whiskey from Scotland, that tends to do the same thing. So it'd be good to do a little comparison and see which one wrecks your palate more, whether it's the Absinthe or the peat and stuff.

Well, George, I guess to start off here, I guess we'd like to kind of get the 10,000 foot view of what is Barrel Global without going into a lot of detail, because I'd really like to hear a little bit about your personal background and how you came to start this company. But I don't want people trying to guess what the heck it is the whole time we're talking. So why don't we tell them a little bit about what is Barrel Global, and then we'll get into some more detail about your background.

Sure. So Barrel Global, I think it's one of the first in the US that brings barrel ownership directly to the consumer. It's a very front-facing business. It's not, as you know, some companies buy a lot of bulk liquid and hide the name of the distillery and make their own brand or what have it. What we do is we partner with a lot of different distilleries We go to the distilleries, we take content, we take photography, we listen to their story, and then we buy fill barrels of either new fill barrels or older barrels from them, and we sell them directly to our customers and our consumers around the world. I have a background. I lived in Asia for eight years. I can get more into that. But the goal is just to bring bourbon barrel ownership global, take it to Europe, take it to Asia. The US, of course, is a big market for us. We just really like to scream and shout about our partners. We don't really like to hide them and just go ahead and try and sell nameless liquid or bulk distilled or contract distilled stuff from really big producers. We tend to like to work with really small, up-and-coming distilleries, hidden gems, ones that have got quality forward and not quantity. I mean, they can still be making a lot, but it needs to be quality forward, good story and focus on their own brands. We don't really like to work with contract distilleries that I guess 90% of their output is to selling these barrels and then a very small percentage goes into their own brands. We like to work with distilleries that are focused on their brand and their story. And it always comes... Again, our contracts and stuff, it's adamant that we need to be able to mention the distillery on the bottlings that we do in the future. So say we bottle a single casket, it needs to be able to say, distill that Jueling Grounds or distill that Colpic distillery. That's something really important to us.

Well, I can tell you the questions in my mind are already piling up. I've got a million directions I could go with the questions I want to ask you. But first, I'd like to know how you got to this point. What did you do before Barrel Global and what's your background in the whiskey industry?

Sure. You can't hear it. I'm half Scottish and half Greek. I grew up in an island called Crete in Greece. Not a lot of whiskey there. I got into whiskey when I was studying in Scotland. I started liking my single bottle. One of those students, everybody's drinking their $1 ciders. vodka that will rip right through you. I always had my little bottle of single malt walking around making sure no one stole it from me and started doing shots of it. I got a taste of this single malt quite early, but it wasn't until I moved to Japan after university and I got really into Japanese whiskey. I was managing a bar there called BrewDog. I think they had a show in the US called BrewDogs in the Esquire network and those two guys started a Scottish distillery. So I was Scottish brewery, craft brewery, sorry. I was managing the branch over in Tokyo, and it just so happened the person who brought the franchise also had a Japanese whiskey company and a Scotch whiskey importing company. I started learning a lot about Japanese whiskey, Scotch whiskey, trying a lot of things. And then that's when I decided I want to be a writer. I'd always been writing a little bit through university. I decided I want to be a writer, moved back to Greece, started writing with some smaller magazines. I was writing for Disteller.com, Decanza is a Japanese whiskey seller. And then I started little by little, the alcohol professor. And then I scaled up and got to like Forbes, Food and Wine, Wine Enthusiast, Financial Times. So I was writing for a lot of different magazines at that point in time. And then I moved back to Asia. I was missing it. And that's when I moved a bit out of writing and got into auctions in Hong Kong. So I was doing old and rare whiskey auctions. So I worked a little bit with Christie's, a little bit with Spink. It's another auction house in Hong Kong. That was a combination of selling old Scotch barrels and also bottles. Basically, after a while that kind of combined together for me to start selling casks of Scotch whisky. So that background, I've been selling Scotch casks for the last... 8 years. Old and rare, Macallans, Beaumars, all the big names to Asian investment funds, family offices, individual clients. Big ticket items work a lot over there. I was living in Taiwan. I lived in Hong Kong. I lived in Japan, as I mentioned. And yeah, so I did a lot of the casks and then I guess the casks were going well and it was fun and it still is. But then I just, I've started to develop my own brands the last few years. So basically all my writing kind of made me see what was missing from the industry. And I did see what was happening in Scotch and casks was going to come to Bourbon eventually was going to come to the U.S. because just how crazy people are collecting bottles. The barrel thing didn't really exist and I could see big brands making moves. And you see it nowadays. Diageo is buying this distillery. Campari is buying this distillery. Everybody's making a move into Bourbon. So I took everything I learned from the Scotch cask industry because that's now gotten very saturated. There are way too many investment companies in that. A lot of the big brands, the Diageos and the big brands are pulling back their stock because these you can call them like snake oil salesmen, come in, sell a bunch of barrels and then disappear. And then the warehouse that holds them needs to deal with these customers that want to get their barrels. It is a whole big thing in Scotch. So with Barrel Global, I just wanted to see everything that's being done wrong in Scotch and do it right in the US, which means working directly with distilleries. So that means there's not five people in between and brokers to sell you tales and smoke and mirrors. You're working directly with the distillery. Everything's transparent. All the documentation, everything's there. And so far, it's working quite well. And then I have a few other brands now. I've got... One of my brands is called Coach Belt Whiskey. It's with a ex-Formula One champion and NASCAR driver called Jensen Button. So he was just at Le Mans over with Mike Rockefeller. They've got NASCAR 56. I think it's called So he's racing for NASBA. He was a champion in F1. He won the championship back in 2009. So we have a high-end blended Scotch whiskey with him. And yeah, then I'm just working on a few other bits and bobs. But yeah, sorry for the long rant.

No, it's actually, it's great context. It's good to understand, you know, kind of you've got a kind of a complex and full background in the whiskey industry. You've been dealing in barrels for quite some time and you have a passion for it and that's important. But what year did you actually start Barrel Global? Is that something that happened within the last couple of years?

Yeah, so Barrel Global is one year old. We started last August. Yeah. And you know, like I think calls and like sales and everything started one year ago. Um, it was in the works for a while, like my, in my mind, and I was just doing the research and trying to find the correct partner in the U S which now we have a, I've got a really great partner over there. Um, and yeah, it's been almost a year. It's been a good year.

So are you guys, do you have brick and mortar? Are you a fully remote company at the moment? Do you have a facility where you store, uh, Inventory, how does that all work?

Yeah, so we are mostly remote. We do have an office space in Iowa where our US managing partner Danny Strable lives. He still has a whiskey club called Rack House and he does a few different things in the industry. So he handles a lot of the stuff over in the US and leads a lot of the sales. And yeah, we have a facility we work with in Kentucky. So a lot of the distilleries we buy from in Kentucky are quite small. Jeweling Grounds, for example, is one of our partners that we work with. And we sell new fill and older barrels from them, but they don't really have the space to store it for us. So we have a bottling. And eventually, one of the services we supply our customers is bottling services, labels. We're going to add a service to help with branding as well. That's what we do that the facility we work with in Kentucky called Bluegrass Bottlers. You might know them and they store a lot of our casks and help us with our bottling needs.

So how hard was it to get that first sign on distillery? How hard was it? Well, you already in the business beforehand, so you had your contacts, but Barrel Global is something new. You started this new company and you approached that first distillery and you said, I got this idea. You guys want to come on board. How hard was that first sell?

It was tough. I mean, it was. Actually, thinking back, the first thing was actually documentation. The fact that a company like this, I don't think there are many in the US, as far as I know. And it was quite complex. It was a lot of lawyers and fees and looking after. We don't like to sell for investment. I don't like to mention that. I just mentioned what happened over in Scotch. So I just think, That's a deep, dark hole. If you promise all these returns, keep doing that and then it... I don't know. I think that's just... It's not great for the future. So we don't mention investment anywhere. So it was quite... The biggest and the longest process was all the lawyer fees. That took us at least 6 months to set all that up, find everything we need. We want everything to be straightforward, legal. So that was the first big part. And then when that was set, we thought, all right, we're good. We're off to the races. And then the distillery calls started and that was pretty... It was tough because people just didn't understand what we were doing. I think, as I mentioned, this is a very established thing in Scotch. Basically, all brands have... You do your own sales in your brand and you do like, task sales. That's something. But this one, they're like, wait, so we have a barrel program. You're doing this. How's it going to work? All that. So it did take quite a while. And again, our brand didn't have much of a track record at that point beyond my history. But now it's good. Now people are coming to us. The calls are much easier. We've had some press. People are realizing we're not hustlers or... We're very transparent. As I said, unlike many companies, we put all the distilleries we work with out there because that's something we promise the distilleries we work with. I'm like, look, I've got 8 years in Asia, do a lot of work in Europe. I will push your brand. We will talk about who you are. We'll tell your story. And that's one of the reasons I think a lot of people sign up with us because we're not trying to hide that. Yeah, but it was tough. The first distillery we got actually was this distillery in Iowa called Revelton Distillery. And it's actually, we still work with them great. The guy, Rob over there, the owner and his wife run it. And they're making some actually amazing juice. The new make is fantastic. It's really good stuff. And our partner lives over there. And they've just been great. They've been like, they only sell via us. If anybody calls and decelerates, they direct to us. We've got a really good partnership with them. And barrels from them tend to move a lot. So that's something interesting we've seen that it's not just Kentucky stuff that people want. Sure. People's minds are opening.

Yeah. Yeah. That has changed a lot in the last couple of years. And although, you know, the majority of bourbons, let's say are made in Kentucky, we all know that all bourbons are not made in Kentucky. And there's some very amazing bourbons made outside of Kentucky, including Iowa. So there's some great Iowa bourbons and I'm long overdue for getting back out to Iowa again. I definitely like it. So is that, is that your only Iowa distillery?

So far, yeah. And as I said, Robbie was great with us at the beginning, really believed in us, really liked the global aspect of getting his brand out there. And it's been a strong partnership throughout the year and we continue. We try not to just sign up new distilleries and forget the ones we work with. We always like to have quite a big repertoire of stock in terms of age and location and flavor, just so our customers can have something diverse, they can have a diverse portfolio. and everyone's happy.

Very cool. Okay. So like I said, the questions were piling up, but one of the things I noticed you said was you weren't selling an investment. And that's, that's kind of interesting because, you know, the first thing that comes to mind to somebody who's buying a young barrel is that I'm going to buy it at a good price while it's young and it's going to grow in value over time. What you're saying is that you're not going to, you don't want to sell that that future value because you don't know what it's going to be. I mean, those values historically do go up, but you don't want to put a number on that because what could happen? Barrel inventories affect selling price.

Yeah. I mean, look, we tell people right off the bat, we give them like a kind of how the bourbons projected to increase in price over the year. You've got a one-year-old now, a five-year-old is going to be worth much more. And at that point in time, we can buy them back. We can try and resell them for them. But we just don't like throwing that word. And it scares brands. And as I said, I've seen it in Scotland. And if you've got all these investment companies coming in, flinging tens of thousands of barrels, it's going to oversaturate the market. There's a lot that's going to happen down the line, which is just why we we've broken away from that. And again, we're working with small distilleries. So we get people that just are starting their own distillery but want to bottle something now. They buy five barrels and bottle it. We have a hotel chain that wants to buy a few barrels. But then we have the individual that wants to collect a few barrels, go and taste the barrels every year, maybe do a bottling for their wedding anniversary of their child's birth. And then also, down the line, we do... So something we have at Barrow, we've got a very state-of-the-art tech. So we've got a really good backend customer area where you can check everything you have. You can check its age. You can check how it's progressing. And eventually, we do want to also have a really cool platform where people can list their barrels. And then that will connect retailers to individuals. So a retailer might come in and say, I want a barrel. This guy's selling his. He's been holding for 5 years. And we want to have the best exit strategies possible for our customers. We don't want to just sell a lot. Now we're in it to stay. We're not going to go anywhere. I'm in the industry to stay. So the exit strategies need to be abundant and diverse. overcharging to start, which is one thing that a lot of these companies will be way overcharged about. So that just means it's so hard to get to that point where they're going to make a profit. And then all these promised returns, they don't know that. I mean, I don't know if you know much about Scotch, but there was that one figure was like 584% growth of Scotch. I think it was like over 10 years. And that was one range by Deagio. It was one range and people would just use that for the entire industry. Like it's going to go up by 500%. So I don't know. I just, I like to stay away from that.

Is it fair to say that you're selling an experience first? So it's kind of an experience. A lot of people want to be a part of something, right? They, they want to be in this business and, and by purchasing one of your barrels, they are in the business more or less, right? They, they do become an owner at that point on paper and they don't actually hold the barrel, but they do become an owner. And, and then I guess secondly, The whiskey is in the barrel and at the end of the day, they can claim that whiskey and have it bottled. So they could end up with something to share out, whether it be at an anniversary, a wedding, whatever event they might be having, a company picnic. Exactly.

Yeah. It's an experience. It's a collectible. And again, as I said, they can resell it later. That's not late. And we help our customers do that. And again, I just think when you throw that investment word about, you also attract a different kind You attract a lot of people that don't care about whiskey. Our sales team loves it because they just talk to all these cool people that are like-minded. One, I want to borrow. Yeah, I want to make some money. Everybody wants to make some money. But I feel if you do it this way, you call it a collectible. You call it an experience. You get people that are actually passionate about it. It just makes everything much more pleasant than that kind of cutthroat, I need this much money and this much time. Right now, that return, it's just... I don't think that's as pleasant.

So you mentioned on your website that you're trying to cover two whiskey categories. Uh, I'm not sure what those whiskey categories are because I'm thinking rye, bourbon, scotch, Japanese whiskey. Maybe I don't know what, what are, what are the different areas you're trying to cover?

So I think right now, we're primarily focused on American whiskey and Scotch because I have the history in Scotch and a lot of good connections in Scotland with the warehouses, with the brands. I get a lot of good access to casks there. And then American whiskey as our focus. Japanese whiskey, honestly, it's a bit, I don't know, it's a bit overrated for me. I loved it before it started my career, but the prices in a barrel, if you manage to get one, are insane. They're very tight about what they allow you to put on your labels and everything like that. In scotch and bourbon, you can do whatever you want. You can put it in a big decanter. You can put it in whatever bottle you want. In Japan, it's very, very strict. You get a teeny little bit in the label. It's just not a category I'm trying to go into right now. Tequila is an interesting one at some point. I'm actually living here in Mexico City at the moment for a short period of time. I'm trying to do some stuff in tequila. That's an interesting one that I'm trying to traverse now. But I think for the foreseeable future, there's just so much to be done in bourbon and American whiskey and scotch. Again, we're talking about it. There's all these states we want to get into. We want to work with the Colorado distilleries. Texas, we're speaking to, you know, Iowa, Virginia. There's a lot to do in there at the moment. And we're loving it. And we're really excited about how it's going. So I don't want to kind of pull our attention too much in too many different categories, if that makes sense, at least for the time being.

Yeah, it does. So are you wearing a lot of hats or do you have a lot of help?

I wear a lot of hats. I've got like, as I said, I've got three, three or four brands right now. But I do have, I think one of my skills as a kind of business owner, I'm good at choosing and finding the right partners. I think I'm more emotionally intelligent than, you know, number intelligent. So I've got my right hand man, who's also my best friend, Tony. So he's our CEO. He just runs it like a, you know, runs a ship, really well-oiled, really well-structured machine. We've got Danny, who's amazing at sales and making that connection and getting those bigger deals offline. We've got a cool sales team, great PR girl that you've been speaking to, great social media partners. I tend to find the right people, which I'm happy about. Sometimes it doesn't work out, as you maybe know. I like to find people that can kind of, you know, they have the skills and the confidence to operate on their own. So I don't need to be over them all the time and always, you know, babying them. And I prefer to meet people that are, you know, talented, smart. They know what they're doing. They have the passion and I can just let them get on with it. And yeah, so it's running. I think it's going quite well, even though we are all busy, but it's, it's, it's good.

All right. Well, George, we're going to keep sipping on our whiskeys here. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, We're going to go through kind of the details of how the program works and maybe an example of a customer and going through the process and purchasing and all of that. And then we got a lot more questions for you. This is some exciting stuff. So we'll see everyone after the break. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their handcrafted wood products are made in their in-house wood shop with authentic bourbon barrels. Specializing in barrel-age potent treats, they use Blanton's barrels to age their own maple syrup, honey, and coffee. Find the most unique gift ideas for your golf lover, cigar connoisseur, avid coffee drinker, and Blanton's fan. Want to win an authentic Blanton's barrel head? Make sure you sign up for the giveaway on the home page of their website. Blanton'sBourbonShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. As we mentioned earlier in the show, we hope you'll join us this fall on October 6th and 7th for Bourbon on the Banks. The festival itself is from 2 to 6 p.m. on October 7th and you can pick those tickets up at bourbononthebanks.org for $65. They also have an early access ticket for $75. It'll get you in an hour early and definitely get you access to some special pours. But if you always like that VIP access, this year they're bringing in the VIP access tickets. They'll give you access to their VIP tent and all the great things that go along with that for $175. Be sure to check out bourbononthebanks.org. You'll get all the details on this year's event. Alright folks, so we are back after the break. I'm still sipping on a little bit of this Lincoln Pinch bourbon from Dueling Ground Distillery. It's the 4 year old single barreled, 120 proof. a very fine whiskey and actually one of your distilleries, right?

Yeah, yeah. They're one of our newest distillery partners. We were up there last month with my partner Danny. I went to meet the guys Mark over there. Great guy. Saw what they're doing over there. They're making some amazing stuff as you're tasting. So yeah, we get a combination of new fill barrels from them. They can't produce much, so they only make I think it's like 8 barrels a week or something like that right now. Yeah. So they're not... Mark's very much focused on very slowly growing, keeping that quality up. He doesn't seem in a rush at all to expand or grow like a lot of them are. He just seems quite chill. He's making good stuff. Yeah. So we buy some of their older barrels and some of our clients are bottling some of it. And then some of the new filter stuff as well.

Yeah, it's a great little distillery. It's kind of off the beaten path just a little bit, but if you're traveling north and south between Nashville and Louisville, which a lot of people do, it's right there near the state line. What a great little spot. Good people and their whiskey is phenomenal. Really good whiskey. So they've got some skill for sure.

Yeah, yeah, no, they're like, yeah, really cool. Like the pot still distilled. I'm really enjoying their stuff. It's like something really different because for me, I'm not a fan of like the very, very overly sweet bourbon, you know, I like it, but I'm more of a riot fan. So I like the ones that have a bit more of that, like, you know, like the Dueling Ground stuff is more like it's got that spice to it. It's got a few extra elements to it. They make it a bit more complex for me personally.

Yeah. One of the things I like about the Dooling grounds whiskey is it does have that sort of unique spice. And I always call it like spice drops, like those, uh, those holiday gumdrops with the real spicy flavor to them and the sugar coating. It's not super sweet, but it does have that nice spice drop flavor to it. And you get that in a few distilleries. You know, one of them is Willet. You get that from Willet sometimes. You get it from Leapers Fork Distillery out of Tennessee. And there's a number of other ones that you get it from. But whenever I taste it, I just think, wow, how do they do that? How do they... uh, get that flavor out of the barrel and out of the mash that nobody else is getting. And it's just pretty, pretty fantastic stuff.

Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. I was really happy to speak to them and I feel that it's when you, I guess it's hard, as I mentioned before, to get signed on to those first distilleries, but I think once you, they all know each other, right? So once you, you've shown that you're actually like, you, you, You know, you do what you say you're going to do. You're a man of your word. You're like very transparent and word gets around. So it's like, they all recommend. It's quite a small little circle, I guess, in Kentucky. So now we're working with Mark and then we've worked a bit with Paul at MB Rowland and now the word's getting around and it's getting easier. We're getting some really cool casks.

All right. So I think it's appropriate now if we kind of go through the process, because I think that our listeners have heard what you had to say. They kind of got an idea of what your company does, but I think the best way to do this is to kind of go through how it works from the time somebody lands on barrel global.com and they click that request info and pricing button. What, how does it, how does it happen from that point forward?

So basically, the people go on, they'll schedule a call with one of our sales teams. We've got 3 members, no, 4 sales members at the moment. So I guess when they request the info, the first thing you'll get is like a deck. So we have all these decks that have a A history of the distillery, a summary basically of what the offering is, the history of the distillery, what they're all about. We've got some bullet points of what they've done, be it releases, be it events, collaborations, awards, and then the pricing. So they'll get this deck with all the information and then they'll jump on a call with their sales guys and their sales guys will take them through everything we have to offer, the storage fees, insurance, the distillery. If that particular offering isn't to their liking, we have a bunch more. At any one time, we'll have five to eight offerings at any one point in time. And that'll be a combination of new fill, two-year-old, four to five-year-olds that's ripe and ready to be bottled. Of course, if it's Scotch, that's a different direction. That's much older. Yeah. And then after that, they'll do the call. If the client confirms and they want a certain barrel or they confirm a certain barrel, they're sent a deposit invoice right away. And then the whole system is very automated. So it's not us emailing over paperwork and such. We have a really good backend system that just automatically populates everything. So you get a deposit, you pay the deposit, you get through your your delivery order so that the contract that you need to sign that makes it... As your barrel, you go through all the paperwork. Eventually, you do the fill payment and then the barrel ownership is transferred over to you. And your name is put in a ledger that the distillery also has. So it's not that it's just Barrel Global. The distillery also knows that you're the owner of the barrel. So should anything ever happen to Barrel Global, you still own the asset at the distillery. But it's under Barrel Global's account, in a sense. But it's just an event that, you know, anything ever happens, your asset is secured.

All right. So let's talk about an example here. For example, a new make barrel from Dueling Grounds Distillery. Somebody comes on, they look at your deck, they see the portfolio includes Dueling Grounds Distillery with a great description of them and their product. And you've got new make barrels for them. What might they expect to pay for a new make barrel of the Dueling Grounds bourbon?

The Dueling Grounds Bourbon is around $2,400 at the moment. It's one of a slightly pricier one because their production is so small. It tends to be with the defaults we work with, they're anywhere from $1,800 to $2,500. The higher is just the ones that produce a really small amount and we can't get many of. Where are the cheaper ones are kind of and we have more availability and a cheaper price point.

So they'll have to come up with let's say it's two thousand four hundred they'll have to come up with a deposit of. some amount, what is it like a 20% deposit or something like that?

Yeah, it's like 10 to 20%.

So they'll have put down on the barrel and that'll kick off the process, in which case they'll get the documents and it's all automated on their online experience. They'll get this order that goes through and then an invoice for the final payment where they'll pay that final amount. And once they pay that final amount, they'll receive a certificate of sorts, right?

Yeah, exactly. So then they'll get their barrel global certificate that notes that the barrel number is listed at the distillery with whichever distillery they buy from. So they get that contract. Another thing to mention is for the order stuff. And we can do it for NewMake too. A lot of clients want samples first. So usually, if it's an order release and they want to bottle it, we often supply samples as well, just to backtrack a little bit. Cool. Cool.

Now you mentioned earlier, insurance and warehousing fees. What could a customer expect in terms of expenses on an annual basis for a barrel?

It's typically around 100 US dollars a year. It's a facility we store with in Kentucky. We try and have a facility in each state so that the whiskey is matured in the way that it's supposed to. So we don't really want to move the liquid too far from where it's originally... The climate that it's supposed to mature in. Typically, insurance and storage is around 100 US dollars a year.

Okay, so in the case of this distillery, they don't store the barrels, but they'll go into a storage facility for you. Now, could a customer visit that barrel from time to time?

Yeah. So we have quite a good partnership with Bluegrass. A lot of our customers actually go there and try their barrels. I'm not exactly sure. But I think they're not allowed to drink it at the actual Bluegrass bottlers facility because I think they don't have the license for that or in the location that they're in. You're not allowed to drink it there. But you can go pick up your sample, take it home and drink it.

Okay. So, I'm guessing that the arrangements you have with each distillery and each state is going to vary depending on the laws of that locality and what you're able to do. So, it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all for all these distilleries. But some of them do hold the barrels, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Revelton, as I mentioned in Iowa, hold them. Who else? Colpick, the distillery we're working with there in Paradise, Kentucky, they're holding the barrels that we bought from them. That's a beautiful location actually. So that's the place we do want our clients to go visit as well because that's in this like 2,700 acre estate. So yeah, it just depends. We try and be quite flexible because I mean, it's hard running a distillery and then Again, I know some of these investment companies go in, they're like, we need these many barrels, 500. Now, this is the price we'll do and that's it. We try and do it differently. So with Dueling Grounds, it's more like we buy monthly. So we buy how many they can produce. We've got a bit like around 10 barrels a month. If they can produce it, if they can't, then Mark comes and says, we're backtracked. If we can't, that's fine. Whereas other deceleries want that cash flow right up front. And we're like, okay, we'll buy 5,800 barrels. And we just try to be quite flexible with the partners because we want these to be long-term partnerships and everybody to be happy in the end of the day.

So you already own the barrels at these distilleries before the customer puts the deposit down with you. You've already made arrangements and procured these barrels for Barrel Global.

Oh, yeah. We don't broker things. So we have contracts and partnerships with the distilleries directly, which take quite a while to line up. And then we buy the barrels outright. And then we only sell what we own. So at any one time, we'll have around 200 to 300 barrels inventory that we own. And I'm not a fan of brokering. And you go out and sell something that's not there. It's just safer and better for everybody if you own what you sell.

Well, that question is very revealing and the answer is exactly what I wanted to hear because I love the fact that you own those barrels in advance and you're not putting that burden on the distillery as a broker. So that's a great thing. And I think it's exactly what I as a barrel purchaser would want to hear that I'm dealing with the owner of the barrel directly.

Yeah. I mean, one thing I will say is when it comes to Scotch and it's a McCallan 30-year-old barrel that costs like a million US dollars, that's not something we buy outright. That's usually something we'll work with the warehouse on. But yeah, when it comes to all the American whiskey we own and everything, all our offerings and the debts that we have, that's all stuff that we own.

If a customer buys a barrel, let's say, let's go back to the New Make barrel. The customer buys a New Make barrel. It's white whiskey in the barrel. It's just been put up. It's been bought very young. It's certainly not ready to drink yet. They bought it from Dueling Grounds and it got moved off to Bluegrass Bottlers and it's been in storage there now for for four years, let's say, and this customer has paid his $100 every year to cover cost of storage plus insurance on the barrel. And that barrel originally cost him $2,400. We won't say what it's worth now, but it's certainly more than $2,400 because it's now a four-year-old aged whiskey.

Yeah.

He has a choice to make. Does he want to go pick up that barrel and have it bottled? does he want to sell that ownership certificate off to somebody else or maybe back to you or the original distillery? What are, what are his options?

Yeah. So, well, that's another thing. So something we're developing now. Uh, I mean, we talked, you said we were going to talk a little bit about the future, but something I want to do is first of all, with my, um, coach belt brand, we're looking at doing the, the one with the F1 shopping and doing a blended Kentucky bourbon. Cause we do a blended Scotch bourbon. We did a blended Scotch whiskey. We didn't want to do a, Then at Kentucky Bourbon, Barrel Global is going to start our own bottling. Similar to what Lost Lantern is doing or Hidden Bar and Spirits, single cask American whiskey bottlings. That's something we're going to do. We have a really exciting trio of casks coming up in collaboration with a really cool artist. I can't say too much, but the goal is to work with just some really cool people in America, artists, photographers, videographers, singers, and do our own bottling. and then also expand that network. So basically, we want BarrelGlobal to be very cemented in the industry, not only selling to individuals, but we also want to supply brands. So we want to supply new brands, which we've done for three or four new brands that have started, we've supplied the stock to them. And this all just makes it more of an ecosystem. And then eventually, when the people do want to sell their barrel, they have that option. We can buy it back and bottle it, and we can reach out to our network that we'll have at that time, and we have right now. And that will only expand retailers, stores, hotels, restaurants, chains, they want to do their own bottlings. Yeah, it can be blended into the other brand I'm talking about. So that's everything that we're going to have available. And eventually, as I mentioned, we'll have a platform that people can actually list their barrels on. So that's something we're working on to be launched next year that people can actually go on without needing to come to me and be like, Hey, George, I want to sell my barrel. Can you help me? They can actually just list it. and it'll be kind of like a barrel marketplace, which is something we're working on. And it's going well. We just need to be at the place where we've sold enough barrels that it will be populated, then there'll be a bit of activity.

Now, that's really cool. That's super cool. And I can see that something like that could be Yeah, even on a, let's say that you get 20 barrels of four-year-old whiskey from one of your distilleries, and it's a very desirable barrel, and they sell out really quick, those people could come right back online and list them with you at an upcharge, potentially move those barrels off to somebody who didn't manage to get one on the first release, and make a little bit of money. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I think there's definitely space in the market. And then if it's done right, done correctly, and again, we have that network and we have those buyers on there, I think that'll be happening more and more often. I mean, it's not that easy to get four or five-year-old Kentucky liquid at this point. So imagining a year or two is probably going to be even harder.

And I guess if somebody along the way decides that they want to actually take ownership of the barrel, they could always apply for a license and become licensed to own and take delivery on a barrel. And they could always do that if they wanted to, particularly if they want to build an inventory over time and say, you know, I'm going to wait until I get 100 barrels that I'm going to apply for my license and then I'm going to go pick them up. I guess they could do that too, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I guess they could. Yeah, that would be possible. But we do supply also the service of bottling for our clients. If the clients, they want to do that, we have a fixed fee, and they can choose their label, choose their bottle. We have our kind of stock bottle that we use at Barrel Global Bottlings. But yeah, they're quite free to do with what they want to do. That's awesome.

That's so awesome. All right, so the future. You said you've got five client distilleries now. Where are you going to be a year from now? What's your goal?

Well, honestly, the last few months we've been growing quite quickly. A lot of new partners are coming in. We're trying to keep up with a lot of the new distilleries that are coming in. In a year's time, I'd say I want to have a wide range of our own bottlings out there. I've started making that because I think it's just a nice little add-on. If someone buys a new make barrel and they want to try a bottle of They buy a new barrel of Gilling Grounds where they want to try a 5-year-old barrel of Gilling Grounds that we've bottled under Barrel Global. I think that would be quite nice for our customers. In a year's time, I'd like to be really deep into doing our own bottlings, single barrel bottlings with Barrel Global. I'd like our name to be out there. I'm trying to get bourbon more into Asia. which is something I'm working on. It's a bit harder because they don't know the names as much as they know Scotch names. But I'm trying to get Bourbon as a whole into Asia more and the UK. So I'm hoping to be much more established. The US is now the bulk of our sales, but I'm trying to expand more into Asia. Yeah, I guess I'd just like to have 10 or 15 distillery partners be working really well with everybody, growing. I guess the main thing for me is that we're liked in the industry. I don't want to become, again, one of those companies that's just cutthroat, overpriced, trying to move a lot of stock and make a lot of money. I would like to be... And we are there. our distillery partners like us, our customers, I think, are quite happy. They seem to be. And I just want to keep cementing ourselves in the bourbon industry as it grows and help it grow.

So I'm a podcast and we've got a large number of listeners and they're all whiskey drinkers. They love barrel picks. I call you up and say, hey, I need a four-year-old barrel from a Kentucky distillery of some really good stuff. You'll send me some samples. I could taste them. I'll pick a barrel. We'll pick a barrel. And then we'll go down and take delivery at Bluegrass Bottlers, right, of 200 plus bottles out of that particular barrel. That's how it works.

Exactly. That's exactly how that would work.

So bourbon clubs, podcasts, YouTube channels, restaurants, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's open to the public.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

The average man's bourbon source for single barrels delivery. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. And as I said, you can name it on the barrel as well. So you can definitely say the name of the distillery, which is something important. And yeah, the fun thing is that we're getting distilleries that have never actually sold barrels before, which is the most fun part about it. Jeweling rounds haven't sold their old stock before. That was the first time. They released like 10 or 15 barrels of their older, like four-year-old bourbon. So that's the kind of stuff we love because You know, people get really excited about it.

Well, let's talk about what this means to the distillery themselves. So Young Distillery, who is just starting up. who has created some whiskey, young whiskey that you've tasted and you say, this has got a future in it. This is good stuff. It's not ready today, but it'll be ready a couple of years from now. You choose to represent them. They can fund their operation off of selling new make barrels to you, right? And that can help them to get through that tough period. And every distillery has to go through in the first few years where they're making stuff, but they don't have any income.

Yeah, that's usually my pitch. So now, as I mentioned, it's a bit easier. But for me, the main points is A, you've got a small brand, you're distributed in a few states, but you're nowhere close getting into the UK or getting into Japan. So that's just an added little footstep into a market that you're not going to be in for a while. But you have some die-hard fans there that own barrels from your distillery. So that's something I always pitch. Because as I said, we say it's just like a marketing tool. We take some really cool videos. If you guys get a chance to go into the website, I'm very proud of the video, the content we create. I think we shine a real good light on what the facility is doing and the people behind it. But I know a lot of brands don't usually focus on... If you're a new brand, you're trying to make good whiskey. You're trying to get everything running. You don't really care about some guy taking a video of you doing it. But that's something we try and do. We try and go there, really make great content, really push what everybody's doing. I write all the decks. So the decks that we send to our customers and the storylines, I write every single piece of that. So yeah, I think my pitch is just like, we're in it as a partner. We're not there to kind of rip you off or have you, we want you to grow. If you grow, we grow. And yeah, again, that cash flow is obviously quite a helpful thing right off the bat as well if you need just that extra flexibility and peace of mind for a new distillery.

All right. So we've got some, uh, events coming up in Kentucky and surrounding areas here. So are you going to be anywhere? Are you going to be showing your face and setting up booths or anything to get the word out?

Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to be at the, we want to go to the Boston bourbon festival. that's happening. I wanted to do Bourbon and Beyond, but I think the Barstown one is a bit more business-y. I think Bourbon and Beyond is a big music festival with Bourbon, which sounds fun. I think we'll be at that one. I'm going to be back up Uh, and Louisville soon to meet some new partners that we're going to have, but I'm heading over to, I'm heading home to Greece, um, in July for a month, see the family best time to be there. So, um, we'll be back. I'll be back at it in August and then go to the Boston bourbon festival. So we'll be there. I don't know if we'll have a booth, but me and the team will be there walking about drinking with their barrel, with their barrel global merchandise on.

Well, we'll be there as well. Last year we did have a booth, but we didn't spend much time there. We were out walking around shaking hands and drinking whiskey with our good friends. So hopefully we'll run into you this year. I have to say, you're quite a visionary. This has got my interest for sure. I think by the time our listeners hear this episode, gears are going to be turning. They're going to be thinking about, I wonder if I can do this. I wonder if she'll let me spend the money.

Yeah, that's often the case.

Well, I would like to give you an opportunity to let everybody know exactly where they can find you. Your website, your social media accounts. You already mentioned you're going to be at the Barstown Bourbon Festival. Where can they find you on the internet?

Yeah. So I mean, if you guys are interested in hearing more about the barrel buying process, you can go to barrelglobal.com and you can request access. You can schedule a call. And again, nothing's set in stone. Nothing's tied. You can just ask for more information. On Instagram, we're at barrelglobal, at barrelglobal. My Instagram is at George Koutsakis. I think you're going to have to see the spelling of that. I don't think you're going to be able to do that off the top of your head. And yeah, that's where you can find us. Ask any questions, any kind of concerns you might have. We're always open to hear about your new distillery. If you're looking to buy your barrel, if you're just looking for some information, we're always there. And then happy to share all the information that we have. We're very transparent, as I've mentioned to Jen. Yeah, that's where you'll find us.

All right. Well, George, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show today. We really appreciate you taking time out of your day to sit down with us. I did hit that request info and pricing button on your website. So I look forward to getting some information here real quick. I might, I might just be putting some money down on a barrel. I think the bourbon road needs to be, needs to be doing something with this. So again, thank you very much for being on the show with us and I'm sure you're going to hear from some of our listeners.

Thank you very much, Jim. Thanks for having me. It's been an awesome chat to you, and hopefully your listeners enjoy what we've been chatting about.

All right. Well, listeners, you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. You can even find us on TikTok. I'm not dancing, I promise you, but we are having a great time. We do a show every single week. You're going to get some good content from us every Wednesday. It's going to drop. Sometimes it's a distillery, sometimes it's a country music artist, sometimes an author or a chef. Today, it's BarrelGlobal.com, so make sure you check them out. If you've got an idea for a show, if you've got an idea for a guest or a whiskey that needs to be highlighted in our podcast, we hope you let us know about it. You can always go to our website, theburbanroad.com. There's a Contact Us page on there. Fill it out. Send it to us. We'll always get back with you and we love hearing from our listeners. But you can always just send us an email, team at theburbanroad.com. Brian and I will get that. One of us will get back with you. We love to hear from our listeners. Well, we hope you, uh, scroll to the top of that app. You're listening to us on and hit that subscribe button. That way every week you get a notification that we've come out with a new show, but until then we'll see you down the Bourbon road.

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