Own a barrel.
Put your name on the bottle.
Pick a barrel out of our rickhouse and put your name on the side of it. It stays here in our bonded warehouse under our care until the day you tell us to bottle it — that part is federal law, and it’s how every barrel program in the country works. Bottle now at two years, or sample it every year and call the moment yourself.
What’s available right now.
Every barrel below is already aging in our rickhouse and past the two-year mark, so any of them can be bottled this year.
| Distillery | Fill date | Age today | Mash bill | Barrel | Min. order | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bardstown Bourbon Company | 9/5/2023 | — | 75 / 21 / 0 / 4 | ISC #4 | 1 barrel | $1,500–2,000 |
| MGP | 1/29/2024 | — | 75 / 21 / 0 / 4 | Speyside #4 | 1 barrel | $1,500–2,000 |
| Green River Distilling | 6/6/2024 | — | 70 / 21 / 0 / 9 | ISC #4 | 1 barrel | $1,500–2,000 |
Mash bill shown as corn / rye / wheat / malted barley. Inventory turns — contact us to confirm what’s still available and to set up a tasting.
Five steps, and most of them are ours.
You choose the barrel and you tell us when it’s ready. The racking, the records, the insurance and the paperwork are our job.
Tell us what you’re after
Mash bill, age, proof, budget, and the date you have in mind. We come back with what’s actually on the floor that fits. Inventory turns, so it’s first come, first served.
Taste before you buy
We pull samples from the barrels on your short list so you’re choosing on flavor, not a spec sheet. Do it here, or we’ll get samples to you.
Reserve it and we plate it
Once payment clears, the barrel is recorded to you by serial number and you get a certificate identifying it. Your engraved plate goes on the side, and it’s racked in our bonded warehouse under our license, tracked to its exact position.
Sample it. Visit it. Call the date.
One pull per year with our notes on how it’s moving, plus an annual inventory report. Come stand in front of it any time. Two years, five, ten — nobody dumps your barrel until you say so.
We bottle it, you collect it
We dump, bottle and label your barrel here under federal label approval, and the excise tax is settled at that point. You pick the cases up in Frankfort, or we coordinate delivery where the law allows it.
You design it. Within the lines the government draws.
Work with us on a custom label — or several, if you want different labels off the same barrel for different occasions. Pick your glass. Your name, your date, your artwork, your message: all yours. The product name, the whiskey type, the proof, the volume and the government warning are fixed by federal rule and can’t be changed, and personalized text can’t make claims about the whiskey itself. We’ll show you exactly which part of the label you’re designing. Handled through our Barrel to Bottle program.
Bottle it now, or let it ride.
Most programs make you wait four years for new fill. We sell out of barrels already aging on our floor, so you get to choose.
Bottle at two years
Every barrel on our floor is already past two years old. Buy one, put your name on it, and we can dump, bottle and label it this year — finished cases in your hands without a long wait.
This is the one for a wedding, a launch, a holiday gift run, or any date already on the calendar.
One thing to know: federal rule requires an age statement on the label for any whiskey under four years old. Bottle early and the label will say how old it is.
Sample it and pick your moment
Or leave it in the rick. Every year we pull you a sample and send the notes, and you decide when the whiskey is where you want it. Three years, six, twelve — there’s no forced dump date.
This is the one for a birth year, a long anniversary, or anybody who wants to taste the thing evolve before committing.
What comes with the barrel.
Not add-ons. This is the program.
An annual sample pull
Once a year we draw from your barrel, record the proof and volume, write up how it’s developing, and get it to you or hold it for pickup.
An engraved nameplate
Your name, your family’s, your company, a date — engraved and mounted on the side of the barrel before it goes in the rick. It’s what makes it yours.
Tours and visits
Bring your family, your clients, your bourbon group. We’ll take you to your rick and pull from your barrel while you’re standing there. By appointment.
A certificate and an annual report
Your barrel recorded to you by serial number, with a certificate identifying it, plus a yearly stock take — proof, fill level, warehouse position and condition.
The barrel itself, when it’s empty
After we dump it, the barrel is yours if you want it — take the whole thing home with your engraved plate still on the side, or just the barrel head. Most owners hang one or the other. Either way you keep something physical off the barrel that made your bourbon, not just the bottles.
Where it sleeps.
Most barrel programs store your whiskey at somebody else’s facility and hope for the best. We own the rickhouse. It was purpose-built to mimic the prime middle floors of a traditional warehouse — the floors distillers fight over — so a barrel here isn’t gambling on where it landed.
104 Fortune Drive, Frankfort, Kentucky. Thirty-eight minutes from Louisville, twenty-five from Lexington.
More on the facilityTwo ways to buy.
Buy the barrel on its own and decide about bottling later, or go turnkey and know your finished cost per bottle before you start. Every barrel is different — mash bill, age and proof all move the number — so we quote each one. These are the ranges.
$1,500–$2,000
per barrel
The barrel is recorded to you and ages in our bonded rickhouse. Engraved plate on the side, one sample pull a year, visits by appointment, and an annual inventory report.
When you call the date, we quote bottling, glass, labels and taxes separately at that point.
$25
per finished bottle
Everything above, plus we dump, bottle and label it under your own design, handle the federal label approval, and settle the excise tax. One number, quoted before you commit.
On a typical barrel that works out to roughly $5,000 all in for +/-200 finished bottles.
The per-bottle number is the one that matters.
At $25 to $30 a finished bottle, turnkey lands below most single barrel bourbon you’d buy off a shelf — except every one of these is yours, single barrel, under a label you designed.
No annual storage bill, no separate line items, no surprise invoice mid-term. We itemise the quote in writing before you commit.
Request pricing and availability- The barrel itself, recorded to you
- Bonded storage for the full term
- Insurance for the full term
- Engraved nameplate
- One sample pull per year
- Annual inventory report
- Facility visits by appointment
- Custom label design — one or several
- Your choice of bottle glass
- Bottling, labeling and federal paperwork
- Pickup in Frankfort, or delivery coordinated
- The empty barrel or head afterward
The ones everybody asks.
When can I bottle it?
Whenever you want, as early as two years. We sell out of barrels already aging here, and everything on our floor is past the two-year mark, so any of them can be dumped and bottled this year. If you’d rather wait, you wait — we pull you a sample every year and you call the date. There’s no forced dump.
Do I get to design the label?
Yes, and it’s the part most owners enjoy most. We work with you on a custom label — your name, your artwork, a date, a message — and you choose the bottle glass. You can also run more than one label off a single barrel if you want part of it for a wedding and part of it for client gifts.
Two limits worth knowing before you start sketching. The mandatory parts of the label — product name, whiskey type, proof, volume, government warning — are set by federal regulation and can’t be moved or reworded. And personalized text can’t describe the whiskey: “Happy 40th, Dad” is fine, “the smoothest bourbon in Kentucky” is not. Every label goes to the federal government for approval before we can bottle, so we build in lead time for that.
Can I take the barrel home?
Not while it’s full. Federal law keeps a filled barrel inside a bonded facility until it’s dumped, bottled and the tax is paid — that’s true of every barrel ownership program in the country. Once it’s empty, though, the barrel is yours: take the whole thing with your plate still on the side, or just the barrel head.
How many bottles will I end up with?
Typically 200 at 750ml, but we can’t promise a count and neither can anyone else. The number depends on the barrel’s current fill level, the proof you bottle at, and how much longer it ages — evaporation isn’t uniform. We give you the actual volume in every annual report, so you’ll know where you stand well before you commit to a date.
What is the angel’s share and does it cost me?
Evaporation. Every barrel in Kentucky loses whiskey through the wood every year — most in the first year, less after that. It means fewer bottles at the end, and it’s also the reason aged whiskey tastes the way it does. Nobody can prevent it. What we can do is report your actual volume and proof every year so it’s never a surprise on dump day.
Is my barrel insured?
Yes — coverage is carried on the warehouse and included in your term price. [ ] CONFIRM: whether coverage is at market value or purchase price, and the per-barrel limit.
What does it cost me in taxes?
Whiskey sitting in a bonded warehouse hasn’t been taxed yet — federal excise tax comes due when the barrel is emptied and bottled, not when you buy it. We’re the party legally responsible for paying it, and that cost is passed through to you at bottling. We’ll show you the current rate and an estimate before you commit to anything. Kentucky also assesses an annual property tax on aging barrels, which the Commonwealth bills to us as the warehouse; your agreement spells out how that’s handled.
Can I resell my barrel or the bottles?
Selling alcohol requires a license, so reselling finished bottles isn’t something an individual owner can do. If you want to talk through transferring a barrel to somebody else before it’s bottled, raise it with us early — it’s handled case by case and there are rules around who can receive it.
Is this an investment?
No, and we don’t sell it as one. This is built for people who want to own a barrel, watch it age and eventually drink it — not for people looking for a return. We make no projections about what your barrel will be worth, we don’t quote appreciation, and we don’t run a resale market. If that’s what you’re after, we’re not the right fit.
Tell us what you’re looking for.
Send this over and we’ll come back with what’s on the floor that fits, what it costs all in and per bottle, and when you could come taste it.
We reply to every inquiry. You must be 21 or older to participate.
Where your barrel lives
BC Bourbon Storage · 104 Fortune Drive, Frankfort, KY 40601 · DSP-KY-20146
Finished cases: pick up here, or delivery to be coordinated.
Things we want you to know up front
Barrel ownership sits inside federal and Kentucky alcohol regulation. None of the below is fine print we’re hoping you skip — it shapes how the program actually works, and we’d rather say it here than at bottling.
- The barrel stays with us until it’s bottled
- Federal law only permits licensed businesses to take possession of whiskey by the barrel — not individuals. So your bourbon reaches you the way whiskey always reaches people: in labeled bottles. That isn’t our policy, and every legitimate barrel program in the country works the same way.
- Federal excise tax comes due at bottling, not at purchase
- Whiskey in a bonded warehouse hasn’t been taxed yet. We’re the party legally responsible for paying it when the barrel is emptied, and that cost is passed through to you. We’ll show you the current rate and an estimate before you buy.
- Kentucky taxes aging barrels annually
- The Commonwealth assesses a property tax on barrels in storage and bills us as the warehouse operator. Your agreement sets out exactly how that’s handled.
- Where we can deliver depends on your state
- Most states do not allow spirits to be shipped to a home address. We’ll tell you before you buy whether we can deliver to you or whether you’ll collect in Frankfort.
- A barrel loses volume as it ages
- Evaporation is real and it isn’t uniform. We can give you a range based on our house, but nobody can promise a bottle count.
- Part of the label is fixed by federal rule
- Product name, whiskey type, proof, volume and the government warning cannot be altered, and personalized text cannot make claims about the whiskey. Whiskey under four years old must carry an age statement. Every label configuration goes to the federal government for approval before we bottle.
- You keep the empty barrel
- Once your bourbon is bottled, the barrel — or just the head with your nameplate — is yours to take home. There are federal rules about markings on used cooperage and we handle that part.
- This is not an investment product
- This is a collector and experience program. We make no representation about resale value, appreciation or return, we do not facilitate resale, and nothing here should be read as investment advice or an offer of a security.
- Spirits sales are final
- Because this is alcohol, an order cannot be cancelled or returned once the barrel is recorded to you, and finished bottles cannot be returned once they leave us. We put everything in writing and confirm it with you before either step happens.
- Damaged or wrong on arrival
- If a case reaches you damaged or it is not what you ordered, send us photos within five days of delivery and hold on to the original packaging. We will replace it or refund it.
- Age
- You must be 21 or older to purchase or take part in this program.
Barrels are sold as goods, not securities. Program terms are set out in your purchase and storage agreement.