AMERICANMADE
The 7 Checks Most Beginners Skip
There are seven simple questions to ask before any options trade.
Most beginners skip every one of them — and pay for it.
I put all seven on a single page so you don't have to.
The Smart Trade Options Checklist.
Normally $29.97. Free today.
Bourbon is the only spirit that must, by law, be made in America. Federal regulation requires it. At least 51% corn. Aged in new charred oak barrels. Distilled to no more than 160 proof. And produced in the United States. No exceptions. No imports. No shortcuts.
Woodford Reserve takes it further. It’s triple-distilled in copper pot stills — the only major bourbon made this way. The mash bill is 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley. It ages for six to seven years in new charred American white oak barrels. And it’s made at the oldest distilling site in Kentucky — a National Historic Landmark where distilling began in 1812.
A bottle costs about $35. Here’s where every dollar of that goes.
Estimated breakdown based on bourbon industry benchmarks, Brown-Forman’s public financials, and TTB excise data.
Start with the grain. Kentucky corn, rye, and malted barley. The raw ingredients cost almost nothing — maybe a dollar per bottle. But the barrel is another story. Federal law requires bourbon to age in new charred oak barrels. A single barrel costs $200 to $250 and yields about 200 bottles. That’s roughly a dollar per bottle just for the wood.
The real cost is time. Woodford Reserve ages six to seven years. That’s capital tied up in a warehouse for years. Barrels lose 2–4% of their volume each year to evaporation — what distillers call the angel’s share. Add the distilling labor, the copper pot stills, the limestone-filtered water, and the bottling line, and you get roughly $10 in total production cost. That’s 29% of the retail price.
The government takes $3.50 — about 10%. The federal excise tax on distilled spirits is $13.50 per proof gallon, which works out to about $2.14 per bottle of Woodford. State and local taxes add the rest.
Brown-Forman keeps about $8.50 — 24%. That covers the Kentucky Derby sponsorship, the brand marketing, the corporate overhead in Louisville, and the company’s operating profit. Your distributor takes about $7 — the middleman required by law in America’s three-tier system. And your liquor store or bar keeps roughly $6.
Notice something? Nearly 40% of your $35 goes to the distributor and the retailer — two businesses that don’t make bourbon. That’s the three-tier system, a Prohibition-era regulation that requires alcohol to pass from producer to distributor to retailer. It creates jobs and tax revenue. It also adds cost. Every bottle of Woodford Reserve touches at least three sets of hands before it reaches yours.
Distilling has been happening on this site for 214 years. The main stone building dates to 1838. It survived the Civil War, Prohibition, and decades of abandonment before Brown-Forman repurchased and restored it in 1993. Today it produces 2.5 million bottles a year with 165,000 barrels aging in rick houses on the rolling Bluegrass hills.
Elizabeth McCall became Master Distiller in 2023, succeeding Chris Morris. She’s only the eighth person to hold the role in the distillery’s history. The bourbon is still made from the same limestone water and the same American white oak. The copper pot stills are the same design they’ve always been.
Brown-Forman is a rare thing — a publicly traded, family-controlled American spirits company. The Brown family holds a majority of the voting power. They just rejected a $15 billion bid from Sazerac and terminated talks with Pernod Ricard. The message is clear: this company isn’t for sale.
The stock trades around $26 — cheap by historical standards. Revenue was flat in FY2026 at $3.93 billion. Tariff headwinds are real: U.S. spirits exports to Canada dropped nearly 70% after retaliatory tariffs. But Woodford Reserve grew 8% organically. The premium end of bourbon is holding.
The bull case is patience. Brown-Forman owns the most valuable bourbon brands in the world. Bourbon can’t be offshored. The barrels are aging right now in Kentucky. And the family that controls it all just proved they won’t sell at any price. In a newsletter about American manufacturing, that might be the most American story of all.