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FORBES.COM JUNE 30, 20 19Bourbon’s Rule Breaker
CONTRARIAN FORBES LIFE
Barrell Craft Spirits creates some of America’s best whiskeys
without ever distilling a drop. Now bad-boy bottler Joe Beatrice is taking
a shot at becoming more than a cult blender.By Fred Minnick Photography by Jeff Sciortino for ForbesWhen the 2017 winners of
the San Francisco World Spirits Competition
were revealed, the judges looked at the Best
Bourbon with astonishment. Was the name a
typo? Who made it? And can we get a bottle?
The winner, Barrell (two Ls, not a typo)
Bourbon Batch 011, was the independent bot-
tler’s coming-out party to the world, but the
man behind the whiskey, Joe Beatrice, was
well known to many of those judges, having
pioneered websites for spirits brands.
From the late 1980s to 2008, Beatrice’s New
York company, Blue Dingo Digital, created
the first online footprints for such brands as
Jose Cuervo. Now with Barrell Craft Spirits,
he’s revolutionizing the industry again as a
blender, acquiring casks from multiple dis-
tilleries and mingling them to create award-
winning whiskeys and forcing heritage dis-
tillers to rethink their methods.
And it all began with a simple distillery
tour. On November 11, 2012—Beatrice re-
members the exact day—at the Tuthilltown
Spirits Distillery in upstate New York, he de-
cided to jump into the bourbon boom, em-
barking on the improbable journey of Barrell
Craft.
Raising capital has been one of his greatest
challenges. Beatrice used his own money—W
Cask Master
Joe Beatrice, founder of Barrell
Craft Spirits, at his Louisville
headquarters. He chose to build
the brand before building a
distillery.