Business TURNING AN ART INTO A
Speyside Bourbon Cooperage: A boon to Ohio distilleries.
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STORY BY MICHAEL PRAMIK PHOTOGRAPHY BY WENDY PRAMIK
oopering — the art of barrel making — is a craft traditionally performed by skilled artisans and, by some accounts, dates to the Celts in 350 B.C. In Jackson, Ohio, the Speyside Bourbon Cooperage carries on the tradition with a modern twist. Thanks to state-of-the-art technology and a finely honed production process, Speyside can crank out 1,500 finely made, new white oak barrels each day to serve an evergrowing thirst for spirits production. They do so in a 260,000-square-foot building that used to be a Merillat cabinet factory, combining automation with art to build a better barrel. “For some things, we still need a human eye and a human to make decisions. But here at Speyside, we took the craft of making barrels and turned it into a manufacturing process,” said operations manager Alberto Ramirez. And it’s an operation on the way up. Since completing its first barrel on May 19, 2016, Speyside has expanded production to about 400,000 barrels each year. The company’s barrels are highly sought after by producers of bourbon and other spirits, from megadistilleries to small craft distillers. It’s been a renewing experience for Jackson County as well, employing about 170 and giving new life to the shuttered building just off State Route 93. Speyside, established in 1947, is based in Scotland and originally refurbished used barrels, Ramirez said. It took on a much larger footprint in 2008 with its acquisition by Tonnellerie Francois Freres Group, based in France, which owns stave mills and cooperages around the world.
A CLOSER LOOK
Wooden staves form the barrel.
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Inside the Speyside factory, 130 production workers use their various talents to make the barrels. It starts with sourcing white oak logs, many from Ohio. Speyside owns five sawmills, including two nearby in Waverly, Ohio. There, they debark the logs, then quartersaw them into planks, also known as staves. The staves go through several months of
Metal rings secure the barrel.
