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From VP Pro:
Small Town, High Tech: How West Virginia Great Barrel Company Is Turning Heads in the Bourbon Industry
On June 23, 2016, a foot of rain fell on the mountains surrounding White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., in just 12 hours. The water funneled through the long narrow valley in which the hamlet sits, transforming tiny Howard Creek into a wide, roiling torrent, toppling houses. One went up in flames — a floating bonfire careening through town. By the time the water receded, the flood had killed 13 people in Greenbrier County. Hundreds of residents had to relocate. The local economy, already depressed, was at risk of collapse. Tom Crabtree, an architect with a vacation home in town, surveyed the wreckage the next day. “I saw houses completely swept away — even the foundations were gone. One neighborhood had five fatalities. It was awful,” he says.
Six months later, Crabtree sat down for a Christmas dinner at the nearby Greenbrier Resort with fellow volunteers from Hope Village, a program to build new housing for flood victims. They happened to be seated next to a couple celebrating the fact that their company, the award-winning Smooth Ambler Spirits, had just been purchased by Pernod Ricard. Everything was great, Smooth Ambler co-owner Greg Parseghian told the table, but it was the height of the bourbon barrel shortage, and he was worried about finding enough barrels to keep up with production. Parseghian explained to Crabtree that he was frustrated watching local loggers cut perfect barrel wood — slow-growth American white oak — and ship it out of state to be made into barrels before he could buy them. “That clicked in our minds,” says Crabtree. “We all looked at each other because we had been looking for an economic development project.”
Read more here: https://vinepair.com/articles/west-v...eid=a5167fed10