The University of Kentucky is hosting its annual James B. Beam Institute conference this week.
The conference brings in distillers from around the world to discuss the goings-on of the bourbon industry. That includes anything from how to sell bourbon to the science of distilling.
Seth DeBolt is the institute’s director. He says the conference encompasses the entire process of bourbon-making.
“It's not just one distilling element, but partly getting your brand on the shelf, finding a consumer, thinking about your farming and your supply chain, and then pairing that with food and the culture and the history of bourbon,” DeBolt said.
DeBolt says despite national discussion on bourbon tariffs, that wasn’t a major point of discussion at the conference. He called bourbon a “long-term” industry because of the years-long distillation process of the spirit.
“You never have just the right amount of whiskey, there's times where you've got too much or too little, and you're kind of constantly navigating that, and these sort of events around tariffs are not things you can really comment on or control,” DeBolt said.
Debolt says around fourteen-hundred people from 14 countries and 34 states took part in the conference, which ends Wednesday.
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