{"id":483182,"date":"2022-05-02T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T10:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=483182"},"modified":"2022-11-10T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:40:08","slug":"white-oak-map-sleuthing","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/white-oak-map-sleuthing","title":{"rendered":"The Mysteries of Bourbon: How Forestry, Mapping Support a Changing Industry"},"author":8032,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[381322],"tags":[477082,281,477092,477072],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478382],"esri_blog_department":[478182],"class_list":["post-483182","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainability","tag-barrels","tag-location-intelligence","tag-sawmill","tag-white-oak","esri-blog-category-forestry","esri_blog_department-natural-resources"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"The iconic American bourbon industry relies on a steady supply of new white oak, and demand currently outstrips supply.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Better barrel staves mean better bourbon. But the right trees are getting harder to find.\r\n\r\n<strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Forestry sleuths use maps of species location and health to track down the best white oak trees.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The US Forest Service surveys forest makeup and health to aid sustainable industry use.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GIS analysis and apps support critical decisions about white oak sourcing and stave mill siting.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Even with careful environmental stewardship and well managed forests, the white oak trees needed to make bourbon barrels have always been hard to find.\r\n\r\nTwenty years ago, it was as much art as science\u2014the best sleuths working to track down the trees that made ideal bourbon barrel staves. The quality and character of the wood matters because of its immense effect on the beverage\u2019s color and flavor.\r\n\r\nThere's a kind of magic in white oak.\r\n\r\nBarrels made of white oak are not simply containers. They are crucial to the bourbon making process. The internal structure of the white oak\u2014its cellular makeup\u2014creates an ongoing exchange within the barrel where the liquid is drawn into the wood and then pumped out without soaking through the barrel.\r\n\r\nIdeally, the trees must be 80 to 100 years old and should be growing in a forest tract that has steady weather, neither too wet nor too dry. If those conditions aren\u2019t met, the heartwood doesn\u2019t possess the internal cellular structure that makes for the best liquid-tight barrels and the finest bourbons.\r\n\r\nIn the past it was impossible to locate decades of weather records for rural, hilly, unpopulated areas to confirm historical patterns. So, even a trained forester, who was scouting trees for a big company, often relied on personal knowledge of the region.\r\n\r\nTraditionally, the search for the best white oak was not only competitive among major distillers, but even had an air of secrecy. Just ask people like Bob Russell, a former forester who became something of a woodlands detective for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brown-forman.com\/\">Brown-Forman<\/a> distillery, makers of a variety of alcoholic spirits including Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel\u2019s Tennessee Whiskey. In his role at Brown-Forman, Russel had to figure out ways to analyze large swaths of forest over most of the eastern half of the United States."},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[483252,483242,483232,483272]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Twenty years ago, Russell often had to rely exclusively on his own eyes, his instincts for promising places, and paper-based censuses of trees done by the federal government. If a forest area looked favorable, he might also see if it could be a good location to build a sawmill. Often, he would visit a potential site without drawing attention to himself, looking for clues. He\u2019d watch the roadways and count the logging trucks passing by to get a sense of the forestry activity, economy, and workforce.\r\n\r\nHe kept a low-key presence to avoid tipping off competitors about Brown-Forman\u2019s interest in the area. Recently retired, Russell had a career that spanned more than 40 years, including working as a forester, wood supply analyst, and, for lack of a better term, tree scout.\r\n\r\nIn his tenure at Brown-Forman, Russell was grateful for any tree census information the federal government could provide. Over the decades, he has seen the data and the analyses improve immensely with the help of geographic information systems (GIS) technology and the advent of what has been called a bourbon-barrel app.\r\n\r\n\u201cJust knowing where to go helps a whole lot,\u201d Russell said of his early days in the industry. \u201cAnd then seeing the Forest Service data and knowing how it's collected and how it\u2019s put together became a key in helping make those decisions.\u201d\r\n\r\nEmpowered with that knowledge and his own boots-on-the-ground observations, Russell could help guide and sometimes even reverse decisions about where to build a sawmill, based on the number and quality of local white oaks, available road and river transport, and potential workforce.\r\n<h3><strong>Bourbon-Barrel Apps and GIS Aid in the Hunt<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nToday, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fia.fs.usda.gov\/#:~:text=The%20FIA%20program%20is%20the,and%20the%20services%20they%20provide.\">Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program<\/a> of the US Forest Service has made its data more widely available online and more easily amenable to analysis by GIS. Developers from the US Forest Service and some in the spirits industry are creating apps to find stable areas of timber production and avoid places where the highly valued white oaks might become endangered from overcutting.\r\n\r\nBut even in the old days, the major producers knew they had to be careful to balance the need for white oak barrels with the need to ensure the survival of the slow-growing species. They realized early on that 80- to 100-year-old trees made the best barrel staves and had qualities that produced smoother, better-tasting bourbon. So, they could not afford to overharvest or create gaps in the staves supply line.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey didn't want to move into a landscape that was already being harvested pretty heavily and put even more pressure on the resource,\u201d said Christopher M. Oswalt, a research forester for US Forest Service. \u201cThey have a long-term vision. They've got to keep these white oaks growing if they want to continue to produce the product that they do.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[483222,483262,483282]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Russell saw the spirits industry eventually gain better understanding of the multiple layers of data relevant to picking the right trees. But today, even with the help of the so-called <a href=\"https:\/\/tfsfrd.tamu.edu\/fia\/bourbon-oak\/?page=Suitability-Page\">bourbon-barrel app<\/a> that uses GIS to produce location intelligence and then plot those results on a map, the hunt for the perfect trees is still difficult. There are many reasons for that, including laws that say bourbon must be made in unused barrels. Later, after the bourbon is bottled, the barrels may be used to age other alcoholic beverages, such as scotch whisky. But they cannot be reused for bourbon making. The law dictates that a fresh supply of white oak is needed, and it must keep pace with the popularity of bourbon and other spirits that use oak barrels.\r\n\r\nIn response, company leaders can use GIS-based location intelligence to map and analyze key variables such as age of trees; numbers of trees; climate history and predictions; records of insect problems; invasive trees and plants that can crowd out white oak saplings; types and numbers of wildfires in the region; and the quality of recent staves made from wood in specific locales.\r\n<h3><strong>Raves About Staves<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nFor the bourbon industry, staves are not simply the curved planks of a barrel. They have qualities that seem a bit mysterious to outsiders.\r\n\r\nWhite oak staves interact with the liquid, helping to age it properly while imparting sugars and flavors that create highly desired bourbons. Each company has its individual recipes, processes, and traditions for making bourbon that vary the way they char the inside of barrels to unleash flavors of caramelized sugars and vanillas from the wood.\r\n\r\nThe ongoing exchange imparts tastes, smoothness, and color that make up the distinct signature of every bourbon.\r\n\r\nBrown-Forman and others use very nearly 100 percent of the white oak they purchase. They collect the bark to be used for fuel while the sawdust and wood chips are pressed into pellets to be used for cooking fires.\r\n<h3><strong>The Future of Bourbon-Barrel Apps<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nThe US Forest Service handles data requests from many sectors\u2014academia, the pulp and paper industries, and lumber companies. For distillers, they have recently been revamping the bourbon barrel app to reflect the multiple layers of data and type of analysis crucial to white oak logging and barrel making purposes. The app gives an at-a-glance view of the available resource, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/experience-builder\/natural-resources\/discover-white-oak-suitability-with-the-bourbon-barrel-oak-availability-tool\/\">users can adjust criteria to determine the most suitable locations that fit their needs<\/a>.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou could look for areas where white oak resources existed, where growth was positive in that white oak resource, and then also look where the density of mills was lowest,\u201d Oswalt said. \u201cAnd you could toy around with the different weights and so forth. Doing that highlights areas on the map that you might be interested in, and then you could click on the map and get a quick snapshot of what the resources within a 50- or 100-mile radius of wherever you clicked.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":509002,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":"https:\/\/tfsfrd.tamu.edu\/fia\/bourbon-oak\/?page=Suitability-Page"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"With properly organized data and the ability to display the analyses spatially, the whole Forest Inventory and Analysis database will open up to many related industries, Oswalt said.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of the things that we're really interested in is bringing our national woodland owners survey information to bear to these questions,\u201d he said. \u201cWe hope to bring that data together much more comprehensively, and do so spatially, so all of that information is available for each place at the same time.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>Changing Methods for Changing Times<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nWith airborne drone surveys also a possibility in some areas of forestry, the older types of intense boots-on-the-ground investigations may become a fading memory.\r\n\r\nRussell has seen a wide arc of change in the industry, and he hopes to see white oak continue to thrive and supply bourbon makers.\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, right now, white oak is pretty rare and valuable,\u201d Russell said. \u201cThe demand is far outrunning supply right now. And so that's forced the price of logs up. It's forced the price of lumber up\u2026So right now, it's very precious. I'm expecting to see that crest and go back the other way. It always has over my last 43 years in the industry.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nRead <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/experience-builder\/natural-resources\/discover-white-oak-suitability-with-the-bourbon-barrel-oak-availability-tool\/\">how to use and configure the Bourbon Barrel Oak Availability Tool<\/a> to answer supply questions. Learn how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/forestry\/overview\">foresters apply GIS to improve management practices<\/a>."}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bourbon: How Forestry, Mapping Support a Changing Industry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The iconic American bourbon industry relies on a steady supply of new white oak, and demand currently outstrips supply.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/white-oak-map-sleuthing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mysteries of Bourbon: How Forestry, Mapping Support a Changing 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