RNDC Bankruptcy and MGP's 59-Percent Slide

This is The Cut Weekend. I'm Franklin. It's Saturday, no clocks to beat and no lists closing while we talk, just the week behind us and a little time to make sense of it. Let's take a walk back through it.

This week didn't have one big headline, it had a current running under all of them: the pipeline that gets bourbon from a barrel to your glass, and what happens when parts of it stumble. On Monday, Republic National Distributing Company — one of the two biggest wholesalers moving whiskey through the three-tier system — filed for bankruptcy and started winding down, though it had already carved out Kentucky and several other territories before the filing became public. That same story kept surfacing all week in a different form: MGP Ingredients, the country's largest bulk whiskey supplier, told investors its contract-distilling business fell 42 percent one day and 59 percent by week's end, with two of its own Kentucky distilleries sitting idle. A lot of the sourced bourbon on your shelf leans on MGP barrels, so that's worth watching, not panicking over. Meanwhile a Charlotte distillery, Oaklore, went the other direction entirely and cut its prices on purpose, betting a new production facility let it pass real savings along instead of chasing the market down. Threaded through all of that: distilleries kept finding new ways to earn your trust the hard way. Old Elk released three whiskeys built on the same age and price so you could taste the grain recipe doing the work. Stranahan's proved the Bottled-in-Bond law wasn't just a bourbon thing. Old Grand-Dad held a $39.99 price for a second straight year while Garrison Brothers asked its most loyal fans to pay now and wait two years for a bottle. And a hat company, Stetson, spent three years getting its first bourbon right instead of slapping a label on someone else's barrels. Different stories, same lesson — the whiskey that earns your money this year is the whiskey that shows its work.

Now the feature — I want to tell you about something that's been quietly happening in southern Indiana. Starlight Distillery, out on a family farm in Borden, just turned 25, and they marked it the way they've always done things — no lottery, no waiting list, just show up. Starting August 1st, they put out a 10-year single barrel bourbon pulled from the southeast side of Warehouse 2, entered into the barrel at 110 proof and bottled unfiltered at 120.4 — hot, honest, cask-strength whiskey with nothing smoothed over. There's somewhere around 100 to 125 bottles of it, sold only on-site, no shipping, no notification list, nothing but a drive down to the farm and whatever's left when you get there. I like this one because it's the opposite of everything else we've talked about this week — no pre-sale, no app to refresh, no three-tier system to worry about. Just a distillery that's been doing this for a quarter century, opening the barrel room door and saying come get it while it lasts. If you can make the drive, that's about as honest a bourbon transaction as exists left in this business.

A few other things still worth chasing before the weekend's out. Copperworks up in Seattle is letting people hand-fill their own bottle from a single French oak cask right at the tasting room — a rare direct-access pour if you're anywhere near there. And out in Wyoming, that state's 250th-anniversary bourbon, made entirely from Wyoming-grown grain, is on shelves at a handful of retailers while supplies last. Neither one is going to wait for you, but neither one's got a countdown clock either.

That's the week in the glass. If The Cut Weekend earned a few minutes of your Saturday, do me one favor — follow the show wherever you're listening, so tomorrow's edition finds you on its own. The full American Whiskey Industry Brief is free every morning at chasingtheunicornpodcast.com. I'm Franklin. Pour something you like, share it with somebody worth sharing it with — and remember, your unicorn is out there.