There is something romantic about aged spirits. The idea that someone works hard to distill a spirit, then fills a handmade oak barrel with it, only to wait decades to enjoy it, is inherently romantic. We fantasize about the painstaking effort and patience it takes to make our favorite aged drinks, and after we finish our glass, we have tasted not only the distilled product, but time.
What many people don’t know is that most of your favorite aged spirits are a blend of different ages. Producers take a cross-section of aged barrels and blend them together to make a brand’s signature flavor, which is why your favorite whiskey tastes like your favorite whiskey every time. Each barrel has unique qualities based on where it was aged, how long it was aged, and environmental factors, such as whether there were hot summers or cold winters during the years it was aging.
But on rare occasions, a barrel of a particular aged spirit is so unique and spectacular that it gets set aside for what is known as a single barrel. Single barrels are the most romantic version of spirits, a product hand-selected because it represents ideas or flavors that make it perfectly unique, yet familiar.
In our community, several bars and retail shops offer single-barrel programs, where their teams have met with brands and selected single-barrel spirits available only at their establishments. To shine a light on the process, I spoke with three people uniquely knowledgeable about the barrel selection process—to bring you behind the barrel.
Before a bar or retail store can access a single-barrel offering, local distributors must work with the brand to bring it to the state. In Nevada, all alcoholic beverages must go through a distributor for tax reasons, so a distributor’s job is to represent the products in their portfolio and serve as an ambassador for the brand and the accounts they serve.
Kyle Wickersham is the Northern Nevada on-premise (bars and restaurants) field sales manager for Breakthru Beverage, one of the largest distributors in the U.S. “The first thing that typically happens is a long conversation with the account,” Wickersham told me. “As a distributor, it’s important for us to be as transparent as possible in the entire process.”
Barrels can be expensive, some as high as $20,000, and typically yield around 240 750-milliliter bottles, which is a lot of bottles to sell. “The last thing we want is bottles to sit in storage or in a back room, so we like to help accounts strategize to sell,” Wickersham said. “Our job isn’t done until every bottle is sold.”
The big selling point is that the barrel an account picks, once bottled, will never exist again.
“From grain, distillation and maturation, it’s nearly impossible to duplicate a single barrel,” Wickersham said. “They are really purchasing a part of that distillery’s history.”
Ivan Fontana, owner of Death and Taxes and Curse of Cane, is no stranger to rare spirits. His bars have selected 45 different single barrels, so they are experts at choosing offerings that stand out.
“We look for big, bold and rich flavor profiles,” Fontana said. He wants consistency across selections—a way for people to try it and say, “Oh, this is a Death and Taxes pick.”
“Our guests can recognize and trust our palate,” Fontana said.
“Barrels used to be a novel part of our program, but now they are what describes us.”
AJ Chhabra, owner of Drams and Smoke
Recently, his team selected a barrel of rum with a cult-like following: Planteray. They chose a spirit made from Dominican sugar cane, finished in sherry casks. Planteray single barrels are few and far between, so it’s a big deal to try one.
Fontana and his team first started serving barrel picks in 2018, and they have no plans to slow down, with more on the way this year.
When AJ Chhabra, owner of Drams and Smoke in Reno, picked his first barrel in 2022, he had no idea he would be reach the 50-barrel mark in 2026.
“When we first started, our first barrel was safe, something everyone could enjoy,” Chhabra explained. “That really wasn’t my style, so after our first barrel, I started to trust myself and go with what I thought was excellent.”
The market has rewarded Chhabra and his team with lines around the parking lot on his release days. It is not easy to pick things that people love; each selection is critiqued and argued over for weeks.
“To be a part of our program, the value must be there, as well as the quality,” Chhabra said. “Barrels used to be a novel part of our program, but now they are what describes us.”
So if you are in the market for something that will never exist again, that teams of people sat in rooms and debated the merits of, that expresses a brand’s identity but is wholly unique—ask for a single barrel.