I think every craft distillery has capacity on their bottling line, right? If you just think, like, how often you're actually bottling, almost all craft distilleries are like, we bottle once a week or we bottle once a month. So in the beginning, you're like, well, we might as well sell that capacity, right? Like, let's sell those other four days of the bottling line. That's when, like, some craft distilleries kind of get into trouble because you can't always do this out of your back pocket and, you know, your customers get frustrated and then.

Yeah, there's a running joke that nobody's happy with their copac.

Right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. This is Burbin Pursuit, the official podcast of Bourbon, bringing to you the best in news, reviews, and interviews with people making the bourbon whiskey industry happen. And I'm one of your host, Kenny Coleman. Have you ever wondered how all these brands that you see across the shelves,

how they get whiskey into the bottle without ever owning a multi-million dollar distillery?

I mean, we kind of do that as well, and we know we've talked about sourcing before on the show,

but honestly, that's just one part of the puzzle. And in this episode, we're going to talk about that second

step, copacking. And for this, we're joined by Jeff Wuslich. He's the president of Cardinal

spirits and Cardinal Copacking, and he's going to break down what it takes to actually

manufacture booze at scale. Jeff has a background in

manufacturing and has slowly become a cornerstone of the Indiana craft scene. And Jeff, he has his

own brands that they use and that's what they do to showcase their own abilities when people

want to understand what goes into it. Plus he has relationships with powerhouses like

MGP if you need the full cycle or full

encompassing circle of what it needs to be able to get a brand-to market however one

thing that interested me was the rise of RTDs this explosion of canned cocktails

and as Jeff is going to talk about there's some massive compliance headaches that

are going to come with them as well.

So if you ever thought about starting your own label or you just want to see how the industry actually moves behind the scenes,

well, this is one side that you need to understand.

With that, enjoy this week's episode.

And now here's Fred Minnick with Above the Char.

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