Can you get even crazier? The answer in boozemaking is always yes. If you don’t care about getting the appellations of your region—if you don’t mind not being able to call yourself “bourbon” or “Scotch whisky,” then you can stop chopping down oak trees and look for something more exotic. A cooperage called Black Swan, based in Minnesota, makes barrels and liner inserts out of nontraditional woods, bored into a honeycomb pattern to increase surface area.
