Chastain resident turned his passion for bourbon into a “full proof” business!
There is always a bottle of Shortbarrel Bourbon’s Rye 101 on my bar at home. It’s incredibly versatile. It’s great served neat or over a big rock; it’s great in a cocktail. It’s even great in bourbon slushies. It’s my baby—my favorite product that we produce at Shortbarrel.
I never expected to turn a hobby —my passion for bourbon—into a business. It started in 2015 when I was introduced to someone who owns a local liquor store. We became fast friends over our love of spirits, and he suggested we get some people together to go to Kentucky to pick single barrels of bourbon for his shop. In 2016, we made our trip, and we discovered that, as a group, we were good at picking single barrels. Over the next four years, our barrel picking group, which included Clinton Dugan and Patrick Lemmond whom I met on the internet in Facebook bourbon groups, expanded into rye, tequila, rum, Cognac and more. We picked 350 barrels of spirits from a variety of distilleries. We even started an Instagram page to share our picks, calling it Shortbarrel. Our budding reputation in the bourbon world helped our selections fly off the shelves of our friend’s store, with them selling out in hours or days once we announced the new barrels we had chosen.
By 2020, Clinton, Patrick and I began daydreaming about starting our own bourbon brand. During a single barrel-picking trip to Louisville, we met a barrel broker who told us to let him know if we were ever serious about launching a business. The next day, we wired him the money to purchase six barrels of bourbon. We had no corporation and no real idea what we were doing, and we all had full-time jobs. I founded DMC Atlanta, a marketing consulting firm, in Sandy Springs in 2003; that is my job to this day, and at Shortbarrel, I joke that I’m the founder and an unpaid sales intern. But we did everything we needed to launch our first single barrels. We had other people blend for us, and we put out some cool products. Things were going pretty well.
At the end of 2022, we discovered that Atlanta’s beloved Old Fourth Distillery was up for sale by the owners, brothers Craig and Jeff Moore. We weren’t the highest bidders, but the they chose us to acquire their business because we made a commitment to buy their assets and to keep the Old Fourth Distillery brand going and growing. By this point, Clinton, Patrick and I had never taken a penny from Shortbarrel, and we had taken out second mortgages and home equity lines to pay for our barrels and supplies. But we found a way to get the funds and closed the sale in February 2023. By May of that year, we moved our now joint businesses of Shortbarrel Bourbon and Old Fourth Distillery into a new space in Norcross.
Today, we have 10 full-time employees, and Patrick and Clinton, our master blender, both work at the company. We do all of our blending, aging and bottling here locally, and we distribute to four states: Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Kentucky. We have a wide array of bourbon and clear spirits, including Lawn Dart, a lemon ginger vodka we relaunched for Old Fourth Distillery. We also have Shortbarrel’s annual Bee’s Knees release, which is a honey-finished bourbon. And we are continuing to expand our list of offerings and our locations. In 2025, we will open a 2,500-square-foot Old Fourth tasting room and kitchen in Concourse E of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in collaboration with Areas USA, the company that manages many of the concession options at the airport.
We never expected this to take off as quickly as it has. We have been blown away by the support from the community, and we’re incredibly grateful for the people who rally around our brand and us. So we’re going to keep working hard to put out great products that people enjoy. We love the spirits business. We believe that great relationships and important times in life are celebrated around a drink. And for us, this is about sharing something we’re passionate about. That passion for whiskey and enjoying the company of great people is why we did this.
SHORTBARREL BOURBON
shortbarrelbourbon.com
@shortbarrelwhiskey
OLD FOURTH DISTILLERY
o4d.com
@oldfourthdistillery
PHOTOS: Erik Meadows
