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Stillbound Research

Whiskey, counted and taken apart.

Original studies of how whiskey is made, matured and owned. Sourced, explorable, and corrected in public.

Inventory and the still

How much whiskey is maturing, and the copper that makes it.

World map of maturing whiskey by country
August 2026 · First edition

Global Whisk(e)y Aging Inventory

60.4 million casks and barrels maturing worldwide, range 55 to 68 million. Every country figure with its evidence tier and its basis.

See every country figure →
The Glenmorangie still, Study 02: a low copper pot, boil ball and very long neck
October 2026 · Study 02 now open

Anatomy of a Still

Ten extraordinary stills. Two are open: Midleton, and now Glenmorangie, whose copper neck alone runs 5.14 metres. Rotate the copper, separate its visible parts and inspect the evidence behind each reconstruction.

Explore the still series →
The wood

The wood, the cask, and what the angels take.

Seventeen cask woods
September 2026

Whiskey & the Wood

Seventeen woods, from American oak to amburana, through the Irish whiskeys they shape. Plus what bourbon, sherry and port leave behind for the next fill.

Read the seventeen →
An American oak cask, rendered in 3D
September 2026

Anatomy of a Cask

An American oak cask in 3D. Separate the hoops, staves, heads and bung, then look inside the charred wood.

Deconstruct the cask →
Three cut-away whiskey casks after eighteen years in Speyside, Kentucky and Taiwan
September 2026

Same whiskey. Same cask. Three warehouses.

One cask filled three times on the same day, then aged in Speyside, a Kentucky rickhouse and subtropical Taiwan. Twenty-five years in twenty seconds: the angel’s share, the strength and the colour, every figure graded to its source.

Play the years →
Studies

Single questions, answered in full.

Kentucky county spike map of aging whiskey value
September 2026

Where Kentucky keeps its whiskey

$5.32bn of aging spirit across 39 counties, from distillers’ own tax filings. One county holds 30% of it. The only whiskey region on earth where this map can be drawn.

See the county map →
Scotland and Ireland distillery ownership maps side by side
October 2026

Scotland v Ireland: who runs the stills

Scotland: two-thirds answer to a bigger company. Ireland: nearly three in four still independent. Same rule on both sides. Counted by distillery, not by litres.

See both maps →
Irish whiskey distillery visits against the 2016 tourism plan
October 2026

Irish whiskey tourism: spend up, visits concentrated

1.04 million distillery visits. About €50 a head, ahead of the 2016 plan. A third don’t drink on the day. Dublin and the Jameson sites still take over 80% of visits.

See the numbers →
Corrections

If you hold better data, we would rather publish your number than our estimate.

Write to hello@stillbound.ai with the figure and its basis. Corrections are logged and dated on each piece.

How we count: four house rules, applied to every figure

The work is built from official aggregates, producer disclosures, and stated-assumption models, with the arithmetic published. Where a figure is estimated rather than counted, it is asterisked, ranged and labelled as such.

Money is not barrelsA balance-sheet value of maturing whisk(e)y is audited capital, not a cask count. We never convert one into the other without a documented basis.
Capacity is not inventoryA warehouse built for 300,000 barrels is a building. Inventory is what is in it. We count filled casks only.
A state is not a countryKentucky’s much-quoted 17.1m is one state, and it counts all spirits. The US national figure is derived separately.
Sales are not stockThe world’s best-selling whisky category is not the world’s largest maturing inventory. What sells today says little about what sits in wood.

When the next edition lands, you’ll hear. Nothing else.

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