IT IS AWE-INSPIRING to take the helm of America’s first forestry organization that was founded before the federal government even had an agency solely dedicated to America’s forests. For more than 140 years, American Forests has stood at the center of the forest movement.

The weight of this fully hit me when I learned that from 1905-1908 James Wilson simultaneously served as the President of American Forests (then the American Forestry Association) and also as the Secretary of Agriculture. During that same period, the second American Forest Congress, led by our organization, passed a resolution calling for creation of the U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Congress complied by passing legislation to establish the Forest Service literally within weeks.

So, why am I launching my first Offshoots as president & CEO of American Forests by looking backward at our history? Shouldn’t the new president be starting with our vision for the future?

My backward look will make sense as you understand that my vision for American Forests’ future is grounded more strongly in our full history than just our recent past.

You see, American Forests has always planted trees, but we were not always considered a tree planting organization as some see us today. The first tree planting that American Forests organized in 1882 drew 50,000 people by foot, horseback, carriage and rail to Cincinnati, Ohio.

But it was not really an event just about planting trees. It was a leader- ship event, part of the first American Forest Congress, and intended to launch a comprehensive forest movement.

We clearly led the forest movement that we launched back then and in differing ways have ever since. Many of our organization’s greatest gifts to America’s forests have been achieved with our vision, expertise and voice — not just our shovels.

While it’s easier to count trees, I can assure you American Forests has had extraordinary impact through less-visible actions like organizing and leading coalitions of forest organizations to pass major legislation, inventing new ways to map urban tree canopy, and teaching “right tree, right place” forestry principles to people caring for forests across the country.

Each of these actions is one step removed from actually planting a tree or taking another on-the-ground action to protect, restore and steward America’s forests. But done right, these break-throughs can improve America’s forests far beyond just what American Forests can do alone — these are the actions of a true movement leader.

Why is leadership needed now? It starts with climate change. Climate change is simply the greatest threat to our forests and our planet that we have ever faced. From rapidly dying western forests to the subtler yet equally serious erosion of forest health occurring in other regions, our forests are in trouble and need a lot of help from people to withstand the climate change we have fostered.

But there is a big payoff if we get this right — healthy and resilient forests can capture carbon emissions from the atmosphere and play a huge role in slowing climate change. Today, America’s forests capture 14 percent of our emissions. They could do even more to slow climate change — or become a source of carbon emissions, depending on our actions.

Tree planting can really help meet this challenge by creating new forests and replacing forests as they are lost to the growing impacts of climate change.

We are doing just this at American Forests, challenging ourselves to plant more trees than ever in stressed areas like California’s Southern Sierra Nevada. We are making these efforts climate- smart by partnering with scientists from the U.S. Forest Service to replant the right tree species in the right places to create forests that can withstand future climate stress.

We are leading tree planting in urban areas, like Miami-Dade County, where we are using computer mapping technology and cutting-edge science to help local officials plant urban trees that can withstand future hurricanes while cooling homes and businesses from rapidly increasing extreme heat. These energy- saving trees offer a double bonus to slow climate change, directly absorbing carbon from the air and reducing the amount of energy used by people for cooling.

But our own place-based work will not be nearly enough given the scale of the climate challenge to forests and our country. That’s why American Forests has launched a comprehensive new Climate Leadership Strategy to empower government agencies, private landowners, forest-products companies, communities, and other nonprofits to also take action.

The centerpiece of this strategy is our leadership of the Forest-Climate Working Group, a powerful coalition I was proud to co-found in 2007. American Forests has taken the reins of this coalition, and we are now engaging policymakers and forestry professionals at an unprecedented scale. This includes the Learning Lab that American Forests hosted in July for delegations from the 16 states of the U.S. Climate Alliance.

American Forests organized a multi- day workshop staffed by more than 60 volunteer technical experts from across the country. This innovative, hands-on training led each state team through a dynamic curriculum that enabled them to build strategies for prioritizing and investing in forest-climate solutions, including planting more forests.

This dramatic demonstration of our leadership abilities has led to a long- term partnership with the U.S. Climate Alliance and new grants that will help us continue to empower these states in taking action. This kind of leadership, when combined with American Forests’ own on-the-ground efforts in places like the Sierra Nevada and Miami-Dade, represents the full potential of our organization to create change on an issue of this magnitude.

While we see climate change as the threshold leadership issue for American Forests, it is not the only one. America faces other pressing challenges that demand the same kind of movement leadership combined with place-based action to deliver forest solutions.

In particular, you will hear much more about our major push to use urban forests as an equity lever to create opportunities and improve quality of life for underserved urban neighborhoods and people. This includes our exciting new partnership with tree care companies to engage thousands of people who urgently need career opportunities into the fast- growing field of urban forestry.

You will also hear much more about our new leadership strategies on the long-standing forest priorities of water and wildlife, in both cases bringing new scientific rigor, partnerships and scale to our work restoring forests for these important outcomes.

America’s forests need more from us now in every way — more trees planted, yes, but also leadership that can help different public and private organizations come together to overcome seemingly insurmountable threats like climate change.

American Forests is ready to provide the servant leadership that can build an unstoppable movement to better our forests and our country. Thank you very much for being part of it.

The post Offshoots: Taking American Forests Back to the Future appeared first on American Forests.

“THERE IS A COMMON LINE that runs through all the work I’ve been involved in, whether we’re trying to protect the climate, water, the Chesapeake Bay, longleaf pine, National Forest lands, or make lands more resilient to fire,” Robert Bonnie says. “It’s all a collaborative, incentive-based approach that recognizes it’s not just about lands, it’s about people.”

Bonnie has spent more than 20 years partnering with farmers, ranchers and foresters on conservation and land management solutions, and he tackles climate goals with a steadfast dedication to land and to people.

“Aldo Leopold said that he cared about two things,” he says, “the relation- ship with people to the land and the relationship with people to each other. That was true then and it’s still true today.”

Bonnie grew up surrounded by forests and wildlife on a farm in Kentucky, where he found outdoor interests and hobbies that laid the groundwork for his long career in conservation. Bonnie’s family has owned and managed forest area in South Carolina for more than a century, which exposed him early on to the issues farmers and foresters face on working lands.

Bonnie graduated from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University with a joint master’s degree in forestry and environmental management and, in 1995, began working at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), where he later became vice president for land conservation. He was specifically interested in creating incentives for wildlife conservation for private landowners. By collaborating with rural stakeholders on conservation solutions that did not involve the usual regulations and restrictions imposed on their land, he saw ways to empower landowners instead of deterring them.

In his work at the EDF, Bonnie helped develop the Safe Harbor Agreements that now encompass more than 4 million acres across the U.S. The Safe Harbor program revolutionized approaches in conservation, restoration, and land and wildlife management by giving government incentives to private landowners who conserve rare species on their land.

Bonnie and a team of conservationists focused on restoring the red-cockaded woodpecker in North Carolina by rewarding private landowners who protected and improved the habitat of the endangered bird.

In 2009, Bonnie joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a senior advisor to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. From 2013 to 2017, he served as under-secretary for natural resources and the environment at USDA, where he continued to engage rural constituencies with conservationists to develop environmental policies that benefit everyone. He worked on projects covering watershed protection, climate change legislation, fire management, endangered species conservation, and forest restoration in our national forests.

In 2015, Bonnie collaborated with public and private landowners to incentivize conserving sage-grouse habitat in the Western U.S. The combined efforts of ranchers and state agencies resulted in a rebounding of the sage-grouse population that avoided their listing under the Endangered Species Act.

“You can’t regulate anybody into restoring habitat for an endangered species,” Bonnie says. “You can’t regulate them into planting trees to protect climate, and you can’t regulate them into protecting longleaf pine in the Southeastern U.S.”

Bonnie adds that while regulation can help in a few instances, we ultimately need landowners to make voluntary choices when it comes to protecting the environment. He believes the way we achieve that is by working collaboratively with landowners.

“We have more work to do to get the environmental community to under- stand what actually works in those rural communities.”

Since three-quarters of the land in the U.S. is privately owned, it seems obvious that solutions to species and habitat conservation must involve farmers, ranchers and private land-owners. But until recently, many environmentalists did not invite stakeholders in the forest and timber industries, or local communities, to be a part of the conversation.

Bonnie has continued to fight for collaboration and partnership with rural stakeholders through his work at the EDF, the USDA and now as a Duke University Rubenstein Fellow.

“We have to recognize that if farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are going to stay on the land, they’re going to need to get economic returns, and they’re going to need to make money for doing conservation, farming, ranching and practicing forestry,” Bonnie says. “One piece is that we need to have viable markets for wood, for farm products, for agricultural products…we need to figure out how we reward landowners for doing good conservation.”

Bonnie is confident that better managing our natural resources and our forests requires a serious investment in conservation on both private and public lands, an investment that is inexpensive and will mean large dividends in the future. Forests and agricultural lands are critical for solving climate change, for providing us with clean air and water, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. At the core of Bonnie’s work is the belief that all our livelihoods depend on how public and private lands are man- aged, and we will accomplish nothing working against each other.

“If we’re going to have resilient lands,” Bonnie says, “we need to have resilient communities and resilient economies and resilient people working on all of this.”

Dorothy Hastings was an American Forests summer editorial intern and is a senior at American University studying journalism with a minor in American studies.

The post Earthkeepers: Uniting for the Land appeared first on American Forests.

WHEN STANDING in a beautiful forest, it can be easy to forget you are standing in the largest carbon storage unit in the U.S., and that the soil beneath your feet is responsible for most of it. Protecting our forests means protecting our soil, and American Forests, The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS), the University of Michigan and State of Maryland are partnering on a project that will protect and enhance soil carbon storage and sequestration in forests across North America.

The project focuses on forest restoration as a means to hold more carbon, identification of the best forest management practices for soil carbon, and building an understanding of the contribution each managed forest makes to climate change mitigation.

“When you think about conservation at large, virtually any issue is too large for a single organization,” says Chris Swanston, director of NIACS. “American Forests has a core mission around forest restoration and supporting working forests, and NIACS has a core mission around helping land managers pursue climate-informed forest stewardship.”

The project is partly funded by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which has the largest forest-managed footprint of any forest management standard world-wide.

“It’s our belief that managed forests have an important role to play in ensuring that as much carbon is captured from the atmosphere as possible in an effort to combat greenhouse gases,” says Paul Trianosky, chief conservation officer at SFI. “With that in mind, the work of American Forests is going to be really important to help us identify what practices help promote those out-comes that we care about.”

Seventy-five percent of carbon in forests is stored in the soil, and the carbon sequestration process that occurs in forests is fundamental to greenhouse gas mitigation. Therefore, ensuring that forest management practices prioritize protecting and increasing soil carbon is imperative in climate change adaptation. Yet, past climate mitigation efforts and incentives have generally focused on impacting limbs, tree trunks and other components of aboveground live biomass. This lack of attention to soils has been generally due to limited data on forest soil carbon and lack of clarity regarding what actions landowners can take to positively or negatively impact this carbon pool.

American Forests is working with partners to synthesize national and regional datasets to broadly assess the differential impact of forest practices. Work to date by NIACS and others shows that practices like tree planting can build soil carbon stocks, while thinning and prescribed burns can help avoid future carbon losses. These larger datasets will then be combined with local data to develop forest soil carbon practices for specific forest types and geographies in Maryland and surrounding states. The approach will result in detailed tools and guidance that will be accessible and usable by SFI, as well as landowners, land managers and policymakers to meet forest health and climate goals.

“Soil carbon sequestration is a hard thing to foster,” says Swanston. “I hope that we can continue to learn how to do that in a way that helps store carbon for long periods of time in soils which have very strong feedback into supporting healthy forests.”

American Forests has already begun working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service to gather data on forest management practices that benefit soil carbon storage in the state, and to determine how these practices can be applied to different forest types across North America.

Prioritizing soil carbon not only protects against climate change, it benefits biodiversity, water quality, species conservation and other ecosystem services that contribute to forest health and maintenance.

American Forests and NIACS

Dorothy Hastings was an American Forests summer editorial intern and is a senior at American University studying journalism with a minor in American studies.

The post Project Showcase: Managing Our Forests for Soil Carbon appeared first on American Forests.

THE PATOKA RIVER MEANDERS through the hills of southwest Indiana. It should be lined by rare Midwestern bottomland and oak savannas. But, as so often happens, the wildlands around the river were left unmanaged, leading to an unhealthy overgrowth of regionally invasive pear trees and autumn olive. With the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge being an intersection between critically depleted oak savannas and bottom- land, restoring this land properly is a priority.

Since its creation in 1990, refuge officials estimate they have reforested approximately 1,200 acres of land, planting 500 seedlings per acre, for a total of nearly 600,000 trees. With funding from American Forests and Alcoa Foundation, the refuge planted 35,000 seedlings to restore 70 acres.

“The grant has allowed us to restore these sites to the optimal level of biodiversity,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Specialist and project lead, Heath Hamilton. “We wouldn’t have been able to do five acres on our own.”

The long-term goal is to provide one-third of a mile of buffer on either side of the Patoka River to provide uninterrupted breeding and rearing habitat for interior nesting birds, such as the cerulean warbler (Setophaga cerulea), endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) and the threatened northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis).

In 2017, with funding from American Forests and Alcoa Foundation, invasive trees were cleared on the Columbia Mine Preserve. Once a strip-mining operation, the tract was converted to a savanna about 16 years ago but has been left unmanaged since. The removed trees were either ground into mulch to enrich the soil or logged and used to augment shoreline habitat along nearby Lake Laura Hare for native species of fish, such as large and smallmouth bass. Tree tops that stick out of the water are used by reptiles and amphibians to sun themselves.

After removing the offending invasives, desirable, native species were left, and others are being replanted, primarily oaks, which are fire tolerant. Controlled burns are used every year to keep the oak savanna healthy and native.

Success stories in conservation don’t happen every day. Building coalitions and partnerships is crucial.

“The reason this refuge exists and is thriving is because of all the partnerships we have here,” Hamilton said. “They range from multi-national corps to local conservation groups. I think with every group, we can find common ground, and agree on many things we’re trying to do to protect the environment. We just happen to be the group on the ground restoring this land.”

With American Forests — and other stakeholders such as Alcoa Foundation, Friends of the Patoka, and all the southwest Indiana residents who stand to gain from a healthier refuge — helping restore the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge, things will only continue to get better.

Nicholas Del Giudice was an American Forests summer editorial intern and is a senior at American University, studying public relations and strategic communications with a minor in sustainability studies.

Editor’s Note: The Columbia Mine Preserve is owned by Sycamore Land Trust, and managed by Hamilton and his team as part of the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge.

The post Project Showcase: A River’s Forward Progress in Indiana appeared first on American Forests.

GROWING UP IN BROOKLYN, N.Y., most of Daniel Hochman’s interactions with nature were in New York City parks. It wasn’t until he attended Dartmouth College, and joined the Outing Club, that he experienced the boundless beauty of New Eng- land’s forests and lakes through camping, hiking and kayaking.

“Over the course of four years, I went from definitely a city kid to someone who was much more interested in the outdoors,” Hochman says.

From there, his passion only grew. For the past seven years, Hochman has worked as a senior researcher at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm. Hochman says he relates his work as a researcher to how he views trees.

“, it’s about seeing everything as a part of a whole,” Hochman says. “I think that led me to reflect on the role trees play in the landscape around us.”

One day, Hochman ran across American Forests’ National Register of Champion Trees. As he learned more about the organization, he felt that donating to American Forests was a concrete way he could help protect our forests and our Earth.

“I try to think about what I feel responsible for,” he says,“and one of them is helping steward the natural environment, and this seems like a good way to begin.”

Hochman joined American Forests’ Sequoia Circle in December 2017, believing that nonprofits play a vital role in conservation by providing the opportunity to get involved and stay educated.

Hochman keeps nature in his personal life, too. He recently began taking a woodworking class taught by Mark Andreas and also goes for walks or hikes. Through reading books and articles, Hochman is constantly learning new facts about conservation and trees.

One of his favorite tree facts is that unlike most living entities, as trees grow older they grow faster. This means that older trees store more carbon, making them crucial to fighting climate change.

“It’s such a cool fact where you’re like ‘wait a second, you mean that if you just leave the tree alone, it will just get increasingly big and effective?’” Hochman says.“Yeah, just don’t chop it down. Leave the trees to do what trees do.”

The post Donor Profile: Daniel Hochman appeared first on American Forests.

Jennifer Broome, Vice President of Philanthropy

IN JUNE, American Forests was honored to join some of the most innovative, progressive and socially conscious companies and organizations across North America at the Sustain- able Brands Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, where companies shared the latest innovations, recent challenges and emerging opportunities in environmental stewardship to improve their sustainability practices.

So, why, do you ask, does a conservation organization participate in business conferences? Well, because American Forests is proud to help companies improve their sustain- ability practices, making every aspect of their business — from the supply chain to their products, and everything in between — greener, by helping them off-set their carbon emissions, water or paper usage, or simply augment their customers’ awareness of their sustainability efforts through shared marketing initiatives.

We do this for two primary reasons.

First, it’s good for our forests. The more awareness-raising we do about the need for companies to keep forests top of mind when sourcing their products, and off-set their use of non- renewable energy by planting trees and restoring forests, the better the long-term health of our forests will be.

Secondly, it’s good for our friends and partners. We’re happy to highlight the good work our corporate partners are doing with us so that other brands can see healthy, mutually beneficial partnerships in action — and be inspired. And, this helps raise our profile and attract new potential partners who are looking for a nonprofit that can help them achieve their sustainability goals.

While there is a lot to be concerned about — from deforestation to forest conversion, and forest products waste — conferences like these provide encouragement and hope to those of us working on the front lines of forest conservation. They are a much-needed reminder that there are indeed many companies from all industries that are actively improving their sustainability efforts and making significant strides to be better stewards of our shared environment.

The post From the Field: Vancouver appeared first on American Forests.

Lindsey Putz, Director of Corporate Giving

IN JUNE, I HAD THE PRIVILEGE of representing American Forests at a planting with Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling, the local southern California bottler for The Coca-Cola Company. The planting is part of a larger partner- ship with the Coca-Cola Foundation focused on water replenishment in critical watersheds across the United States. More than 30 employees and their families joined me on a toasty Saturday morning to plant 20 coast live oaks and western sycamores in Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Historic is a perfect way to describe this park. Los Angeles River State Park Partners shared with our group that prior to being a beautiful outdoor space, the park acted as a Zanja Madre (or irrigation ditch) for Pueblo Indians in the 1700s, a train station in the late 1800s, and a cornfield as part of an art movement in the early 2000s. It is now considered the Central Park of LA.

After an introduction to the park and a safety demonstration, our group put in some major sweat equity digging, planting, mulching and watering. One of my favorite things to see at plantings is families volunteering together, getting younger generations involved early on in giving back, especially in their own community. Most of the families in attendance were locals from the neighborhood — a park-poor area very much in need of greenspace.

One of the younger tree planters asked me, “Did you know trees provide oxygen so we can breathe?” I let her know I had heard that before, but I was glad she confirmed it for me.

Throughout the morning we had several community members come up and thank us for what we were doing. They shared a bit of their history, being from the area and not having a space like this before, and how much they appreciate having an outdoor area to come together, meet their neighbors, be active and play with their kids. While positive affirmation is not a necessity for volunteering, it definitely doesn’t hurt.

My fellow planters made promises to come back and visit their trees, a living testament to their hard work and the impact a small team can make by giving up just one Saturday morning.

The post From the Field: Los Angeles appeared first on American Forests.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed the removal of the Kirtland’s warbler from the endangered species list due to its remarkable recovery.

For nearly 30 years, American Forests has been restoring the Michigan jack pine forests the Kirtland’s warbler depends on for habitat. We’ve planted more than 4.6 million young jack pines across 4,200 acres in Michigan. It is through this dedication, and our partnership with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, along with other dedicated conservationists, that this rare bird’s population has recovered

to this point. And it is because of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that we can celebrate this victory. Of course, this proposed delisting does not mean our work stops. American Forests is committed to continue our jack pine restoration to ensure the Kirtland’s warbler continues to thrive.

However, now the ESA that was instrumental in protecting Kirtland’s warbler is also at risk. Congress has introduced a “modernization package” made up of nine bills that would alter the ESA and make it more difficult to add species to the endangered species list, make it easier to delist species, and remove the responsibility for conservation practices from involved parties. While critics of the ESA focus on the statistic that 3 percent of species have been delisted, they ignore the fact that more than 99 percent of the species covered by the Act are saved from extinction — a clear indication of the effectiveness of the ESA. The Act protects those species by protecting their habitats and keeping them listed as endangered until their population is stable.

The fate of endangered wildlife and plant species is an issue that deserves the attention provided by the ESA as it currently stands. Weakening the ESA will only hurt our ability to protect endangered species. Help us voice our opposition to the ESA reformation package by letting Congress know that we expect them to follow through on the commitment made by the original ESA to protect our endangered species! Visit our Action Center at americanforests.org/TakeAction and let your Congressional members know you want a strong, effective Endangered Species Act.

Rebecca Turner writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ vice president and chief of staff, general counsel.

The post Action Center: Keeping the Endangered Species Act Strong appeared first on American Forests.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Naomi Fortino is an amateur photographer from the Chicago suburbs. Surrounded by forests while growing up, she has always had a passion for nature and wildlife. Capturing and sharing her love through her photos has become her life’s path, believing that no matter where you are, there is nature and beauty. Naomi’s photo “Sunshine Makes My Soul Shine” was the Forest Close-Ups category winner in American Forests’ 2017 Forests in Focus photo contest. Find more of Naomi’s work on Facebook @photosbynaomi140.

The post Last Look: Naomi Fortino appeared first on American Forests.

Andrew Wiehebrink, director of spirit research and innovation at Independent Stave Company (ISCO), shares his expertise and experience concerning creating flavor profiles, how different factors change the flavor of whiskey, and the best way to drink bourbon.

AF: How does the process of creating a flavor profile with a customer begin?

AW: It usually starts with a visit to our Kentucky Research Center to discuss the goals for the new product. From there, it can go a few different ways. Most of the time customers have a very specific flavor profile in mind and they say, ‘We don’t want to deviate from this. You need to design a maturation program around that.’ We take as many factors as we can into consideration and then get to work. Other times they don’t have any specific goals in mind, but they want to try something new. If that is the case, we pull samples from our library and start tasting. They always find a handful of things they like and from there, they put some barrels into trial using their distillate and await the results. Depending on the outcome of the initial trial, we can circle back and tweak certain parameters to get as close as possible to what the customer wants.

AF: What’s an example of what a customer might say they’re looking for?

AW: A good example might be they want to design a very balanced whiskey that appeals to the casual drinker and doesn’t have really strong aromatic characteristics. On the other hand, it could be something along the lines of, ‘We want this whiskey to have notes of vanilla, hints of spice and finish with a strong smoky note.’ It varies between extremely general descriptions on the overall profile to very specific flavor and aroma characteristics. Sometimes we can accomplish the goals with one type of barrel and other times it might take four or five barrels to deliver a certain profile.

AF: What is it like working at ISCO to create flavor profiles for customers?

AW: It is extremely technical and very specific. We utilize a lot of different resources to try and meet the customer goals as best we can. We have a lab in Napa, California, that is equipped with our analytical chemistry equipment, and we have our new research center in Kentucky, where we perform a lot of flavor discovery trials and conduct all of the sensory analysis. Between the two facilities and a very skilled R&D team, we pretty much have every kind of tool available to bring the best flavors out of the oak. It’s always interesting and we always learn something new.

AF: What part does your division play more specifically in the process of developing the profiles?

AW: The spirits research division is normally where all the brainstorming begins and the initial flavor discovery trials are conducted. That is where we’ll have some initial talks about what it is the customer is trying to achieve. We’ll sit them down, we’ll say ‘Okay, what category does this fall under? Is it a bourbon, is it a single malt, is it a rye?’ We want to get as much information as we can up front. We ask if they have any distillate or maturate we can taste or if they have any kind of flavor goals in mind. At some points it can get very complex. Once we conduct our trials in the lab, one of our cooperages will produce the products and ship them to the customer.

AF: How do you help customers develop a flavor profile when they have a general idea of what they want but don’t have specifics?

AW: We have a big whiskey library at our Research Center which is stocked with spirits from all of our different barrel experiments. If our customers aren’t sure what they are after, we invite them to walk through the library and just geek out. If they have a question like, ‘What happens when we use French Oak or what flavors does this toast profile produce?’, they can go back in the library, pull out relevant studies and taste through them. We can tell them all the analytical stuff, we can tell them what to expect from different barrels, but when they get the chance to actually taste it for themselves, that’s when it really hits home.

AF: Do you get requests for flavor profiles that can’t be done?

AW: We get a lot of different requests to produce unusual flavors. Sometimes we have to tell the clients, ‘Listen, with oak there’s a lot of flavor possibilities, but some of this stuff just isn’t possible or it is out of our control. You can’t get these flavors from lignin; you can’t get them from the hemicellulose.’ Sometimes we have to tell customers that we’ll give it our best shot, but it’s going to be a bit of a guess for us as well. Other times, we simply have to tell them they should probably pursue something a little different.

AF: What are some of the characteristics American oak can add to a flavor profile?

AW: The best analogy that I can probably give, as far as overall flavor profile, is this: American oak is that loudmouth at the party. He always stands out. He’s easy to spot. That’s kind of indicative of the flavors for American oak. They’re really bold; they’re really easy to distinguish. You don’t have to do much digging. If we were to compare that to French oak, for example, he’s that quiet guy in the corner. He doesn’t really say much, but when you start to talk to him, start to get to know him a little bit, he’s got a lot to say. And that’s indicative of French oak, because with French oak, the flavors aren’t as pronounced, but it produces a flavor profile that is very nuanced. It produces a lot of different flavors. The general rule of thumb is that American oak is typically sweeter and French oak tends to be a little spicier. But how you treat the wood has a lot to do with what flavors will be lent to the whiskey.

AF: How do the different flavors translate to a physical difference in the wood?

AW: Through different variations in growth rate and different concentrations of certain constituents. Tannin, for example, can lend some woody characteristics and changes the mouthfeel of the spirit. French oak has more tannin than American oak, and that difference will have considerable effects on the final outcome of the product if the aging is long enough. American oak has more lactones of which there exists two different isomers: there’s a cis isomer and a trans isomer, and the ratio at which those occur is very important. It just so happens that American oak has a more favorable ratio of those two isomers, and basically what that translates into is a greater perception of sweetness or coconut-like flavors in the product. The rate at which a tree grows influences the overall porosity of the wood. This is important when it comes time for oxygen to make its way into the whiskey. Oxygenation has a huge effect on the flavor profile of barrel-aged spirits, and the porosity of the wood alters that process.

AF: The oak itself and its variations, how do you manage that part of the process?     

AW: Well, of course, you’re dealing with a natural product. So, no matter how hard you try to reduce the variation in the barrels, no two barrels are going to be exact. Trees grow differently from one another. They have different physiological characteristics and the constituents can vary within the same tree. We have a lot of proprietary technology in our process that ensures we can repeatedly make a specialized barrel over and over again with high accuracy. For example, we have machines that can look at the grain of each stave and then sort accordingly. That gives us the ability to construct a barrel using staves that experienced the same growth patterns.

AF: What kind of effects do heat treatments have on the flavor of the final product?

AW: The effects are huge, and in my opinion, it is responsible for the majority of flavor lent by the barrel. When oak constituents start to break down, or in other words, when you begin to apply heat to a barrel, a wide variety of compounds will begin to form. And those compounds will appear according to certain temperatures that are being applied to the wood. So, if you apply a little bit of heat you get one compound, if you apply some more you get another one. Each one of those compounds will lend certain flavor or aroma characteristics to the whiskey. Any kind of heat treatment applied to the barrel makes a big difference in the final product and it’s something we watch very closely.

AF: What’s the most enjoyable part of coming up with new barrel experiments for you?

AW: I’m kind of a tinkerer by nature, and I’m a very curious person. Whiskey maturation is so complex, and nobody really has it all figured out yet. With our experiments we are uncovering new territory every single day, and that’s pretty cool. We do experiments to further our understanding of maturation and to develop new products for our customers. Feeling like you’re making a difference in an industry that spreads across the globe, that’s the fun part.

AF: How do you drink your bourbon?

AW: Usually, I drink my bourbon neat, and I will have two or three bourbons poured at one time. I think one of the best things you can do to start learning how to pick out the different flavors is to do side by side comparisons. That’s something that my dad taught me a long time ago, and it’s always stuck with me. As far as my favorite bourbon — if you ask me on one day, I’ll tell you one thing, and if you ask me the very next day, I’ll tell you something completely different. It just depends on the mood.

Behind the Scenes: Barrel-Making

See what comes before the barrel at Independent Stave Company, Bogle Vineyards and Michter’s Distillery!

The post Web Exclusive: Barrel Flavor Profiles appeared first on American Forests.