by Michael Shoer | Aug 21, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
It’s easy for a marketplace to cast the broker as the villain of an opaque market. That’s lazy, and it’s wrong. Brokers built the only market there was. The question isn’t whether they had value — it’s where that value belongs as the...
by Michael Shoer | Aug 3, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
Compliance Is the Real Moat — and That Should Change The federal framework around distilled spirits is genuinely hard. That difficulty has protected incumbents for decades. But a moat that exists only because the water is muddy is not a moat worth defending. Ask why...
by Michael Shoer | Jul 20, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
Trust, but Verify the Mash Bill The mash bill is the load-bearing fact of a barrel deal — and the easiest thing in the transaction to assert and the hardest to check. That gap is where the seller has always lived. Every barrel trade rests on a claim. This is an...
by Michael Shoer | Jul 6, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
The federal excise tax is the largest line item most barrel buyers treat as fixed. It isn’t. And the money left on the table doesn’t vanish — someone collects it. There is a number attached to every proof gallon of distilled spirits that...
by Michael Shoer | Jul 1, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
The boom pulled a decade of production forward. What comes next is not a crash — it is a repricing, and it favors whoever can find the inventory a home. Booms end the same way. Demand climbs, everyone lays down more than they can sell, and the barrels keep aging on a...
by Michael Shoer | Jul 1, 2026 | The Ascent--Coming of Age
Every other asset class has a number you can check. Whiskey has a phone call. Here is what it would take to fix that. Ask three people what a barrel of four-year MGP high-rye is worth and you will get three answers, each delivered with total confidence and none of...
