A cool baby gift: bourbon?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

At McLaughlin Distillery in Sewickley Hills, owner and distiller Kim McLaughlin offers an unusual baby gift: bourbon.

On the day a child is born, he’ll fill a small barrel with, say, 10 gallons of bourbon and mark it with the baby’s name, date of birth and contact information.

Customers don’t have to have to pay anything to have a barrel laid in. They simply get first dibs at buying bottles of that whiskey at regular retail price when Mr. McLaughlin bottles it when it’s ready in two or three years. It’s up to customers when they open the bottles, but they can wait until the baby is an adult. He can’t sell full barrels, but he will sell customers the empty barrels, too. If they choose not to buy all the bottles of “their” whiskey, he simply sells it to other customers.

Mr. McLaughlin himself made such a barrel for Shaylee Grace, his granddaughter who was born on Nov. 30. He’d made one for his other granddaughter, Clementine Rose, when she was born the previous March, but Shaylee Grace’s he posted on Facebook. “People started calling me,” he says, wanting barrels for their babies. As of this week, he had 14 of those barrels aging. He plans to keep his granddaughters’ batches in the barrels until they each turn 21.

This is not to be confused with McLaughlin’s superpremium Baby Bourbon, which is aged in little 2.5-gallon barrels that he hand makes himself.

Mr. McLaughlin also recently began offering home delivery of his bourbon in Allegheny County.

For more information visit the distillery’s Facebook page, website or the distillery itself or call 1-315486-1372.

Kim McLaughlin, McLaughlin Distillery At Sewickley Hills’ McLaughlin Distillery, owner Kim McLaughlin will put his bourbon into a barrel on the day a baby is born and give the customers first dibs on the bottles. The barrels age at the distillery, marked with the baby's date of birth, name...