TWiB: Southern Glazer’s to pay a 12.5M penalty, More Canadian liquor tariffs, Booker’s Bourbon The Reserves 2026

Bourbon Pursuit

This week in bourbon covers major industry developments including a $12.5M penalty for Southern Glazer's, new tariffs on Canadian liquor, an

Key takeaways

• Southern Glazer's faces a $12.5M penalty over federal trade practice violations.
• U.S. is imposing new tariffs and import bans on Canadian spirits.

Main topics

• Southern Glazer's penalty
• Canadian liquor tariffs and bans

Notable quotes

"When two men wanted to make an allegiance or swear on an oath of one another, they would do so by holding each other's testicles as a sign of trust."

Conclusion

The episode highlights a dynamic week in bourbon with major regulatory

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:08) It's This Week in Bourbon, and I shall testify I love bourbon. And here's your headlines for September 18th, 2026. Southern Glazers is going to pay a $12.5 million penalty. There's more tariffs and now bans of Canadian liquor coming into the U.S. And there's also the release of Booker's Bourbon the Reserve and Little Book the Infinite Edition 3. Before we get started, here's a quick word from our partners. Speaker 2 (0:45) Hey everybody, welcome back to another great episode of This Week in Bourbon. I'm Speaker 1 (0:50) Kenny Coleman. Ryan Cecil here, and what are we testifying to? Speaker 2 (0:53) Well, you know, I just want to testify I love bourbon. I also testify that I love some new merch that we got. You're sporting a new hat. I Speaker 1 (0:59) am, yes. Speaker 2 (1:00) I've got a new t-shirt on, which kind of, the microphone's out of the way here, but we call it the Simple C, because, you know, I don't know about you, Ryan, you kind of, you wear like short-sleeved collar button-downs Speaker 1 (1:12) a Speaker 2 (1:12) lot when you go out, right? Somewhat, yeah. Mostly. I've noticed. And then myself, I love t-shirts. I'm just like a t-shirt person, but you know, you gotta have, you know, you gotta have your going out t-shirts and you gotta just have like your everyday t-shirts and your everyday ones are, you know, just like littered, like the one you have. Yeah. It was like graphic fronts and everything like that. But you want to have something that's more of a solid, something that's minimal branding to kind of go out. And so we created something called the Simple C. So it just has this little. little baby logo right here and a tag at the bottom. I love it. Like it goes with anything, whether you want to wear jeans or khakis or shorts or whatever. It's like you feel like you're dressed up, but you're still wearing a Speaker 1 (1:52) t-shirt. Our whole merch department is developed about your desires and wants. At Speaker 2 (1:57) this point, right? Speaker 1 (1:58) Yes. I think there's only Speaker 2 (1:59) about a handful of baseball jerseys left too. I know, those rolled. KBF cleaned them out. Yeah. thankfully those are selling yeah those are those are fun i know and well now that it i actually had a lot of great feedback from it everybody's loved them and like i said we probably have less than 15 that are remaining so sizes are dwindling by the moment here but when i had a chance to actually pick one of the very first barrels of father time with our good friends blake and brian over at seal box and so jim gaffigan came in and you know he did a whole bit when he came to the festival and he was with us and he came in and he was just like guys these jerseys are really cool he's like and he gave us the whole story he gave me the whole story that there was an internal i should say maybe like a celebrity inner circle thing because when you go into letterman David Letterman used to give you a Letterman jacket, but it Speaker 1 (2:53) would be different every single year. I wouldn't know. I've never been on. I know. And so in this inner circle, people would always sit Speaker 2 (2:59) there and they'd be like, oh, you got that year? Oh, I got this year. And they would sit there and fight to try to get on Letterman just so they could keep their Letterman jacket. Yeah. To try to get that going. He's like, you should do these like every six months. I go, six months might be aggressive, but I do think that if we came out with a New Jersey every single year, new design, home, away. Speaker 2 (3:21) visiting green for rye i don't Speaker 1 (3:23) really know like we'll Speaker 2 (3:24) figure out something i think it'd be fun definitely want Speaker 1 (3:25) a green one white and green for uh that'd be awesome yeah and then somebody said had i think it was greg braxton said instead of saying pursuit on the back end we should do bourbon or uh yeah yeah that we should do that so Speaker 2 (3:37) we'll have some good ideas so yeah glad you all liked it it's it's a fun way to be able to do this and Speaker 1 (3:42) then we can do like black and yellow for honey hog and oh let's see you know Pink and white for Skira. No, I like it. Black and Speaker 2 (3:50) yellow, black and yellow. Well, anyway, Speaker 1 (3:52) back to testify. You Speaker 2 (3:53) know, this one's Speaker 1 (3:55) a Speaker 2 (3:55) little, might be a little racy. So if you have kids in your car, just maybe go ahead and turn down the volume or skip forward 30 seconds here. But back in ancient Rome, when two men wanted to make an allegiance or swear on an oath of one another, they would do so by holding each other's testicles as a sign of trust. And by holding another man's testicles, it's where we get the word testify. And that's used to give a formal Speaker 1 (4:19) statement under oath on a court today. No way. Yeah. Okay. So now do you want to testify? Hell no. Speaker 2 (4:27) Well, it depends. What are you working with over there? Yeah. Jesus. Speaker 1 (4:32) That's intense. I Speaker 2 (4:33) know. When I was doing this, I was like, I don't know if I should do this one. I was like, eh, you know. That's pretty funny. It's Speaker 1 (4:38) a fun thing. Humans are fascinating. It is. Well, you know, something fascinating in front of you. We got some dark liquid over here. Speaker 2 (4:45) What do you got? Speaker 1 (4:47) We got some Circle City straight rye whiskey. 12 years old, 125.6 proof. Our good friend Drew Black over at Circle City has been doing some awesome things. They're an indie. I'm pretty sure this bottle did. Yeah. Yeah. It's the one that did really well in the Ascot's too, but. But not good enough. Speaker 2 (5:07) I'm just kidding. I always say that because, you know, we won best, best show of Ascot in the rise, but. I know, but. No, this is dry whiskey. This looks delicious. It looks dark. I'm a huge Speaker 1 (5:16) dry fan. So I saw this bottle. saw drew over the weekend i was like oh let's pop it open on there yeah see what we've got going yeah i did get to see him over at kbf as well Speaker 2 (5:24) too so here we go ryan on with the nose oh wow that's like really dark luxardo cherries this is a 12 year 95 5 from indiana 125 Speaker 1 (5:37) and a half proof oh my gosh that nose is heavenly i was expecting the 95 5 to be like huge spearmint and dill and you know all that but man it Speaker 2 (5:49) almost looks double oak how dark it is i know Speaker 1 (5:51) man it's just like tons of dark cherries sweet oak i mean that that smells awesome Speaker 2 (5:57) all right you hit it with the taste the Speaker 1 (6:00) taste does it has that familiar 95.5 taste to it yeah but that like cherry syrup notes like amplified i mean it's like the luxardo cherry syrup that you put a little juju in your old fashion a juju You know, you put a Luxaro cherry, but you make sure you get a little juju Speaker 2 (6:17) in it. You're talking to me like I'm a six-year-old. I got it now. Speaker 1 (6:23) Holy cow. That's Speaker 2 (6:24) good. Speaker 1 (6:25) All Speaker 2 (6:26) right. That's really good. Speaker 1 (6:26) Give your rating here, Ryan. Nose, thumbs up. I like it. Taste, thumbs up. I like it. And finish. I know. And somebody was asking me, like, do you ever talk about this? Speaker 2 (6:36) Do you ever Speaker 1 (6:36) give a sudden mediocre? But I always say, if I bring it on the show, then it's worth. It's a really good whiskey. It's worth talking about. Yeah, it's worth talking about. Good job, Jer. That's a good barrel. A Speaker 2 (6:49) lot of times. It's Speaker 1 (6:50) a Speaker 2 (6:50) batch. Speaker 1 (6:51) Oh, Speaker 2 (6:51) yeah. And a lot of times we're most hypercritical is when it comes to limited edition releases by all the major distilleries, because that is what is getting the eyeballs. And that's what people are like, is this year's birthday bourbon going to be amazing? It's like, we'll be hypercritical about that. No, Speaker 1 (7:06) no doubt. Yeah. But if they would have packaged that in something else, we'd be like, oh, okay, well, Speaker 2 (7:10) you Speaker 1 (7:10) know, pretty good. Specifically when we got the antique collections, but then we no longer got it. Speaker 2 (7:15) No, no. Maybe we were too Speaker 1 (7:16) critical. Speaker 2 (7:17) Yeah, we'll see if 2026 is going to be our year if we're going to get snuffed again. I doubt it. Speaker 1 (7:23) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:24) Oh, well, we got a lot of other whiskey to talk about anyway. That's right. Well, before we get into that, you know, by the way. We are still in Bourbon Heritage Month. I hope you're celebrating now, 18 days in with some more whiskey every single day. Filling out those calendars. You better be. But there's a lot of events coming up. This is like our one week we get to kind of take a little bit of a break because then again, we start next week. What Speaker 1 (7:47) break? Well, I meant like from events. We're still Speaker 2 (7:50) rocking and rolling. Actually, I was talking to Ryan earlier because we've been filling up barrel samples to ship out to market. all morning long and i Speaker 1 (8:00) was it was only about 94 in our warehouse heat index 108. Speaker 2 (8:04) i wore shorts so it's not too bad yeah Speaker 1 (8:06) but Speaker 2 (8:07) i was like i didn't realize i mean i guess i knew but i'm always it's the fallacy that we always talk about with entrepreneurs like oh it won't take that long like we'll just do this i know this is the first time you pulled saying i'm usually the one that pulls and you're like oh Speaker 1 (8:21) it can't take that long like Speaker 2 (8:22) 15 minutes yeah it can't Speaker 1 (8:24) be Speaker 2 (8:24) that long four hours later getting like 16 samples, you're just like, wow, okay. Not really four hours, but at least probably an hour and a half. You get your clod prompts out and see if we can automate that shit. Just put Speaker 1 (8:38) a dispenser on all the barrels. I Speaker 2 (8:40) mean, there's, it's not really that. A lot of it's like spending time looking around because they're just in different pockets everywhere. And so you're just, you're like, well, I grabbed this one. I'm pretty sure I had this one with a cart, but I got to go back to it and get that Speaker 1 (8:52) one now. Yep. And oh, crap. Forgot to bring my hammer to. Hammer the plug back in. Yeah, it's constant. Well, Speaker 2 (8:59) anyway, let's talk about some events. Bourbon and Beyond coming up this week, next week. Sorry about that. On the Twitter. Speaker 1 (9:06) Flatiron Speaker 2 (9:06) Life is this week. Flatiron Life is this week. But you can come find us at Bourbon and Beyond on Thursday at 1 o'clock p.m. over at the Fork and Flask booth. And then I went through all of our events that we have coming up. So I'm going to kind of scream through these because we have a ton through all of our ambassador programs. So on September 25th. Pursuit of Protection, our friends out in Long Beach for the Women Who Whiskey in Long Beach. We've got our ambassador that's going to be over there. Pursuit and Food Adventure Memories Dining Experience happening in Houston on the 26th. Also on the 26th in Chicago, we'll have our ambassador team at the Social Scene Top Shelf Tequila and Whiskey Tasting Festival. Very nice. October 1st, don't you forget, Haunted Lodge. It's coming. Speaker 1 (9:49) Yeah, Speaker 2 (9:50) there's been some good stuff happening already. I saw some of the previews of the cocktails. They look pretty cool. They even have like some of that flash paper on it that magicians use. Speaker 1 (9:59) That's cool. And then a bunny hops out of your drink. Speaker 2 (10:03) Maybe. Something will hop out. And then on October 2nd, we're going to have the South Oldham Rotary Bourbon and Wine Experience happening here in Louisville. On October 3rd, there's a bourbon dinner pairing at Stockyard Grill, which is just outside of Columbus. Good Lord. This all sounds Speaker 1 (10:18) expensive. Speaker 2 (10:19) Well, yeah. On Speaker 1 (10:20) October Speaker 2 (10:20) 3rd, we have our team that's going to be at Bourbon on the Banks. Oh, yeah. Ryan's going to be at Gomer's in Missouri on October 6th. He'll be at the Kansas City Bourbon Club on October 7th. And then wrapping up his time in Missouri at the St. Louis Bourbon Festival on October. Speaker 1 (10:35) October 9th. I think Speaker 2 (10:36) I'm Speaker 1 (10:36) doing some with Savon and Dean Lickers October. The 9th was the festival. It is. The Thursday. I don't have details yet, but put that on your radar if you're in the area. So that would be on the 8th then? Yeah. Okay. So you got 6, 7, 8, 9, all something going. Can't wait to drive to Kansas City. You should get a Speaker 2 (10:53) Tesla. That's Speaker 1 (10:55) right. I'll borrow yours for this one. You just go. You can drive my truck for a week. You Speaker 2 (10:58) just Speaker 1 (10:58) sit Speaker 2 (10:58) and go. It's super, super nice. Well, like I said, you love trucks. We'll figure out if we can get you on the Cybertruck train. Speaker 1 (11:05) I Speaker 2 (11:05) don't think so. Speaker 1 (11:06) It looks Speaker 2 (11:06) so ugly. I know. I love the technology. I think if they made something a little less radical, it would probably go over. Now you see Model Ys everywhere now because I joined the club recently. October 11th, I'll be in D.C. at Premier Drams. October 11th will also be, not we, but we will have our ambassador team at the Cincinnati Whiskey Festival. October 17th, we're going to have our team at the 10th Annual Fresno. whiskey festival out there in California. October 17th, BrewBQ 2026 happening in Owensboro, Kentucky. And again, on October 17th, that's three things all on October 17th, the Urban Bourbon Bash happening here in Louisville. And then on October 18th, that's a Sunday, there's an event called Tailgate for Home. It's a fundraiser for the Family Promise of Warren County that's happening at Camp Kern in Oregonia, Ohio. So there you go. To all our distributors say we need to be on market. There you go. We are on market. And that's only what I have written down. I have to go through our spreadsheet of what's actually happening in Pursuit World. All right. Let's go ahead and dive with some industry news because, my friend, we have got a lot of news to cover today. Okay. Well, the first one is coming off of KBF. Well, what do they do? They announce. next year's KBF. So they've already announced the dates next year, which will be September 16th through the 19th of 2027. I'm not going to talk about everything because we've talked about KBF a lot. And I think at some point, maybe on a behind the pursuit, we'll get our wrap up and thoughts of this past KBF as well, too. Speaker 1 (12:42) Yeah, it was a great weekend. Thanks for everyone that came out to our tent. We had a great time hanging with you all, taking pictures, signing bottles at our. collab can't believe clinton wear that sapsquatch suit for so long in the 100 degree heat but it was awesome weekend i wish we all would have had sasquatch suits to be honest with you lost about five pounds yeah 30 Speaker 2 (13:02) minutes might as well right it's all water weight yeah whiskey Speaker 1 (13:05) weight whatever you want to Speaker 2 (13:05) call it Well, Edmund Williams is now expanding its game day presence. We kind of talked a little bit about this last week about going into the University of Kentucky market, but now they are teaming up with more in the snapback sports as the presenting sponsor of Snapback Saturdays, which includes special tailgates at the University of Alabama. That'll happen October 10th, University of Oklahoma on November 14th. And also college sports broadcaster Molly McGrath is also returning as a brain ambassador to help big brain fans closer to the action. Speaker 1 (13:40) Very nice. I thought we were going to beat the tide in our Wildcats. We were up at halftime and then got in the car to go back to Louisville. And it deteriorated pretty quickly. Just fell off like a Speaker 2 (13:52) freight train. Yeah. You know, I'm kind of like at a crossroads right now. We don't have, I'm not paying for any channels that have any college sports on them right now. So I'm missing pretty much everything in the past two weekends. Speaker 1 (14:07) I know. Speaker 2 (14:08) So I, I'd Speaker 1 (14:09) see there. I didn't watch anything. So it's Speaker 2 (14:11) at the point where I either have to go ahead and throw down for some more YouTube TV for a couple months, or I just try to figure out, is this the life that I'm destined Speaker 1 (14:20) to. to live without