Some 1,300 barrels of whiskey were stored in Rogue Ales & Spirit’s distillery in South Beach. On Wednesday, Ninkasi crews moved more than 100 barrels and say they’ll likely need another week to remove all the whiskey to a Ninkasi building in Eugene. (Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle)Workers for Ninkasi Brewing of Eugene are hauling away more than 1,300 barrels of whiskey from Rogue Ales & Spirit’s distillery building in South Beach, purchased at auction after the Newport-based company declared bankruptcy last year.
When Rogue Ales & Spirits filed for bankruptcy last year, its assets included 1,300 barrels of whiskey worth $2.8 million aging in its South Beach distillery. (Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle)After seeing its beer sales tank and racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent and back taxes, Oregon’s third largest craft brewery abruptly ceased all operations last November, closing a chapter on the 37-year-old company. Rogue operated from several buildings — a bar on the Newport Bayfront and a 47,000-square-foot building, bar and distillery in South Beach owned by the Port of Newport.
An online bankruptcy liquidation sale occurred in February with about 700 items for sale, including the aging whiskey in barrels, stainless steel brewing vessels, pallets of ingredients, coolers and other production equipment, and everything else from sweatshirts to Rogue memorabilia. Rogue’s bankruptcy filing said the 1,300 barrels of aging whiskey were valued at $2.8 million.
Ninkasi’s crew so far moved two truckloads back to the Ninkasi Brewing building in Eugene. By Wednesday there were still more than 1,000 barrels left to move and crew members estimated they would still be hauling barrels into next week.
— Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle
Ninkasi crews use forklifts to move barrels filled with whiskey onto pallets before they can be loaded onto trucks headed to Eugene. (Port of Newport photo)
I’m a bourbon enthusiast. The Rogue stuff was just awful the one time I tried it.
So was Rogue able to detract (they owe around $16M) the assessed value for the whisky ($2.8M) or the heavily depreciated value at auction (undisclosed, but estimated to be pennies-on-the-dollar?) Not that they’ll ever pay the full amount. But it should be part of their credit history to help prevent loaners to fund them to start something else.
Bankruptcy liquidations are typically all about trying to make creditors as whole as possible by liquidating the assets. So it would be normal for this $2.8M to be added to the master asset list, from which creditors will be paid (after expenses) on a pro rata basis.