Angel’s Envy’s popular Toast the Trees program has returned this September for its sixth year, with an increased goal of planting 30,000 trees.
The distillery began the program in 2014, planting white oak trees in Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest to help replace those cut down for use as bourbon barrels. By law, bourbon must be aged in white oak barrels. One white oak tree can take 70 years to mature and will make up to 3 bourbon barrels. With over 8 million barrels aging in Kentucky alone, that means a huge amount of trees are culled for the coopers each year.
Angel’s Envy finishes their aged bourbon and rye in port wine and rum casks, meaning they use even more barrels than average. The distillery estimates that if they reach this year’s goal of planting 30,000 trees, those trees could one day be used to craft the barrels needed to make 12 million bottles of bourbon.
“White oak sustainability is incredibly important to the Angel’s Envy family, and we’re proud to call some attention to the cause across the bourbon community through our ‘Toast the Trees’ initiative,” said Wes Henderson, ANGEL’S ENVY Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer in a press release.
“After seeing our fans rise to the occasion to help us not just hit, but exceed our target of planting 20,000 trees in 2018, we’re excited to raise our goal this year by another 10,000 and continue to do our part to support a healthy white oak population and, in turn, the future growth of bourbon,” Henderson explained.
Participating is simple – just take a photo of an Angel’s Envy bottle, pour, or cocktail, and share it on social media with the hashtag #ToastTheTrees. For every time the hashtag is used, the distillery promises to plant a white oak tree. Hashtags count throughout the whole month of September, which is National Bourbon Heritage Month, so post as often as you like. Here’s to Angel’s Envy – and to the trees!
To learn more about the Toast The Trees program, please click here.
