Bourbon casks are rough hewn and coarse.
Wine casks are smooth and refined.
Canton started out by fashioning casks for bourbon distillers. In the last nine years, the cask maker has been growing the vintner side of the business. As a result, the company has asked its coopers to build wine barrels with machinery designed originally to assemble whiskey casks. Canton enlisted the help of mechanical engineer Jerry Duncan of the Kentucky Technology Service in Olive Hill, to sand out any snags in the operation. Duncan and his co-workers at KTS, an affiliate of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership, spent about a year at the plant.