The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sazerac, a privately held American alcoholic beverage company with a principal office in Louisville, Kentucky, has approached Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel's Woodford Reserve, with an offer to buy the company for around $15 billion.

Brown-Forman is reportedly also in merger talks with French Spirit's giant Pernod Ricard.

While Brown-Forman is a distillery company, they were also known for producing its own barrels in its own cooperage. In 2022, the Wood Industry Association (WIA) awarded the company with its Wooden Globe Awards in the Commitment to Excellence Through Technology category. In 2014, the company also won a Wooden Globe for Innovator of the Year by the Woodworking Machinery Industry Association, a precursor to the WIA.

"By investing in automation and being committed to excellence through technology they reduced labor by approximately 100 people and can produce over 2000 barrels per day," the association said in the award's presentation. "They are also building better barrels that have a direct result in higher volumes of whiskey and bourbon."

In 2025, however, the company announced it was getting out of the barrel-making aspect of the business. The company closed the Louisville-based Brown-Forman Cooperage, the last of the cooperage's that they owned, to the Independent Stave Co., which continues to make barrels for Brown-Forman's needs.