The scent of white oak -- steamed and charred -- lingers off KY 3434. Logs stack atop one another, waiting to be sawed into staves and begin their lives as barrels for whiskey and wine. In 1959, C.B.

The barrel industry — which includes about 15 companies, most of them, aside from Independent Stave, quite small — stands as an exception in a mainly dismal U.S. manufacturing industry: Despite an ...