There are 16 million barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky right now. The state has 4.5 million residents. That works out to more than three barrels for every man, woman, and child in the commonwealth.

The barrels sit in long wooden warehouses called rickhouses, stacked to the rafters, slowly breathing through the wood. Bourbon can legally be made anywhere in the United States, but Kentucky dominates for good reason. Its limestone-filtered water is ideal for fermentation. Its dramatic swings between hot summers and cold winters push whiskey deep into the charred oak and pull it back out again, building flavor season by season. And it has 200 years of accumulated knowledge that no newcomer can shortcut.

Here is the strange part. Kentucky is the only place in the world that taxes aging barrels as personal property. Wineries in California do not pay an annual tax on wine sitting in their cellars. Scottish distillers age Scotch for decades without a yearly tax bill. But in Kentucky, every year a barrel sits in a warehouse, the distiller pays. A twelve-year bourbon gets taxed twelve times, each year at a higher rate as the whiskey grows more valuable. That cost gets passed along in the price of the bottle, which is part of why older bourbon costs so much more than young bourbon. Last year, distillers paid $75 million in barrel taxes statewide.

Kentucky now has more than 125 distilleries, the most since Prohibition ended. Every one of those 16 million barrels is waiting, aging, and paying its way.