Mike Mankel, 58, is a musician and visual artist who had tinkered with building guitars his entire life. But one cold day in 2012, while sipping a glass of bourbon, he contemplated building a different type of guitar. As the sunlight came through the window and shined on the beautiful amber-hued bourbon, he gazed across the room at an acoustic guitar in the corner, and it came to him.
Could he build a guitar completely from a reclaimed bourbon barrel?
The answer became apparent. About 40 guitars later, Mankel is now the owner of the Bourbon Barrel Guitar Company, a name he has trademarked. He also has applied for a patent for the process he uses to craft the guitars.
Mankel grew up in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, which is in Washington County. It was there, in 1794, that the 400 residents staged the famed Whiskey Rebellion in retaliation for an excise tax that was put on their distilled spirits. He moved to Lexington in 1991 to work in medical sales for the next 20 years but always dabbled in music and art. With his whiskey roots, he always had an affinity for Kentucky bourbon.
Mankel’s guitars—a marriage of art, music and bourbon—are works of art that also produce beautiful sounds.
“As a visual artist, I’m intrigued by shapes and colors,” he said. “But I build instruments that I would want to own myself.”
Mankel started messing around with barrels and barrelheads with the plan of making the guitar from the staves, or slats that comprise the sides of the barrel.
“But when I started looking at the geometry, I was afraid it would be shaped like a watermelon,” he said. “So I looked at other designs and realized I could shape the barrelhead like a guitar body. I wanted the wood to be as authentic and as natural as it is when the barrel comes to me.”
That state of the white oak barrels he receives includes varying degrees of being burned—or charred, as it is referred to in the bourbon-distilling industry—and depends on how long it has been since the barrel was emptied. The wood might even still be wet. Mankel said that sometimes the char is so deep he has to scrape away the top layer, which gives the wood a texture similar to alligator skin.
“From an artistic standpoint, my guitars cross boundaries—musically, artistically and aesthetically,” he said.
As Mankel started working with barrels, he realized that not all barrelheads are the same thickness, which adds to the unique qualities of each guitar.
His favorite barrels to work with come from Alltech, maker of Town Branch Bourbon. “What I love about their barrels is the barrelhead has a white background with black stenciling,” he said. “It is very heavy, very thick. I want my guitars to look like what the barrels look like when they are stacked in the warehouses. Most distilleries have very plain, non-decorative markings on theirs. For the real estate that I use, the more contrast there is, the happier it makes my eye as an artist.”
Mankel also has had good experience working with barrels from Buffalo Trace because he enjoys the buffalo logo and bold lettering. He has two barrelheads from the distillery that he treasures but has not worked on yet. One has the date of December 30, 1999, and the other is a partial barrelhead with a hand-written signature of the late Elmer T. Lee on it. Lee, who worked at Buffalo Trace 36 years, starting as a maintenance engineer at the George T. Stagg Distillery, as it was called at the time, retired as the distillery’s first master distiller.
“They are really cool, but I haven’t decided what to do with them yet,” Mankel said.
Although Mankel originally set out to make the perfect guitar, he has switched his focus to the artistic side of the piece in the past few years.
“Unless you know what these barrels are supposed to look like, the untrained eye can’t tell the difference between the distilleries. So now, I’m appealing to collectors—people who collect cars, collect horses, houses, and have a lifestyle that they can get what they want,” he said. “They get what they want because they love what they see.”
Mankel said his guitars are not something that can or will be mass-produced. Each one requires about 100 to 120 hours of work and contains more than 60 pieces of wood. The price is around $7,500.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you charge less and build more?’ and the answer is because I don’t want to, and I’m not going to,” he said. “Go anywhere in the world and show me where you can find something like this. I don’t say it with arrogance. I say it with artistic respect.”
Mankel admitted that it would be easy to make a stencil and spray paint something on the wood, but that certainly is not his style. The barrels must be authentic and in the same condition as they were when they held aging bourbon.
“Sometimes, as barrels expand, the bourbon leaks out, and then it dries and leaves a sappy residue, like tar. Well, to me, that is awesome,” he said. “That’s a color differentiation; it’s a substance differentiation. And if that is there, it stays there. If it covers up some of the writing, I don’t care. That is how it looks.”
Mankel’s passion for his art and craft is palpable. He decided several years ago to spend his life doing something he wants to do. Now, he spends time every day building guitars, working on guitars, and playing music for himself and others.
“I’m the most blessed man I know,” he said.