On the edge of the woods off Route 202 in Buxton, Matt Albrecht is coordinating container shipments to Australia and importing truckloads of used whiskey barrels from Tennessee. The Connecticut transplant came to Maine when he was 15 with a dream of becoming a firefighter and paramedic like his father and grandfather before him. While working as a Scarborough firefighter, however, Albrecht stumbled upon a hobby that would quickly grow into a global business. Eleven years later, Albrecht is the founding owner of River Drive Cooperage and Millwork, a company of ten employees that specializes in the reconditioning, repairing, and recycling of oak barrels.

The story of how River Drive came to be is “a bit long, convoluted, and weird,” Albrecht says. It evolved from his love of history, wood-working, and whiskey—and a bit of not being able to say no. Albrecht founded River Drive after he began to dive for sunken logs to repurpose as hardwood flooring and almost anything else a customer could dream up. After a trip to Ireland with some friends, he began to source old whiskey barrels for repurposing. But in 2011 there was a shortage of used whiskey barrels in the United States, he says, “and I’m sitting here, cutting them up and making stuff out of them.” Some breweries and distilleries age their beer and spirits in old whiskey barrels, so Albrecht started offering the barrels to breweries and distilleries first and only made them into other products when they were damaged beyond repair. Soon, River Drive began to import barrels from breweries, distilleries, and wineries around the world, repairing them when needed, and reselling them to other makers, working with everyone from home brewers to small-batch breweries like Bissell Brothers and Lone Pine Brewing Company to global companies like Jack Daniels and Anheuser-Busch.