Next week is National Forest Products Week; bourbon's one

Oct. 17-23 is National Forest Products Week, designated by Congress in 1960 as the third week of October as to recognize the value of American forests and the products they create. "It also acknowledges the value of woodlands, commitment to good stewardship and conservation practices," says a news release from the University of Kentucky, a state more heavily forested than most.

A forest product, imparting color and flavor (Distiller.com photo)

Forests provide timber, water, wildlife habitat, opportunities for recreational activities, take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and add back oxygen. In Kentucky, "Forests provide white-oak wood for [charred] barrels, which impart 70 percent of the flavor and all of the color in bourbon," the release says, giving you a reason to observe National Forest Products Week that may not have occurred to you.

"We see it as a time to recognize and support how important forest and forest products are not to just our daily lives, but to our future," says ForestProud.org, which says it is "committed to making choices that keep forests as forests. . . . By offering renewable, sustainable, plant-based alternatives to plastics, concrete, and fossil fuels, forests and forest products provide some of the most innovative and powerful solutions we have to climate change. And we think that that is something worth supporting."