Truth be told, I went and found this after today's Odd Lots podcast[1], which goes into it more deeply (see transcript[2]). The white oak quality and type needed for bourbon barrels has specific requirements—different from what is used for most building. To quote:

>So you have these growth rings here, which is how much this tree grows every year. When they're very big, that's really good for liquid moving through it, which if you are trying to hold a product for a long time in a barrel is bad. So you need trees that are kind of stressed. And they're really having to compete. And so the growth is good, but it's not huge. This is the opposite of like, if we're growing two by fours, when we're growing two by fours, we want big growth because then you can make a lot of two by fours really fast.

1: https://www.bloomberg.com/oddlots

2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-01/transcrip...