For Tampa’s growing community of bourbon enthusiasts — from the speakeasies along 7th Avenue in Ybor City to the riverside cocktail bars in Downtown — there is reason to raise a glass this week. A federal decision to lift tariffs on whiskies coming in from the United Kingdom is rippling all the way down to Bay Area shelves, and one of the brands most affected is a Kentucky bourbon with an unusual transatlantic journey.
Never Say Die Bourbon is distilled, barreled and aged for six years in Kentucky before being shipped across the Atlantic to England, where it spends additional time aging before being bottled and sent back to American drinkers. The brand takes its name from a struggling young horse foaled in Lexington, said to have been revived by a shot of whiskey before going on to win a major race in England — a story that has become a small legend on local bar back-bars from South Tampa to St. Petersburg.
Earlier this year, the company had been preparing for the worst. After the most recent change in administration, founders feared a return of the kind of tariffs introduced during President Trump’s first term and rushed to ship roughly a year-and-a-half’s supply of product into the United States before inauguration day. “We shipped a lot of barrels over to the UK, so we got out ahead of it, hoping that the tariffs wouldn’t last,” co-founder Brian Luftman told Spectrum News from the construction site of the brand’s new distillery in Lexington.
Just as that emergency stockpile was running thin on shelves in markets like Tampa, the White House announced it was lifting tariffs on UK whiskies following the president’s recent visit with King Charles III. The U.S. Trade Representative also confirmed “preferential duty access” for whiskey produced in the United Kingdom.
For local bar owners, the relief is tangible. The bourbon industry, Luftman acknowledged, “is pretty tight right now” — no longer booming as it was a few years ago — and an extra layer of tariff would have squeezed already thin margins. Tampa bartenders who pour Never Say Die alongside Florida-made spirits say the reversal protects not only price points but the variety their guests have come to expect.
The decision also lands well with Tampa’s scotch drinkers. Because most scotch is matured in used American bourbon barrels, the two industries are tightly intertwined — and supporters on both sides of the Atlantic have been celebrating what they see as a win for the broader brown-spirits world.
For now, regulars at Tampa’s whiskey bars can expect Never Say Die to keep arriving — and the long, salt-aged trip from Kentucky to England and back can continue without an unwelcome line on the receipt.