Bourbon Games Episode 1: BCA Beats Florida 40–19 in Opening Challenge

BOURBON CLUB OF ARKANSAS • BOURBON GAMES • SEASON 1, EPISODE 1

Bourbon Club of Arkansas officially hits the screen in Bourbon Games Season 1, Episode 1, with Gary Penna and Justin Mills representing Arkansas against Southwest Florida Bourbon Society at Barrel King in Bourbon, Missouri.

The four-episode series has already been released, but we are revisiting it one episode at a time. This recap stays inside Episode 1: the opening bottle-sales challenge, the Bourbon Lodge, and the beginning of the blending competition. No later-episode results are revealed here.

Episode 1 at a glance

Arkansas enters as the smaller club

On paper, the opening challenge looked like a mismatch. During filming, Gary described the Bourbon Club of Arkansas as a group of roughly 350 members. Southwest Florida Bourbon Society was described in the episode as a club of roughly 6,000; a Facebook group capture after the episode’s release showed 5,510 members.

Those figures are not perfectly identical measurements of participation, but they show the scale difference clearly: Florida’s reported community was more than fifteen times larger than BCA’s at the time.

That is what makes the first result meaningful from our perspective. BCA did not have the biggest membership base in the matchup. What it did have was an engaged community that responded when Gary and Justin finally decided they could stand behind the challenge.

Gary Penna and Justin Mills represent BCA

Gary Penna and Justin Mills entered the competition as a two-person Arkansas team. Florida brought three tasters: Jake, Jason and Matt. That difference becomes more important once the teams reach the barrel room, but Episode 1 first tests something entirely different: whether each club can move bottles.

Challenge 1: sell the barrel

For the opening challenge, each team received a sales link and could sell up to 100 bottles before an 8 p.m. deadline. The winning club would earn the better sleeping accommodations at the Bourbon Lodge. More importantly, challenge money contributed to the charity pool at the center of the Bourbon Games format.

Florida moved first. About fifteen minutes into the challenge, the scoreboard stood at 4–0 Florida. With roughly four hours remaining, Arkansas had moved in front 15–8.

But BCA did not immediately ask members to buy

For Gary, the first challenge created a real conflict. BCA has spent years building trust around the bottles and barrel selections we recommend to members. The competition bottle was not a normal BCA pick, and Gary was reluctant to use that trust simply to win a television challenge.

“Winning this first round is not worth losing our reputation.”

Gary Penna, during the Episode 1 sales challenge

That moment says more about BCA than a scoreboard can. Gary and Justin tasted the whiskey before making the push. Justin also reframed the challenge around charity, competition and representing Arkansas. Once they were comfortable moving forward, BCA members responded.

BCA wins the opening challenge, 40–19

By the final count shown in the released episode, Arkansas sold 40 bottles to Florida’s 19. That is a 21-bottle margin and more than a two-to-one result for the smaller club.

It would be too simple to say the score proves one bourbon community is more dedicated than another. A single sales challenge cannot measure that. What the result does demonstrate is how strongly BCA members can mobilize. With roughly 350 members at the time against a Florida community numbering well above 5,500, Arkansas punched far above its weight in the first event.

For BCA, that is the part worth celebrating: not being the largest club in the room, but showing what an active, connected bourbon community can do when its members rally behind the people representing them.

The Bourbon Lodge turns competitors into neighbors

The opening victory gave Gary and Justin the upstairs accommodations at the Bourbon Lodge, while Team Florida stayed downstairs. But the lodge sequences are less about the prize than what happened once everyone was under the same roof.

The rural setting came with weak or nonexistent cell service, limited contact with family and very little separation from the competition. The teams ate together, shared bourbon, joked around and exchanged phone numbers. Episode 1 makes it clear that the Bourbon Games are competitive, but the people on opposite sides of the scoreboard are still part of the same broader whiskey community.

A little Barrel King history: “The Goat”

During the lodge gathering, the group also revisits an early Barrel King selection known as “The Goat,” named for Muhammad Ali and associated in the conversation with No. 24. The whiskey was described as roughly six or seven years old and part of Barrel King’s early selection history.

Day Two moves from club support to whiskey creation

The next morning changes the nature of the contest completely. Matt Bunch brings the teams into Barrel King’s barrel room and explains the production rules for the blend that will eventually carry the largest point value in the competition.

Arkansas and Florida take different approaches to blending

Both teams taste through Barrel King’s inventory, record impressions and claim barrels with team tags, but their decision-making styles are noticeably different.

Gary and Justin came into the competition with a shared frame of reference. They had already worked together at Barrel King on a large custom BCA blend, so they understood how a promising barrel changes once it becomes one component in a much larger whiskey. In Episode 1, Arkansas looks first for a mature bourbon base, then starts thinking about what can build the middle of the palate and extend the finish.

Florida uses the advantage of three palates differently. The team builds a more formal tasting grid covering aroma, flavor, sweetness, spice and observations such as tannin, bread and yeast. The Florida team also recognizes that Arkansas has prior Barrel King blending experience and intentionally looks for its own direction rather than simply following BCA’s path.

That contrast is one of the strongest parts of Episode 1. Arkansas has fewer tasters but more shared blending history. Florida has more tasters and uses disagreement and comparison as a form of quality control. Neither method is finished being tested when the episode ends.

BCA’s earlier Barrel King work matters here

Episode 1 also gives Gary a chance to put the club’s history into context. He says he founded BCA in 2019, watched the original community grow rapidly, rebuilt after the first Facebook group was lost and had completed 43 barrel picks by the time of filming.

That history connects the two halves of the episode. The same reputation that made Gary cautious about the sales challenge is also what gave Arkansas experience once the competition moved into the barrel room.

If you want the background on that experience without jumping ahead in the Bourbon Games series, read how Gary and Justin built BCA’s first true custom Barrel King bourbon blend.

Episode 1 ends with Arkansas ahead — and the biggest whiskey decision still unfinished

Arkansas leaves Episode 1 with the first challenge win and the better rooms at the lodge. But the competition blend is still taking shape. Gary and Justin have found a base they like and are working through the middle and finish. Florida is still testing combinations of its own.

The final blend is worth up to 50 points, making it the largest single scoring opportunity introduced in the episode. So while 40–19 is a strong opening statement for BCA, Episode 1 closes with the part of the Bourbon Games most directly tied to whiskey creation still unresolved.

Episode 2 coverage follows next.

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Historical record notes

The released Episode 1 gives the final opening-challenge score as 40–19. BCA and ArkansasLiquor.com coverage produced during the April event reported 40–17. Because the finished program is the later published source, this recap uses 40–19 while preserving the earlier discrepancy here.

The episode’s host describes the opening challenge whiskey as a nine-year MGP single barrel selected by Barrel King. Contemporary April coverage described the contest bottle differently, as a Barrel King-created blend. The available material does not fully resolve that difference, so we are not treating the two descriptions as interchangeable.

Sources and further reading

• Watch Bourbon Games Season 1, Episode 1 on YouTube
• Barrel King — Bourbon Games
• BCA’s real-time Barrel King Bourbon Games Day 1 coverage
• ArkansasLiquor.com’s Episode 1 editorial recap

Bourbon Games is a Mixx Tank production filmed at Barrel King in Bourbon, Missouri. Video-frame images on this page are reproduced for editorial reporting and commentary; copyright remains with the applicable rights holder.

Please enjoy responsibly. Bourbon Club of Arkansas content is intended for adults of legal drinking age.