By Richard Thomas Utah’s High West Distillery got its start so early in the craft whiskey boom of the 2010s that they could be described as one of the companies that pioneered a now bedrock business model for small distilleries everywhere: start building your brand with sourced whiskey while financing and building your actual distillery, …
By Richard Thomas For years, one of the things that has signaled to me someone is really paying attention to American whiskey is if they know who Jake Norris is. After all, Norris was the first head distiller at both Stranahan’s and Laws Whiskey House. Stranahan’s was one of that class of trailblazing small distillers …
By Richard Thomas During the last couple of weeks I have seen reports that unobtanium bottles (either on demand and at MSRP) for years, in some cases since before the Pandemic, were back on store shelves. Some of these appeared in my social media and other instances were sent to me, but examples included shelves …
By Richard Thomas Bourbon is chock full of poorly defined terms, and I think the wrong ones receive far too much of attention. Take, for example, small batch. For a couple of decades, croakers have made a cottage industry complaining about the use of small batch. Although that term has no official definition and should …
By Richard Thomas Enthusiasts who know anything about the global market for rare bottles know that when the subject is the most expensive whiskies out there, American stuff never comes up. And I mean never. The truly expensive stuff in the world carries a six digit price tag at retail, and of those bottles that are …
By Richard Thomas While I was promoting my latest book, Behind the Bottle: Jack Daniel’s, earlier this spring, I fielded more than a few questions about what the difference is between sour mash and sweet mash whiskey-making. If that seems off-topic, I initially found it a little odd as well, but I have since chalked …
By Richard Thomas The arrival of craft distilling in Pennsylvania gave rise to one of the most interesting features of the entire category: the revival of Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey. Once the most popular style of whiskey in America, by the 1990s both the style and the distilleries that made it had gone extinct. The most …
By Richard Thomas Although it was my intention to not do another round-up of the whiskey industry’s closure, bankruptcy, business and lawsuit news until early summer, recent events have compelled me to follow mid-May’s update with a mid-June update. Double Blow To The Weavers In Uncle Nearest Case Sometimes small town newspapers are an excellent …
By Richard Thomas In whiskey circles, summertime is best known as when the release calendar slows down. In America, only a few of the well-loved and much-anticipated annualized limited editions comes out during the summer months. It is also not a time known for new product launches or brand extensions. Even internationally, the releases schedule …
By Richard Thomas Spirits broadly and whiskey especially experiencing a sales slump and part of the reason is that the generational cohort entering the marketplace, Gen Z, has broader range of choices in legally available mind altering substances then their predecessors to choose from while also sharing the signature characteristic of youth everywhere: buck what …
