When I was young, I had a friend who replaced half of his hops bill in one of his porters with high-quality weed. It was awesome.
Did you like Rittenhouse back when Brown Forman was making it? The shift to Heaven Hill making it at Bernheim has not been favorable in anyone’s opinion that I’ve seen, although I don’t seem to dislike the new version as badly as you and others in this thread. But then again, I mostly use it as a mixer, so…
Yeah, that’s pretty much the same conclusion I came to a few years back when I was somewhat seriously considering quitting my job and going entrepreneurial as a craft distiller.
If you’re distilling a common spirit, you’re aiming to carve out a tiny niche in the high-end space. So if you’re a gin distiller, you’re trying to carve out your own microscopic niche among Bluecoat, Citadelle, Cadenhead, et al… Or if you’re a rum distillery, you’re trying to compete with the Ron Zacapa Centenarios of the world, or worse, with Bacardi. In the whiskey world, you’re hoping to somehow beat out MGP or Heaven Hill.
So that leaves you with stuff that isn’t commonly done… probably because nobody in the world actually wants to drink artisanal Texas grappa made from Hill Country pomace. Or nobody really cares to drink Michigan Kirshwasser.
I’d think that liqueurs are where it might be at, but damned if I know how to make one.
I never had it until last year or so, IIRC. I think I saw it at one liquor store in Japan. I really didn’t start drinking booze in any quantity until 2000, when I had a Talisker 10 at an airport bar and fell in love. Japan is a liquor-lover’s paradise: cheap and amazing selection. (Beer? Not so much. Wine: Pretty good but mostly European, at least it was back then.)
When I came back from Japan in 2004, the world of bourbon and rye was so much simpler. You’d see Jim Beam Rye (then about $13), Old Overholt (a little less), and Wild Turkey Rye 101 (I think it was about $25 then for 750 mL). I never saw Rittenhouse or Sazerac. So three bottles on the shelf–simplicity itself. Needless to say, Bourbon was also relatively uncomplicated. It seems like the recent explosion of horseshit brands happened in the scope of just a few years.
So I’m afraid I was not able to make the comparison.
Ah well. It used to be different. Better then, in my opinion.
Not hard to believe!
The mantra of curmudgeons everywhere, throughout History.
Recognize! 
GET. OFF. MY. LAWN!. 
In actuality, I think we’re in a Golden Age of booze. One example: It’s possible to buy cognac from the 50s and 60s, and I tried a bunch. Mind you, these were your basic grades from VS/3-start up to XO, not the ultra-pricey stuff. Conclusion? Cognac, overall, is better now than then, though Courvoisier 3 Star from the 60s is incredible and still a hell of a bargain. I tried Remy-Martin VSOP from the 80s and prefer the current version. Other stuff was good but not mind-blowing.
But the market is constantly shifting, and some products do get worse. Was Jack Daniels Old No. 7 better in the 1970s when it was 45% ABV instead of the current 40%. I don’t know about the flavor, but that is a definite downgrade in quality.
Other stuff gets better. Seagram’s basically destroyed Four Roses, but it has come back under the ownership of Kirin as a truly awesome distillery.
And so on. “Ever shifting, alcohol is.”–Yoda
Sadly as the owner of a “craft” distillery (there is no legal definition, but in KY it is under 10,000 gallons per year) I am afraid I have to agree with the original analogy…mostly. I think one difference is that making beer at home is legal and distilling is not so there is no opportunity to “practice” the art legally. Second most small distilleries (recent start ups) buy the same stills from the same companies and learn how to make mash and distill from the same people. Rather than creating a unique product they create something similar to the others. Without question a column still as used by the mass producers produces a different quality or alcohol. A pot still used properly produces a better product. At least a little. But I have had some terrible craft bourbons. There are a few that are pretty good. Kings County in NY has some unique and very tasty products, but they are not going to be like the difference between Bud and a great craft brew.
I think people got into craft brewing for the love of making good beer. And they had made good beer at home. People get into distilling because of the “charm” and then try to figure out how to make good products. Americans settled for mainstream boring beer for a long time. The Europeans always complained about US beer and bread. Both just plain and boring. So a shift from boring to amazing was a big gap. The gap for distilled spirits is not so huge.
The big distilleries have been upping the game with new products based on popularity. 15 or 20 years ago there were very few options in the bourbon aisle. Now unfortunately sourcing has taken hold and there are many products distilled by the same big distilleries. If you look at the label and it does not state “Distilled by” and the name then it is sourced. Does not make it bad. Just not genuine. The good news is that there are many things to enjoy. The bad news is when everyone makes them popular they become scarce and expensive. Just remember that it is people who eventually ruin every good thing.
A fundamental truth there.
I finally found a source for the new Pikesville, which clocks in at a quite respectable 110 proof. Pricey as all get out, but a delicious Manhattan base.
I think the biggest thing that differentiates the beer/wine markets and the spirits markets in the US is that the beer and wine markets were relatively underserved (is that the term?), meaning that in say… 1985, there were a handful of enormous breweries all producing variants of the same basic light lagers. If you wanted anything else, you had to get imported versions, and those were scarce, often badly handled, and often also lacking in variety. Wine was similar, although AFAIK, the revolution there started earlier. So there was a waiting market of people who wanted to drink good pale ales, porters, IPAs, etc…
The spirits markets didn’t really have that- at least in the past few decades, there’s always been the major categories with a fair degree of variety. It’s not like there were 5 distilleries in the US making cheap vodka, 2 kinds of bourbon, and poor brandy. Instead, there were already lots of types of those spirits. So the artisanal producers were competing directly right off the bat.
I foresee something of a readjustment coming in the next decade or so in the craft alcohol markets; I am suspicious whether the market will support 42 varieties of unflavored vodka, for example. Or as many bourbons… Even now, they’re starting to be more about the bottles than what’s in them- branding and image type stuff.
I kind of disagree with the majority of people here. I think that craft distilling is still in its infancy but people are judging it against a fully mature craft beer industry and its old fight with the mega producers. First off there are already great strides being made by the craft industry that are developing cool historic styles of spirits. Check out the Empire Rye movement out of New York. They are making great rye whiskey in a style that hasn’t been seen in this country for 100 years. Craft distilleries are bringing back historic manufacturing techniques like leopold brothers or Golden Moon. Over on the west coast Rouge spirits is experimenting with doing their own cooperage and using woods besides oak. Do they compare with a 12 year old bourbon. Not really, not yet.
It takes a whole lot less time to make good beer then it takes to make good spirits. So the craft brewery next door can compete with bud in two weeks but it takes a decade to compete with buffalo trace. We are seeing the first wave distilleries or those with a ton of money doing innovation today that will pay off a decade from now. That little guy that just started up is still trying to pay of his investment and putting away 12 barrels per year costs him $24-36k on top of that. I think the spirits market has room for good locally produced booze that is of a similar quality to what is made today but the industry is also innovating new or different styles of spirits that will define the industry for years to come.
Now of course the sourced spirits are a net negative to the industry but the massive money that has been made by the sourcers (titos, high west, sagamore, et all) are allowing more funding into the industry. I think the lack of legal home distilling also hurts the industry because I know a lot of people who have no idea how to distill that own and run distilleries. This leads to some bad booze that wouldn’t make the market if they were working with a home brew club to prototype recipies before they tried to go pro. I think both the sourcers and the people who are bad at it are going to get pushed out of the industry in the next 5 years. We are already seeing shelf space becoming hard to get and like craft beer in the early 90s were heading into a contraction. Long term we’ll see craft spirits come back afterwards much stronger with just the quality guys and the barrels then will be 10 years old and as good or better then the big boys. 2025-2030 is when craft spirits will be ready to come into their own.
The problem, like I said earlier, is that craft brewing took advantage of an underserved market niche- i.e. styles that weren’t produced in any appreciable quantity by the big brewers. The craft guys did NOT compete in the same markets in general- nobody was stupid enough to try and produce an artisanal light lager and go head-to-head with Anheuser Busch, Coors and Miller. Instead, they brewed IPAs and porters and American brown ales, and marketed them toward people who didn’t want Bud Light or High Life.
But the craft distillers ARE trying to fight the big boys on their own turf- what exactly does a craft distiller have to offer that say… Heaven Hill or Beam doesn’t? They don’t have 30 year old barrels to blend in, they don’t have rickhouses containing tens of thousands of barrels. They don’t have the production or sourcing economies of scale, they don’t have the process control, etc… And it’s not like the big boys make shoddy products either, so it’s not like there’s a quality gap there to exploit.
Their main ways to differentiate themselves is to use ingredients/processes that are either boutique, hyperlocal or uncommon (i.e. Pernod Ricard can’t order enough of weird herb X for their new Beefeater expression, but the tiny distillery can), or they can emphasize aspects of their brand that are mostly unrelated to the quality of the spirit in the bottle- for example every Texas-produced spirit puts it front-and-center on the labels, because Texas is a big state where people like to buy local.
But there’s only so much of a market out there for artisanal bourbon made with local grain that was aged in local wood casks if that bourbon doesn’t match up to the big boys’ offerings. I mean, I’ve had a fair amount of craft distilled stuff, but most of the time it’s not better enough to warrant the higher price. For example, I like Bluecoat gin, which is made in Philadelphia, and I like the Leopold Bros gins as well. But I don’t like them enough to pay more for them than say… Beefeater or Boodles. Same thing with other spirits- I’ve had several local-ish rums that are good, but they’re not worth the premium versus say… Cruzan or Mount Gay.
Mostly agreed. I sampled a handful of smaller-production bourbons for a while, but I’ve found myself generally settling back on a few big-name old favorites. That said, I vastly prefer overproof bourbon to the 80-90 stuff, and I appreciate that the “boutique” products seem to have made a few more affordable 90-100 proof bottles show up on the market.
I will say there’s a distinction to be made between boutique brands, which are often just generic-ish spirits with a nice label, and actual craft distillers who are fully controlling their entire production in house. There’s a few of the latter in my area. My absolute favorite gin is a craft product, and worth the extra cost to me. And the other two produce some products with unique flavorings that I enjoy having access to. The blackcurrant all-corn moonshine liqueur I got at a Wisconsin craft distillery is a particularly fun little bottle.
I suspect the real trick will be to make VERY local products that express some of the terroir from the ingredients and/or processes. Like say… a bourbon made from local corn, rye and wheat, and aged at the distillery in barrels made from locally grown oak. Or maybe a gin made from local fermentables, and using locally grown herbs. Or maybe eau-de-vie made from local fruits.
I’m not sure though, if that kind of thing is actually perceptible though; it could well be that it’s too subtle to notice, and it becomes another marketing exercise.
I imagine it’s harder for non base spirits too; most of those have brands that are THE standard of their type- Cointreau triple-sec, Amaretto di Saronno, Luxardo Maraschino, Kahlua coffee liqueur, Bailey’s Irish cream, Chartreuse, and so forth. Going up against them isn’t so much putting out another example of the style, but rather trying to either displace the dominant brand, or fighting for the scraps left over by them. I mean, I imagine it’s not that hard to make a good coffee liqueur, but when people think coffee liqueur, they think Kahlua, and not your product. So you have a choice of trying to encroach on Kahlua, or fighting lesser brands (often at a lesser price point) like “Kamora”. Either way, it’s not a winning proposition.