9 min read
Here is a question that comes up every time the market softens, usually from someone smart looking at the category from the outside. New-fill barrels are going for a fraction of what they cost a few years ago. Shelf prices on the finished bottles...
4 min read
Ask a whiskey operator to name the risks to their brand and you will get a predictable list. The liquid might not be good enough. The price might be wrong. The story might not land. Demand might soften. Every one of those is real, and every one of...
4 min read
The whiskey and spirits industry has never had a shortage of content. What it has a shortage of is signal.
5 min read
The bourbon glut story has gone fully mainstream. It is in the Wall Street Journal. It is in hospitality industry newsletters. It is moving through LinkedIn feeds alongside Airbnb travel data and restaurant color trends. The headline writes itself:...
7 min read
On April 30, 2026, President Trump announced the removal of the 10% tariff on Scotch whisky imports to the United States. He posted it on Truth Social, framed it as a personal gesture to King Charles III and Queen Camilla following their state visit...
3 min read
For most of the last decade, whiskey brands were rewarded for moving quickly. If you had good liquid, a credible story, and enough capital to get to shelf, the market usually absorbed the rest. Demand covered timing mistakes. Distribution smoothed...
7 min read
The announcements came in close succession. Jim Beam paused production at its main Clermont campus for all of 2026. MGP followed, idling Lux Row Distillers in Bardstown and Limestone Branch in Lebanon starting May 1, for up to twelve months. Diageo...
5 min read
There is a number that does not get talked about enough in whiskey circles: the monthly count of new label approvals coming out of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). It is not a glamorous data point. But tracked over time, it works...
5 min read
The spirits industry's biggest story just got more complicated. Two weeks after Pernod Ricard and Brown-Forman confirmed they were in active merger discussions, Bloomberg reported last week that Sazerac has entered the picture with its own approach....
2 min read
RTD companies, wine brands, and lifestyle spirits labels are filing whiskey COLAs in growing numbers. Trade press tends to frame this as a vote of confidence in the category. The more useful read is simpler: barrel economics have shifted...
