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The Revived Rosebank Opens To Public This June

Ian MacLeod Distillers has announced that the revived Rosebank Distillery will open to the public on June 7, 2024. Rosebank is a Lowland distillery, set on the Forth and Clyde Canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The distillery was mothballed in 1993; the state reason at the time was an estimated £2m upgrade to its wastewater …

Ian MacLeod Distillers has announced that the revived Rosebank Distillery will open to the public on June 7, 2024.

Rosebank is a Lowland distillery, set on the Forth and Clyde Canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The distillery was mothballed in 1993; the state reason at the time was an estimated £2m upgrade to its wastewater treatment equipment was uneconomical. Various parts of the property were sold over the years, with the bonded warehouse becoming a pub and the maltings demolished and redeveloped into housing. Metal thieves made off with the stills and much of the distillery equipment. Ian MacLeod bought the property in 2017, and successfully restarted production there last year.

Is Kentucky’s Bourbon Business Really That Rosy?

New Economic Numbers And Tax Breaks Leave More Questions Than Answers By Richard Thomas February saw the release of a key economic report from the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA), the trade group that represents the Commonwealth’s bourbon industry. The statistics presented in the report were held up as a cause for celebration, billed as a …

New Economic Numbers And Tax Breaks Leave More Questions Than Answers

By Richard Thomas

Heaven Hill rickhouse near Bardstown, Kentucky
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

February saw the release of a key economic report from the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA), the trade group that represents the Commonwealth’s bourbon industry. The statistics presented in the report were held up as a cause for celebration, billed as a picture of the Kentucky bourbon industry going from triumph to triumph, and its release was attended by leaders from both the state government and the bourbon industry.

“Kentucky’s economy is booming, and the Bourbon industry is helping us build a strong economy for generations to come,” said Gov. Andy Beshear. “Today, this signature industry is generating $9 billion in total economic impact, with more on the way. We thank our distilleries for working hard to create more good jobs and boosting our tourism industry across the Commonwealth.”

I’m loathe to disagree with Andy Beshear, especially as both he and his father before him are/were outstanding governors for the bourbon industry. That said, I command a long memory and have some graduate-level economics courses under my belt, two characteristics that led me to some questions over the report that occasioned those remarks. Chief among those questions is “is this data as good as it seems” and “what about the salient issues for Kentuckians not discussed by the KDA?”

Old Forester’s signature is its in-house cooperage
(Credit: Brown-Forman)

Kentucky Bourbon As A $9 Billion Industry
The headline statistic in the new data is that Kentucky bourbon is now a $9 billion industry. Mind you, that does not mean it generates $9 billion in sales or profits; it means the industry has a $9 billion economic footprint. This is keeping it in tandem with Scotch Whisky, the other leading whiskey industry in the world (Scotch was estimated to have a £7.1 billion footprint in 2022), and makes bourbon one of the state’s most important industries. That number also represents the growth of Kentucky bourbon, but how much growth?

When I first started The Whiskey Reviewer twelve years ago, that KDA figure for the bourbon industry was $8 billion. For the last several years, that figure has been $8.5 billion. Now it has reached $9 billion, and over that time the industry has grown from having fewer than twenty active distilleries in the state to “100 distilling locations operated by around 84 companies in Kentucky,” representing a fivefold increase since 2009. Most of those new distilleries are craft-scale, but some are medium-sized enterprises (New Riff, Rabbit Hole, Wilderness Trail) and at least one is large (Bardstown Bourbon Company).

Another factor, one that shouldn’t require a long memory to recall, is the recent inflationary cycle. That spike of inflation ran from 2020 to 2023, with an overall rate of 6.7% during that period. Roughly speaking, for three years inflation ran triple to what it had been for the whole of the 21st Century, and those three years cover the majority of the time since the previous report on the scope of the Kentucky bourbon industry. Some simple math indicates that the half billion dollar growth tracked by the KDA (more or less) corresponds with inflation.

The old farmhouse at Wilderness Trail
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Knowing that, I was surprised the new figure wasn’t higher, but that is as far as this exercise in being informed enough to exercise a little critical thinking go. Whether that is because inflation ate up the value of the industry’s growth or because growth has been slowing, I can’t say, but it certainly does not represent an inflation-adjusted surge of strong growth that one might have expected.

Bourbon, Taxes And The Bluegrass
As part of the new report, the KDA touted the 2023 passage of House Bill 5 (HB5), Kentucky’s infamous barrel tax. That is a 0.05% property tax on whiskey aging in warehouses (1/9 of the 0.45% tax on other forms of tangible property), and is the only tax of its kind in the US. The tax will now be gradually phased out between 2026 and 2043. In 2022, the Kentucky bourbon industry paid over $40 million in barrel taxes, and the industry has long claimed the tax is an anti-competitive hindrance to their industry.

The industry may be right, in that they are paying a tax that no one else in the United States must pay, but on a global level the truth of that statement is less clear. Every country has its own unique tax and regulatory quirks, and comparing them is often a matter of apples and oranges, or apples and pears at best. Certainly few have considered paying the tax so strong an impediment as to prevent them from a whiskey-making business in Kentucky, as witnessed by the boom in new distillery starts this last decade and the absence of any whiskey company picking up and moving out of the state.

The reason why only Kentucky has this tax is two-fold: the tax was enacted in the 1940s and ever since Kentucky has the nation’s largest whiskey industry, and its largest by a huge margin. Also, the state is home to large and influential groups of Protestant teetotallers. An old axiom in the state is those folks don’t want liquor sold in their counties, but they are more than happy to collect taxes from the whiskey business.

Barrel taxes are used to fund the schools, police, fire and other services in the counties they are collected from, and rural counties in particular are heavily dependent to fund their essential functions. In the run-up to the passage of HB5, this issue was often simplified into counties that were home to distilleries and those that hosted only bourbon warehouses. It was presumed the former would be fine, since the distilleries provided dozens or hundreds of permanent jobs. The latter would suffer upon losing the barrel tax because it was the only revenue they derived from the industry, because warehouses create fewer jobs and those are often not permanently assigned to a given storage property in any case. Indeed, many county officials from these warehouse-only counties said losing the barrel tax would make the bourbon industry a fiscal parasite on their communities, since they would still be stuck holding the bill for the wear and tear on their roads caused by barrel-hauling trucks and the additional fire protection the warehouses require.

Maker’s Mark, still one of the prettiest distilleries in Kentucky
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

The reality, however, is worse than that. Marion County is home to Maker’s Mark, Limestone Branch and the cooperage Independent Stave Company, so the bourbon industry creates plenty of permanent jobs there. Yet the barrel tax represents 70% of the budget for the county seat of Loretto. Leaders like Marion County Judge Executive David Daugherty question why the industry needs tax relief when it has been experiencing record growth and investment for the last several years, and he has a point. Again, those of us with long memories can fairly posit that a better time for tax relief might have been during the Whiskey Bust of the 1970s and 1980s.

Besides, HB5 is that this is only the latest tax break received by the bourbon industry during the modern Bourbon Boom. A previous measure was passed in 2014. Since that measure was passed, most Kentucky distillers haven’t even been paying the full barrel tax each year.

I think the real divide is between rural and urban or suburban counties. Places like Woodford, Jefferson and Boone counties have a far larger and more diversified tax base than Anderson, Bullit or Marion counties. I suspect in the long run, something will be done to bail out the counties losing their barrel money, if for no other reason than the statehouse is dominated by Republicans, and those rural counties are where the Republican voters live. Yet what that means in practice is that barrel tax will de facto be paid by other taxpayers in the state.

Kentucky corn farming
(Credit: CraneStation/Wikimedia Commons/CC By 2.0)

Asking Questions
One of the problems with looking at these issues is just how many variables contribute to them. For example, those same rural counties that complain about losing the barrel tax are home to farms that grow the corn that is ravenously consumed by the bourbon industry or feed their cattle for free off the spent grain waste of the distilling process. Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Shell said, “Kentucky farmers sold nearly 19 million bushels of corn and 2.6 million bushels of other grains to Kentucky distillers last year. The economic effects on our industry are building a stronger agricultural community for years to come.”

I don’t pretend to have all the data, let alone all the answers. But as I wrote at the beginning, I have sufficient insight to look at all this and be left scratching my head. Some years ago, the Bourbon Boom was attended by the constant question of “yes, it’s all very well and good, but when and how will the good times end?” I don’t hear that worry much anymore, but looking at these numbers, perhaps I should be. It looks more like a relative (emphasis on that word “relative”) slowdown than a continued surge. And as a Kentuckian, I can’t help but wonder if there won’t be a sales hike tax coming in the 2030s to offset the loss of barrel tax revenue for those bourbon industry counties that find they can’t pay to fix their roads anymore.

EU Postpones Reimposing Whiskey Tariff

By Richard Thomas Distilleries great and small in America were granted more than a year of space to breath easy, as the European Union and the US agreed to postpone scheduled retaliatory tariffs on each others products for another 15 months. This smoldering trade dispute dates back to the Trump Administration, which slapped tariffs on …

By Richard Thomas

Distilleries great and small in America were granted more than a year of space to breath easy, as the European Union and the US agreed to postpone scheduled retaliatory tariffs on each others products for another 15 months.

This smoldering trade dispute dates back to the Trump Administration, which slapped tariffs on European-made steel and aluminum in 2018. The EU responded with tariffs on selected US products, such as motorcycles and power boats. Whiskey was also on the list, widely perceived at the time as a means of applying pressure to then-US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hails from America’s top whiskey-making state of Kentucky.

The problem with trade wars is they don’t simply go away, even when governments change and both sides agree that they should. As The Whiskey Reviewer reported at the time, the trade war did not result in lower prices for whiskey or an easing of certain scarcity issues in the US. Instead, all it accomplished was the ruination of whiskey industry export plans for large and small producers alike.

Biden won the election just in time to prevent the EU from implementing a mandated doubling of the retaliatory tariff to 50%, and talks on resolving the underlying dispute over aluminum and steel have continued ever since. The US replaced the tariffs with an import quota system in 2022, which the EU saw as an improvement, but complained still resulted in European producers paying over $250 million in unfair import duties annually. By postponing the return to retaliatory tariffs, the EU has signaled it wants negotiations to continue, and 15 months places the new deadline after the US 2024 general election.

Dave McCabe Made Master Blender At Irish Distillers

Irish Distillers, producer of Jameson, Powers and Redbreast, today announces the appointment of Billy Leighton to Master Blender Emeritus as Dave McCabe steps into his predecessor’s role as the new Master Blender at Irish Distillers. Billy will remain at the business supporting Irish Distillers’ brands as Master Blender Emeritus following an incredible 47-year career at …

Billy will remain at the business supporting Irish Distillers’ brands as Master Blender Emeritus following an incredible 47-year career at Irish Distillers. Billy originally started as a trainee accountant, in the then Irish Distillers owned Old Bushmills Distillery in County Antrim. He then moved into production, working in a variety of roles across bottling, warehousing, maturation and blending before being appointed Master Blender at Midleton Distillery in 2004.

As blender, Dave McCabe has spent several years working closely with Billy gaining experience, knowledge and an in depth understanding into the art of blending. Dave joined the business in 2010 and held several roles, including Irish Whiskey Academy Tutor, International Whiskey Ambassador and Process Technologist, before being appointed Blender in 2018.

Leighton said, “I have spent most of my working life at Irish Distillers, and I am truly grateful for the opportunities my job and this business has afforded me. While I will be stepping down from the Master Blender role, I will not be stepping away from the business and I look forward to embracing my Master Blender Emeritus role, working with brand teams on special launches. I would like to take this time to wish a much-respected colleague and friend, Dave McCabe, the very best as he takes the Master Blender baton and I look forward to continuing to work with him. Dave and I have worked closely together for years and really enjoy our collaborations. I’ve seen first-hand his passion, expertise and knowledge that will ensure he is a fantastic Master Blender. Our whiskeys are in great hands.”

The Coppersmith You’ve Never Heard Of Is Also The Oldest

By Richard Thomas For many whiskey enthusiasts, the beauty of a gleaming copper still takes on a certain romantic allure. That is true whether the enthusiast loves bourbon or Scotch and whether the still is a column or a pot, just so long as it polished. I took to calling photos of these lovely pieces …

By Richard Thomas

Abercrombie’s handiwork at Mortlach
(Credit: Chris McAuley/CC BY-SA 2.0/Wikimedia Commons)

For many whiskey enthusiasts, the beauty of a gleaming copper still takes on a certain romantic allure. That is true whether the enthusiast loves bourbon or Scotch and whether the still is a column or a pot, just so long as it polished. I took to calling photos of these lovely pieces of machinery “copper porn” a long time ago.

Most of those copper-enthralled folks can tell you the names of one or both of the major coppersmiths in the business of making those stills: Vendome in Kentucky and Forsyths in Scotland. Some might know the names of some of the other well-established players in copper still fabrication, like Hoga in Portugal and Spain and CARL in Germany. Beyond these four, the world whisky boom has caused copper fabricators to sprout like mushrooms, especially in the United States.

But one Scottish major still-maker often goes unremarked on, which is especially strange when one considers who they work on: Brora, Caol Ila, Cardhu, Cragganmore, Dalwhinnie, Knockando, Lagavulin and Mortlach, just to name several. Not only does this Scottish coppersmithy work on some of the most esteemed stills in the world, but they are also perhaps the oldest of the major copperworking firms, and certainly the oldest in Scotland. Forsyths opened in 1890 and Vendome in 1910, but this company traces its roots back to 1790.

Their name is Abercrombie, and the reason you’ve probably never heard of them is they have been part of the global drinks giant Diageo for years. Some distilleries whisky companies have in-house coppersmiths as well as in-house coopers; The Balvenie, for example, has a resident coppersmith. Diageo, however, owns 28 malt distilleries plus their grain whisky distillery at Cameronbridge. Their demands are a thing unto themselves, so they acquired Scotland’s most venerable firm to address them.

This doesn’t quite explain why Abercrombie has such a low profile, though. Brown-Forman maintains two cooperages: one in Louisville, plus a new one in Alabama just for Jack Daniel’s. That Brown-Forman makes their own barrels hardly keeps these facilities on the down-low, far from it. Nevertheless, because no one spoke of Abercrombie in the same way that they revere Forsyths, I remained unaware of their existence for years, with the first peep in the media about them being in 2015 when they marked 50 years at their present Alloa location, and again in 2017 when Abercrombie hired its the first female apprentice.

The way Diageo does business leaves most observers scratching their heads. Abercrombie got some mentions when the conglomerate announced it was going to reopen the legendary Brora Distillery, because the coppersmiths would obviously be doing the work in rehabilitating the plant’s signature equipment. But when Diageo decided to get back into Irish whiskey with Roe & Co., mum was the word about Abercrombie building the triple set of stills going to Dublin. This despite the obvious fact that, being based in Dublin, thousands of tourists would potentially see them every year. The only photos of Roe & Co.’s equipment as it was being made that I could find were from a blog on Prohibition University. When I searched the Diageo corporate website for this article, “Abercrombie” scored just two hits, and one of those was irrelevant.

So, I suppose it follows that Diageo doesn’t use the romance of the copper and the people who work it to the extent that an independent firm, like Forsyths, would. Abercrombie no longer needs to advertise its work, and it is easy to imagine that Diageo views them as something like a department of engineering or maintenance (albeit a highly specialized department), not as something to incorporate into their marketing and storytelling. The latter is a dreadful oversight, of course. As any true whisky fan can tell you: copper is romantic.

More News of Whiskey Misconduct In 2023

By Richard Thomas Earlier this year, bourbon fans on both sides of the United States were rocked by news of alleged corruption, in what was the biggest news of its kind since Pappygate. In February, it was revealed that managers of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) had been under investigation for several years …

By Richard Thomas

Justins’ House of Bourbon in Lexington
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Earlier this year, bourbon fans on both sides of the United States were rocked by news of alleged corruption, in what was the biggest news of its kind since Pappygate. In February, it was revealed that managers of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) had been under investigation for several years for abusing their authority. The month before, Justins’ House of Bourbon, one of the leaders in the field of dealing in collectable bourbon, saw its facilities in Kentucky and Washington, DC raided by local authorities, amid rumors of selling fakes and illegally re-importing Blanton’s Bourbon. After the passing of several months, it is time to revisit these cases and review developments.

Corruption At The OLCC?
An Oregon state investigation unveiled in February 2023 alleged that top managers at the OLCC had been using their authority in what is an alcohol control state to divert bottles of rare liquor, most infamously Pappy Van Winkle, to themselves. Oregon is one of America’s 17 liquor control states, where the state government serves as distributor and store retailer. Therefore, in Oregon it is the state that receives the allocation of scarce whiskeys available to the state as a whole, and the OLCC directs where those bottles go. OLCC leadership, including Executive Director Steve Marks, are alleged to have diverted the rare bottles to particular stores at times they could go in and pick them up, easily acquiring them and paying regular retail prices instead of inflated market values. Although definitely not theft, it is clearly the kind of abuse of authority that should make an Oregon bourbon enthusiast’s blood boil.

Marks and other managers at OLCC resigned, with Marks being replaced just eight days later. Also coming to issue in February 2023 was the new OLCC headquarters and warehouse construction project, which had reportedly ballooned over its projected cost by 133%. That could be explained by the rapid escalation in the costs for materials and labor in the construction industry during the Pandemic, but the story added another layer to the existing tale of corruption at the OLCC.

(Credit: Kurt Maitland)

In July, Marks filed a lawsuit against Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, alleging that he was wrongfully forced to resign due to the influence of local cannabis business interests. In August, the state cancelled the plans to build the new headquarters that Marks was overseeing as head of the OLCC, and will instead move the organization to vacant office space it has in Salem. The warehouse project will go ahead. There is no news on if criminal charges are being pursued against the OLCC’s managers, and Oregon authorities would not comment on that investigation.

House of Bourbon Partly Cleared, But Only Partly
Justins’ House of Bourbon is a popular destination for travelers on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, with their stores in Lexington and Louisville being the best known area retailers for collectable bottles of American whiskey. They also run an online retailer from Washington, DC called Bourbon Outfitter. In a shocking development, they were simultaneously raided in Kentucky and Washington, DC in January.

One of the Justins of Justins’ House of Bourbon is Justin Thompson, who in addition to co-ownership of that company is owner of Bourbon Review magazine and co-owner Belle’s Cocktail House in Lexington.

In May, the Washington, DC end of the case was seemingly closed. Although the company had been re-importing Blanton’s Bourbon from Europe for sale (at a considerable mark-up from MSRP) in the U.S., they had not been doing so illegally. According to reports, the matter ultimately boiled down to some fines for improper record keeping.

Some news coverage of events on the Washington, DC end of the case wrongly implied that Justins’ House of Bourbon had been fully cleared of all serious wrong-doing, which was not the case. In August, the Kentucky end of the story took a step forward, lodging a complaint against the company alleging multiple violations of the law regulating the sale of vintage spirits and liquor regulations generally. The former law legalizes the resale of liquor in private hands to retail vendors, since it is normally illegal for a private person to sell liquor to anyone. Those violations include failure to label vintage spirits as required, purchasing non-vintage spirits, purchasing excessive amounts of vintage spirits from single sellers, and illegal transport of spirits across state lines (between Kentucky and their Washington, DC branches). The latter was to enable the shipping of spirits, contrary to Kentucky state law.

Justins’ House of Bourbon was offered a settlement, whereby they would admit to their violations and pay a $60,000 fine, but retain their licenses and continue to do business in the state. However, it seems they didn’t take the settlement, and now the Kentucky Department of Alcohol Beverage Control is seeking to revoke the company’s liquor licenses. The case is widely seen as the groundbreaking first test of Kentucky’s vintage spirits law, passed in 2017.

Whiskey Fungus: That Perpetual And Pesky Problem

Whiskey Fungus Has Been Around For As Long As Spirits Have Been Aged, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse By Richard Thomas Earlier this year, whiskey fungus got back into national headlines, this time in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Even though the 35,000 residents of the rural Lincoln County love Jack Daniel’s Distillery, in the way …

Whiskey Fungus Has Been Around For As Long As Spirits Have Been Aged, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse

By Richard Thomas

This house in France is stained with not whiskey, but cognac fungus! Same species, though.
(Credit: JLPC/Wikimedia Commons/CC by-SA 3.0)

Earlier this year, whiskey fungus got back into national headlines, this time in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Even though the 35,000 residents of the rural Lincoln County love Jack Daniel’s Distillery, in the way that one can adore their biggest employer and tourist draw, at least some residents have apparently had enough of the black fungus that accompanies whiskey distilling growing all over the outside of buildings in the county.

Stories of this type are a regular feature of whiskey news, and the black fungus itself is nothing new. Baudoinia compniacensis is a type of fungus that feasts on alcohol vapor, and because the stuff is heat and light resistant, it can be found growing on the outside of buildings all around wherever spirits are stored, as well as other kinds of infrastructre and even plants. A whiskey rickhouse, which could hold over one hundred thousand gallons of high proof liquor, is constantly evaporating alcohol. If it isn’t moving and it is next to a whiskey warehouse, more than likely the fungus will take root and make that thing look dingy.

This evaporation is often called the Angel’s Share, but alcohol vapor is heavier than air, so it disperses at what could be described street level rather than up into the atmosphere. It would be better to call it the community share, rather than the Angel’s Share. That is because if there is enough vapor or the distillery’s warehouses has neighbors, those neighbors will get an unwelcome share of the dirty-looking fungus.

Buffalo Trace Distillery, stained with fungus
(Credit: Joana Thomas)

Shively, the suburb of Louisville that has long been the urban center of the bourbon industry, has been coated with whiskey fungus for so long that many lifetime residents simply take it for granted. Shively is like many communities with a whiskey fungus problem, though, which is to say that at least some of the people living there are taking the whiskey companies to court over the fungus.

The fungus isn’t harmful to humans, and doesn’t do any damage to structures beyond the purely cosmetic. Treatment with bleach solutions or cleaning with pressure washers takes care of the fungus problem, at least temporarily. It’s also a long establish nuisance that accompanies aging spirits wherever they can be found. What has changed, at least insofar as whiskey in America is two-fold.

First, more spirits are being made in the US that ever before, so the major distillers of Kentucky and Tennessee are building ever more warehouses for storing and aging their whiskeys. That means more vapor, but perhaps more importantly, more vapor in areas that had never seen it before. In Kentucky, you might find a complex of bourbon rickhouses under construction down the road from a commercial retail zone or a residential suburb. In a major city, perhaps that old disused factory has had part of its space turned into a whiskey warehouse by the craft distillery located in the next neighborhood.

The other reason is the same issue, but working in the other direction: people moving into places where the whiskey warehouses already were, and then discovering the fungus problem a few years later. To see how both problems interact, one should simply drive around Anderson, Franklin and Woodford counties in Kentucky. Six large and mid-sized distilleries are found in this area, and as much as the bourbon industry has boomed there, so has the local population. Woodford County was already an exurb of Lexington, and the last decade has seen the population grow by 7%. Franklin and Anderson counties have had growth rates in the lower teens over the same period.

Fungus at Blair Athol in Scotland
(Credit: Bernt Rostad/Wikimedia Commmons/CC by 2.0)

Federal law is clear that a distillery can vent evaporating alcohol into the atmosphere, so there is nothing technically polluting about this issue. That still leaves a distilling industry open to civil actions due to damages, however.

Even though the fungus doesn’t eat through wood, stone or vinyl, and isn’t harmful to people, home owners might still have a legitimate grievance in the form of reduced property values. I would argue that if you move into a brand new suburb next to an existing whiskey distillery, your gripes about the dingy fungus on your house should be directed at the developer behind the project for not informing you about a relevant defect. But if a distillery builds a rickhouse next to your home, and you suddenly need to start pressure washing it every few years to keep the fungus under control, then you might have a case.

Some distillers in other industries rectify their alcohol emissions with the use of a thermal oxidizer, which eliminates the vapor. However, estimates suggest installing one of these systems on a typical Tennessee or Kentucky rickhouse would cost $400,000 each. I suspect we won’t see the whiskey industry adopting this technology until doing so becomes cheaper than paying out settlements or judgements, and the whiskey fungus lawsuits are all on just square one or two.

How Whiskey Impacts The Brain

People tend to drink alcohol to have fun and feel better. That’s why many people drink in social situations to enhance their experience. It’s even a behavioral expectation within a community, such as a sign of respect toward a superior at work. It can also serve as a coping mechanism. It’s one of the …

(Credit: Image by freepic.diller on Freepik)

It can also serve as a coping mechanism. It’s one of the go-to drinks to forget a painful experience, vent out feelings and frustrations that are otherwise hard to say sober, or fall asleep easier.

This article will focus on how alcohol affects the brain and how whiskey, in particular, supports brain health.

Defining Alcohol

“Alcohol” is the short-term for an alcoholic beverage. It also goes by the names “alcoholic drink,” “strong drink,” “adult beverage,” or simply a “drink.” It’s categorized based on how they’re produced, as follows:

Fermented – for example, wine and beer
Fortified – drinks with added spirits after fermentation, usually in wines
Liqueurs – combining spirits with spices, fruits, sugars, and cream
Distilled – vaporizing alcohol, then cooling or condensing it

People often get confused with spirits (also referred to as hard liquor) and alcohol. They’re similar but different. All spirits, such as calvados, are alcoholic. However, not all alcoholic drinks are spirits. For example, beer is an alcoholic drink but not a spirit.

Spirits are often made via distillation. It first works with fermented liquids as a base, then separates the drinks by boiling and condensing them, increasing alcohol content. The main types of spirits are brandy, gin, rum, tequila, vodka, and whiskey. All have a higher alcohol content than other drinks, which means they have a greater effect on the body.

Most alcoholic drinks contain ethanol. It’s a type of alcohol that acts like a drug. Specifically, acute ethanol intake from alcoholic drinks causes central nervous system (CNS) depression, leading to euphoria, slurred speech, impaired sensory, impaired judgment, impaired motor skills, and uninhibited behavior, which are all common symptoms of being drunk.

How Does Alcohol Affect the Brain?

The CNS is made up of the brain and spinal cord. Between the two, the brain is the most affected by alcohol intoxication. It’s so delicate and intricate that it requires a “careful balance” of neurotransmitters (the body’s chemical messengers) to function properly.

However, alcohol blocks the neurons (the cells that use neurotransmitters to transmit signals within the body). This leads to common immediate symptoms of CNS depression or alcohol intoxication that were mentioned earlier.

If alcohol intake becomes long-term, the brain adapts to the blocked signals to compensate for the effects of alcohol by over-activating certain neurotransmitters. This continues even after alcohol leaves the system, which causes painful and potentially detrimental withdrawal symptoms that can hurt brain cells. This damage can be worsened by drinking binges and sudden withdrawal.

The damage of alcohol to the brain can take several forms, such as :

Neurotoxicity – This happens when neurons overreact to neurotransmitters after being exposed to them for a long time, which causes the former to burn out. Neurons make up the pathways between various brain parts, so if they burn out, these pathways will have slow reactions. In other words, there will be a delay in people’s reactions, such as slurred speech or sluggish movements.
Brain matter damage – Besides pathway damage, heavy alcohol use damages the brain matter (the two sides of the brain) and causes “brain shrinkage.” Specifically, it reduces the volume of gray matter (made of cell bodies) and white matter ( made of nerve fibers or cell pathways) over time.

These damages cause observable issues on:

Verbal fluency
Verbal learning
Processing speed
Working memory
Attention
Problem-solving
Spatial processing
Impulsivity

Adolescents are especially susceptible to long-lasting or permanent cognitive deficits and damage since their brains are still developing. People with malnutrition, especially a vitamin B deficiency, are also at risk of these consequences.

Regardless of age, these impairments grow worse without proper treatment. For example, they can potentially develop into alcohol-related dementia or, worse, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which may result in amnesia or coma if left untreated.

However, note that these consequences will only occur if one drinks alcohol excessively. Although alcohol is a neurotoxin, several studies have shown that “moderate consumption” may provide some health benefits.

Cognitive Benefits of Whiskey

When it comes to “healthy alcoholic drinks,” wines usually come first into people’s minds. However, many other drinks can do the same, such as whiskey. In fact, an increasing number of studies show that a moderate whiskey intake can support the brain.

Here are the proven benefits of a moderate intake of whiskey:

Maintain brain equilibrium – The plant-based antioxidants in whisky maintain a healthy chemical balance in the brain.
Improves short-term memory retention – The same antioxidants can increase the activities of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the neurotransmitter responsible for nervous system function and memory. In other words, whiskey can help keep the mind active and aid in memory retention.
Prolongs the onset of dementia – Those antioxidants can also reduce the risk of and even prevent developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Final Thoughts

Always drink responsibly. This means drinking alcohol moderately, typically a drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. Heavy or chronic drinking, on the other hand, means three drinks per day or seven drinks per week for women and four drinks per day or 14 drinks per week for men. Avoiding excessive drinking means avoiding facing severe health consequences.

Not Every Sourced Brand Comes From MGP These Days

By Richard Thomas Some ideas die slow, hard deaths, and as recently as last year I found myself reading yet another magazine article warning consumers that their bottle of supposedly craft whiskey really came from the big distillery in Indiana, MGP. Moreover, I continue to hear this notion virtually every time I engage with enthusiasts, …

By Richard Thomas

James E. Pepper 1776 Rye
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Some ideas die slow, hard deaths, and as recently as last year I found myself reading yet another magazine article warning consumers that their bottle of supposedly craft whiskey really came from the big distillery in Indiana, MGP. Moreover, I continue to hear this notion virtually every time I engage with enthusiasts, and read it fairly regularly from bloggers.

This notion is so pervasive and embedded that it leads to some seriously mistaken conclusions. James E. Pepper Distillery, located just a mile from my home, recently launched a bottled in bond rye whiskey. Some have claimed that rye is made with the same stock as the their flagship 1776 rye whiskey. While that 1776 Rye has always been sourced through MGP, the bonded rye is entirely in-house, so this claim is quite erroneous. Slightly more understandable, but just as ill-informed, is the belief that every 95% rye, 5% malted barley mash bill rye whiskey is made at MGP; these days, an increasing number of such whiskeys are made by other distillers, either as follow ons for their previously MGP-sourced brands or chasing the flavor profile of what is a ubiquitous style of rye whiskey.

Admittedly, there was a good reason for believing this generality, even if it was never entirely true. As the Bourbon Boom gained breakneck momentum during the 2010s, one Kentucky Major after another withdrew from the business of trading stock whiskey (i.e. aged and held in stock). Excepting Heaven Hill, the big distillers in Kentucky were often reticent about dealing in stock whiskey, so who provided what to whom was always a guessing game. Nonetheless, demand pressures on their own brands meant they stopped selling stocks and let existing contracts come to a close. That left MGP, a major distillery with a large stock of aging and aged whiskey, but no brands of its own to feed, as the one of the very few games in town… although, as shall be detailed below, never the sole game. Yet by the end of the decade, some major competitors were already entering the scene, as well as several dozen minor ones.

James E. Pepper Bottled in Bond Rye is NOT from MGP
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Moreover, MGP themselves decided to get fully into the game as a brand-holder, not merely as a supplier. The company renamed the Lawrenceburg, Indiana distillery Ross & Squibb, and began acquiring brands that were sourced through their distillery. The single largest example of this was the buy-out of Luxco (which brought with it the Lux Row Distillery in Kentucky), and just two months ago they announced the acquisition of Penelope Bourbon.

This development of MGP’s status has led to two major changes in the business of sourced whiskey in America. First, it’s not accurate to describe brands that were once made with MGP’s whiskeys, but now belong to the company (such as Rebel Yell and Minor Case) as being “sourced.” Also, brands relying on MGP contracts must now contend with their supplier also being a competitor.

Alberta Distillers
Underlining how ignorant it is to assume that any sourced rye must come from MGP is that a handful of the most established brands in rye whiskey are based on 100% rye sourced from Canada. Alberta Distillers were the source behind the original 10 Year Old iteration of Whistlepig. Also coming out of Alberta are Masterson’s, 35 Maple Street, Jefferson’s 10 Year Old, Lock Stock and Barrel and Pendleton, and that isn’t including the distillery’s in-house brands. Alberta Distillers are clearly secondary to MGP as a supplier of rye whiskey to sourced brands in terms of number of brands served, but a lot of those expressions have age statements of 10 to 16 years, so their presence in the mature and middle aged end of the spectrum is quite outsized.

Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBCo)

Bardstown Bourbon Company
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

The most important development in the business of sourcing whiskey in America was the start of production at Bardstown Bourbon Company in 2016. Although the company has its own brand, the core of its business model is to provide contract production and maturation services for other brands, with a secondary role as offering a “home” visitor center for those brands. It seems like there is at least one new rickhouse under construction whenever I even so much as drive past the distillery, located outside Bardstown on the Martha Lane Collins Parkway; repeated expansions has raised the distillery’s output to the point where I place it among the ten largest distillers in Kentucky; and last year the company was making over four dozen distinct whiskeys for more than three dozen customers.

New Riff Distillery And Others
Compared to BBCo, New Riff is less a challenger to MGP than an example of just how many minor market challenges could be out there, because once upon a time they were engaged in contract production for Rabbit Hole Bourbon. Moreover, the whiskey New Riff was making for Rabbit Hole was one of those not-MGP 95% ryes I referred to earlier. Now that Rabbit Hole is operational and making its own products since 2018, that makes two medium-sized distillers that are making their own 95% rye. Somewhat ironic is that New Riff got started with OKI, a bourbon brand sourced through MGP.

Rabbit Hole’s old rye
(Credit: Rabbit Hole Distilling)

It’s unknown whether New Riff is still engaged in contract production today, and their attitude towards their work for Rabbit Hole is best described as “neither confirm or deny.” This is an important consideration for industry watchers, since we know many distillers in the small and medium-sized classes probably have “time” available on their production equipment, and want customers to fill that time until demand for their in-house products catches up with their capacities. Most of these contracts aren’t secrets, but they aren’t publicized either.

For example, I know that Fresh Bourbon made at least their initial product through a contract with Hartfield & Company, a small distillery in Paris, Kentucky, but only because I was there for the launch of Fresh Bourbon and spoke with all concerned. It’s an example of both how some contract production is done on a small scale and not widely announced, so not necessarily every “made in Indiana” whiskey comes from MGP.

Those Folks In Tullahoma
Like Alberta Distillers, an unnamed distillery in Tullahoma, Tennessee has been providing a steady supply of aged bourbon for many brands. Fans of Barrell Bourbon have long been familiar with this unnamed Tullahoma distillery, which could only possibly be Cascade Hollow (home of George Dickel), as it has been one of the company’s two principal suppliers.

The only difference between George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey and a Tennessee bourbon made at the same place is the Lincoln County Process. Presumably, parent company Diageo ordered Dickel to begin producing and laying up bourbon in stock for use in other products, and some of that stock has since appeared in sourced, independent brands.

Four Roses Has Ten Recipes, And Now You Can Try All Of Them

(Credit: Mark Jackson/Four Roses)

As more people are discovering the world of spirits, to the point that liquor now outperforms beer, some drinkers are looking for brands to be more forthcoming on their production methods and what exactly it is they are drinking. Enter Four Roses, a brand that most bourbon drinkers are already likely familiar with. Four Roses has virtually no secrets when it comes to it’s production methods, having offered up all the details on how it makes ten different bourbons using two different mash bills (one high rye and one low rye) and five different yeast strains. How these bourbons are blended together enables current Master Distiller Brent Elliott is able to achieve so many different variations in his releases.

Recently, Four Roses has unveiled a limited edition tasting kit, featuring all 10 of their recipes, allowing consumers to sample each individually, as well as play taking a stab (albeit one stab, what with the small amounts) at being their own blender.

Although Four Roses is a major name in bourbon nowadays, most of that recognition has come in the last 20 years, despite being founded in 1888. That would be because for much of the 20th Century, what was available in the US wasn’t their bourbon, but rather a blended whiskey, containing up to 66% neutral grain spirit. What is now the Four Roses Distillery was still making bourbon, but this was to provide stock to their parent company, mega-conglomerate, Seagram. Four Roses as an esteemed bourbon continued in Japan, where it enjoyed a good reputation. In America, it was more akin to Kentucky Gentleman.

Four Roses is currently headquartered in what was once known as the Old Prentice Distillery, purchased by Seagram in 1946. When Seagram consigned this distillery to making stock bourbon for other products, they unwittingly laid the foundation for Four Roses as we know it today, because that is how the distillery would up with its now famous ten bourbons. This industrial practice was actually widespread in Seagram’s properties, but Four Roses is one for the few survivors. Another Seagram-era survivor whose production follows a similar model is MGP.

In 1960 Four Roses current rickhouses in Cox’s Creek, KY (not at the Lawrenceburg plant), featuring single story rickhouses, rather then the multi-storied rickhouses common in bourbon country. These shorter warehouses are great for creating more consistent products, as they lack the profound temperature gradients of the taller storage structures. This mirrored Seagram’s priority placed on making consistent stocks that could be used in products across the sprawling company.

Four Roses Yellow Label is no longer quite so yellow labeled.
(Credit: Four Roses)

Although Four Roses bourbon may have been impossible to acquire stateside during this time, that didn’t stop them from creating some stellar bourbons under other labels. Under the direction of Master Distiller Charles L. Beam (of the storied Beam family, keeping in mind that many Beams have sought employment away from Clermont, Kentucky), the distillery released Benchmark bourbon in 1969 and Eagle Rare–yes, the same brand produced by Buffalo Trace today–in 1975.

As the other Seagram-owned distilleries in Kentucky and elsewhere closed their doors, production was slowly moved on over to the Old Prentice site, along with their yeast strains. Jim Rutledge joined the distillery in 1992, after having worked in Seagram’s corporate office in New York for some time, and quickly took over production in 1995. Over the next half decade Rutledge would appeal over and over to the corporate brass to bring Four Roses bourbon back to America, to no avail. It wasn’t until the purchase of the brand by Kirin Holdings in 2002 that Rutledge’s dream would start to take shape.

The brand’s bourbon still enjoyed a good reputation in Japan, which is what initially drew the Japanese company to Four Roses. Initially only offered in Kentucky, the Four Roses Yellow Label was slowly introduced to more states as Kirin increased production of the product, with Rutledge introducing new expressions over time. The company has since introduced many other iterations of its bourbon, but Yellow Label continues to be the only expression drawing on all ten recipes made at the distillery. Not all ten are widely available to the drinking public: the standard Four Roses Single Barrel is recipe OBSV (high rye mash, V yeast; more on that below), with the other nine available only as private barrel bottlings. Anyone who wanted to experience each of the ten individually had to laboriously hunt these down through the various liquor stores, bars, restaurants and clubs ordering them.

Enter the new Ten Recipe Tasting Kit. Breaking into the tasting kit, one should first become familiar with how Four Roses labels their 10 whiskies. They start by naming the mash bill first with OB being their high rye mash bill and OE being the low rye mash bill. The five strains are labeled as follows: V (light and delicate fruit), K (spicy), O (bold fruitiness), Q (floral and fruity) and F (herbal). For example, OESF is their low rye mash bill and herbally yeast strain, creating a Light Oak and Mint profile (all the whiskies contain the letter S, designating it as a straight whiskey). Each sample contains 50ml of liquid and is bottled at 52% ABV. Nosing them all, their is a definite difference to every one of them. The OE (low rye) varieties smell like well-made bourbons, with the OB’s (high ryes) having a clearly defined rye characteristic. One could almost mistake them for a rye whiskey. That’s how forward the rye profile is.

Tasting between them is not as dramatic as nosing them, but there is still a noticeable difference. The OB whiskies start to taste more like a spicy bourbon, with the corn making itself known. The OE whiskies are creamier, filling the mouth with a nice viscous feel. The strains seem to start off leaning more into bourbon notes, starting with V, and moving slowly over into more rye qualities, going to K, O, Q and ending on F. All of them seem extremely well made, although I couldn’t stand the OBSF (delicate rye and mint). It seems too astringent and herbal with not much of a sweet component.

We’ve addressed Yellow Label drawing on all ten, but Small Batch uses just four: OBSK, OBSO, OESK and OBSO. Small Batch Select uses seven: OBSV, OBSK, OBSF, OESV, OESK and OESF. It seems to be that when Elliott is creating his blends he is going for a similar top end, with the different strains being used to increase or decrease the intensity of the rye spiciness, as well as the mouth feel. Four Roses doesn’t release the percentage of each whiskey for it’s releases, but one can still get an approximation of the blends by going off which whiskies are listed for each.

The kit seems to be a fun way to pass the evening with whiskey loving friends. Grab one of these and a couple different bottles of Four Roses, and see who can create a blend that’s closest to the official release. The winner gets to drink their blend, savoring in the delight that is Four Roses. Maybe someone is looking to create their own infinity bottle, but doesn’t know where to start. This kit would be a great crash course on how different whiskies play together, enabling someone to get their head around the concept