It’s a completely different situation, but this story springs to mind:
https://www.blacksheepbrewery.com/about
If Hollis knows the family business, can she find backing to set up on her own and start making something delicious and unique, rather than the generic mass produced Bourbon we’re all hoping to avoid?
Why are most craft beers so strong (alcohol and flavour)? I enjoy a long, refreshing beer. Anything above 5% is strong-to-too-much, for my taste at least. I really enjoy good, flavoursome beer in the 3-4% range, but they become scarce. If I wanted to get plastered, I’d drink no-name shots. I want to enjoy a good beer through the whole night (maybe followed by a good whisky or two).
That’s a great name considering their back story. 
I don’t know how much of the technical side of the family business she knows. I do know the industry people I know adore her. She’s creative and a bigger than life personality. I imagine her doing her best in a non-corporate environment. As for finding funding I don’t know.
Hollis Fine Lickers
Ba dum bump…
(Sorry I could not resist)
But the Bulleit Rye is still OK, right? Right?
That is not my point at all. My point is that addicts are a captive market. They lack choice. Ton’s of variety, but no choice.
You cannot BUT sell to addicts at that scale. You must, in fact, engineer them. Build them from previously functioning people, if you wish to extract money from them.
I really am referring only to the intentional profiteering on misery, please refrain from making rounding errors to reframe my point as something other than that one.
Now I’ll probably hear about teetotaling and prohibition not working, as if that has anything to do with my point. Been nice talking with you, despite the reframing. No foul or anything, just think it’s all been said.
Weird. On my end the posts are all just gone. Fine by me, nobody needs to read me pointing at a turd in the punchbowl.
Any jokes about straight bourbon yet?
I don’t drink bourbon anymore (too sweet, too “perfume-y”, I think I never really liked it but drank it because it was popular among the crowd I ran with), and while I detest that so many brands are now the property of some mega-corp, I still think they make good products. It’s not like Diageo buys up Johnnie Walker or Bulleit, fires everyone, then hires all new personnel and starts using a new recipe-- quite the opposite: they want to keep the brand close to the same quality or else it starts losing value. Obviously, if the same family still runs Bulleit then Diageo isn’t messing with the company too much.
Ironically, I would like Diageo to pressure Bulleit management to change their ways regarding this apparent discrimination, but then I’m being hypocritical because I don’t think the big corporate masters should interfere with the running of the valuable brand (that said, LGBT rights are a separate issue-- it’s not like bourbon made under Jim Crow is going to have better quality simply because “it’s tradition.”)
What’s weirdest about this is that Diageo is well-regarded as a great place for LGBT employment. It’s possible that Bulleit is a hidden backwater within the Diageo corporate structure, it’s also possible this woman is not being completely honest about the situation.
Got it.
True of tobacco companies. Maybe true of alcohol; I’m skeptical but lack the research to rebut the assertion.
Okay, I’m sorry. I really thought you were talking about vice tax. I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth. I hate when people do that to me. Sorry for doing it to you. It was unintentional, but thank you for calling me on it. I’m perfectly capable for mistakes and I genuinely appreciate people politely calling me out on them when I do. I should have given this discussion more attention or let it be, and instead I made a few half-baked comments while I was doing half a dozen other things today. Mea culpa.
Tobacco is a great analogue.
From what I can tell, it’s because modern craft brewing (in the US) grew as a reaction to the mass-produced American lager style, and we’re still riding that cultural moment. (And that previous movement was born out of America’s prohibition grown love of sweet drinks)
I’d love to see an in-depth consideration of this, though.
All good points and I wasn’t aware of Diageo’s status in that regard, which is awesome. And yeah, this is one fo those times where it’s a good thing to have a bigger set of corporate masters, assuming they do the right thing. Down side is, if it was still family owned, a boycott would actually do some damage directly, so there’s that.
It’s not so much that I’m opposed to the big corporate ownership (I consume a fair number of things from Diageo and Constellation Brands specifically), but that it’s not always easy to make the choice to go smaller if I want to. Definitely more of an issue with beer than wine or hard liquor, but still crazy how much alcohol is so few groups. Consistency and distribution are good, but so is competition (as opposed to the appearance of competition).
I am Jack’s deleted comment. 
Setting up small scale breweries is easy, relatively speaking, so trying product from small time operations and supporting them is doable. Setting up distilleries is much harder since the regulations around that are more restrictive and there’s also the fact that they have to age their product so that’s several years of burning money with no return. Small distilleries do exist but they just aren’t as common, and seems that larger players like to buy them out. I’m not much of a hard alcohol drinker myself but i do find the lack of competition to be sad.
I’m more inclined to believe her than the company’s PR flak, so off the list for me too.
I used to live where the booze flowed freely in the aisles of TJs, but alas, here in Orygun they don’t allow that. Though they keep talking about maybe one day.
Many thanks to @cannibalpeas for his wealth of information in this thread. I know we morphed the abhorrent homophobia discussion into a discussion of whisky quality and liquor monopolies, but the info, history and tips are really gonna help me get snoggered in style this weekend!
Likewise. Tip of the hat, @cannibalpeas. Was very pleased to see my local distillery on the map. I found their bourbon by accident and have subsequently hand-sold so many bottles I ought to be on commission.
That’s awesome. I haven’t met them. You like their stuff?
