Why Did Suntory Botch Its Jim Beam Announcement?

 

Major brands in the portfolio of Suntory Global Spirits.

Whiskey is unlike most manufactured products in a way that even close watchers of the business have trouble grasping. Unlike most things we buy, whiskey made today will not be sold next week, next month, or even next year. Hardly any of it will be sold before 2030. Some of it will go unsold, deliberately, until 2034 or later. That's the nature of the whiskey aging cycle.

That's just for American whiskey, which usually sells after four to five years of maturation. For scotch it's longer, more like eight to ten years. Irish and Japanese whiskies are more like scotch. Canadian whisky is more like bourbon with regard to how long it's aged.

So, when distillery production planners decide how much they will distill today, tomorrow, and next year, they're not thinking about market conditions in 2026. They're trying to imagine market conditions in 2030 and beyond. A lot can change. Taylor Swift may be president by then. 

In their data pile is evidence that bourbon's long "boom" has ended. Sales have declined for the last few years and inventories, both in barrels in maturation warehouses, and in bottles in the warehouses of distributors and retailers, are too high. Many household inventories are too high too.

But the bourbon industry is not collapsing, it is adjusting. Across the board, production cuts are ranging from 25 to 30 percent. Unofficially, Vendome's business making stills and other distillery equipment also is off about 25 percent. 

Remember, you're trying to compensate for two things, about five years of overproduction and about three years of declining sales. 

So, considering that all this is pretty much normal business, why did Suntory Global Spirits botch its announcement so badly, giving the impression that Jim Beam has paused production altogether?

I've often felt Diageo, despite its size and broad portfolio, is just Guinness and Johnnie Walker at heart and that's how they think. They fundamentally misunderstand American whiskey.

Suntory may be in the same boat. They sure were caught flat-footed when announcing their decision to significantly reduce production of Jim Beam Bourbon. 

It appears Suntory was forced to make the announcement, on the Saturday before Christmas, because reporters at Louisville Business First heard chatter from distillery folks that the shutdown was coming.

It's a small world down there. Clermont is in Bullitt County. The top government official in Bullitt County, Jerry Summers, was Director of Community Relations at the Beam distillery for 39 years. He's a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. I'm not saying Summers talked to reporters before the announcement was made, but I guarantee he knew what was coming. Plenty of other people did too.

Suntory's statement made it clear the decision came from New York and was conveyed to the Kentucky teams in recent days. It said nothing about layoffs, which led to speculation about pre-Christmas firings. Today the company said, "employees in our distillery department are being reassigned within the company, and as of now, there are no layoffs." That should have been in Saturday's announcement.

So, Suntory rushed out a statement that made it sound like no Jim Beam Bourbon would be made in 2026. You had to read it carefully to realize that, in fact, only the smaller of Beam's two plants would not produce in 2026, which would reduce production of Beam whiskey by about 25 percent. A former Beam insider pointed out to me that the distillery they're "pausing" is about 50 years old and due for either a major overhaul or retirement. 

One of the best articles on the subject so far is in the New York Times, written by Clay Risen. Although Risen's primary beat is obits, he is a serious student of American whiskey and, like any good journalist, strives to provide perspective. For example: "The sudden, steep decline in bourbon sales comes after more than 20 years of expansion in American whiskey, which regularly reached 5 percent in annual growth. It went from about $1.4 billion in sales in 2004 to about $5.2 billion in 2024, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group."

Most stories have not been so balanced. Many attribute the shutdown to Trump's tariffs. Uncertainty about future sales in non-U.S. markets is certainly one of the factors production planners are considering, but it's far from dispositive or even the most important factor. It's probably fourth or fifth on the list.

It also should be noted that while Clermont is Beam's "main" distillery, that term suggests it is where all, or at least most, of the whiskey is produced but that's not true. The Booker Noe Distillery in Boston, Kentucky, makes all the same products and has about double the capacity of Clermont.

So, why did Suntory flop? Maybe the scandal involving the CEO of their parent company has their PR department distracted. Maybe they thought they could wait and make the announcement after the holidays. Without evidence to the contrary, it looks like they made the decision and transmitted it to staff at the affected facilities without a messaging plan of any kind. That seems incompetent.

Prove me wrong.

Jim Beam Won’t Distill at Clermont in 2026. So What?

 

Fred and Freddie Noe at the Beam Distillery in Clermont, Kentucky.

As reported today by the Kentucky Herald-Leader, Louisville Business First, and other sources, Suntory Global Spirits, parent company of Jim Beam, has issued the following statement:

“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026. We’ve shared with our teams that while we will continue to distill at our (Fred B. Noe) craft distillery in Clermont and at our larger Booker Noe distillery in Boston, we plan to pause distillation at our main distillery on the James B. Beam campus for 2026 while we take the opportunity to invest in site enhancements. Our visitor center at the James B. Beam campus remains open so visitors can have the full James B. Beam experience and join us for a meal at The Kitchen Table.”

Beam has bottling lines at Clermont that will continue to operate, supporting the Clermont maturation warehouse complex. In addition to Clermont, Suntory has bottling lines at the former Old Grand-Dad Distillery in Frankfort.

No announcement has been made about layoffs, but a law requires large employers like Beam to notify government officials if a layoff will affect more than 50 positions. No such notice has been given. 

Because the distilling part of the operation is largely automated, it’s likely the number of affected positions will be small. Affected employees might be shifted into other positions or transferred to another facility.

Not in the article, but pointed out to me by a former Beam insider, is that the distilling infrastructure at Clermont is about 50 years old. Booker Noe/Boston is more modern and has more than enough capacity to meet anticipated needs in the near term, which certainly means the entirety of 2026. It is likely Clermont will either receive a major overhaul or be retired. 

Although it is smaller than Booker Noe/Boston, Clermont is considered Beam’s main plant, in part because of the now very important tourism component, and because historically it is where Jim Beam, his brother, and their sons resumed distilling after Prohibition.

The Fred B. Noe Craft Distillery, which opened in 2021, is also on the Clermont campus. It has an annual capacity of about 1.2 million gallons. That’s comparable to Willet, Rabbit Hole, New Riff, Sagamore, and several others, a not insignificant volume. It is state-of-the-art. 

This behavior looks a lot like what happened in the late 70s, early 80s, with one key difference. That time, people started to skip seasons or shut down plants entirely after nearly a decade of not adjusting to a changing market. In this case, the reaction/response is only about a year late. In that sense, all this bad news is good because it says the industry is doing what it should to prevent a glut. So far, the responses we’ve seen from Suntory and others have been timely and proportional. 

We're getting our first glimpse of the "new normal," which is really the old normal, but at a much higher level.

For close to 20 years, all the major American whiskey distilleries have produced at or near capacity. It shouldn't be like that. Let's say an ideal level is 75 percent capacity. That way, you always have sufficient capacity to ramp up when you need a little more production. That's the efficient way to run a distillery.

A distillery is either on or off. All major producers use continuous stills, which are designed to run continuously, up to and including 24 hours a day. They must be shut down periodically only for cleaning and other maintenance. Consequently, the way you make more or less is in how many days you distill.

Historically, extended shutdowns that are used to adjust production occur between seasons. For distilleries, the year has two seasons, identified as spring and fall, but spring is the first six months of the year, and fall is the rest. That means production shutdowns usually, and deliberately, occur during the coldest part of winter and the hottest part of summer.

Ideally, you will distill for at least some number of months in each season. Shutting down for a whole season, let alone a whole year, is a big deal, but it’s mitigated in this case because Beam has two distilleries, with the same DSP number, less than ten miles apart, making the same products, so they’re still going to be make whiskey every season, just not at that distillery.

Suntory also owns the Maker’s Mark Distillery in Loretto, Kentucky, which is unaffected.

UPDATE 12/22/25: Suntory Global Spirits today said, “The company and union are working to ensure there is minimal impact on workers during this production shutdown. Employees in our distillery department are being reassigned within the company, and as of now, there are no layoffs.”

Year-on-Year Bourbon Production Is Down 28% and That's Good News

 

Typical warehouse shot but I took this one myself.
Pretty sure it's Barton 1792.

Janet Patton and the Kentucky Herald-Leader are indispensable if you want to stay current with the American whiskey industry. Today's headline: "Bourbon production is down 55 million proof gallons nationwide this year."

To wrap our heads around this news, let's start with an analogy. This is an oversimplification but bear with me. 

If Ford makes 500,000 F-150 trucks over a six-month period, that's because they expect to sell 500,000 F-150 trucks over the following six months. If they need more, they'll make more. If they have too many, they won't make so many next time.

It's like that in most businesses. If my store buys 200 Labuses, it's because I expect to sell 200 Labuses. Maybe I'll sell them in a month or two, or maybe in a day or two, but I expect a quick turnover. Time is money and that is never more true than when you are sitting on excess inventory.

Bourbon* is different.

Because most bourbon is sold at between four and eight years old, distillery production planners must predict demand 5 to 10 years from now. When you look at a year-to-date production figure of 142 million proof gallons, when it was nearly 200 million during the same period last year, you have to remember there are about 850 million proof gallons currently in aging warehouses, of varying ages, most of it less than eight years old.

That's just Kentucky. Tennessee doesn't report warehouse inventories the way Kentucky does, but you can add another 250 million for Tennessee, and a couple million more for every other state. (I'm converting barrels to gallons in a slapdash way, but the numbers are right enough to make the point.)

Because a 4-year-old isn't that much different from a 5-year-old, producers have a lot of flexibility in terms of what they choose to bottle and sell, up to a point. Production at the distilling end of the business is very different from production at the bottling and sales end of the business.

Although it's not as straightforward as the truck analogy, bourbon distillers expect to sell most of their current inventory over the next few years, replacing it as they go. Knowing how much to make during your current production season is, therefore, a complicated question. Each distillery knows how much they're making, and how much they have in inventory, but they don't necessarily know how much everybody else is making or how much they have in inventory. 

While some producers are transparent about how much they produce, most are not, so the data from Treasury is crucial. It is linked to excise tax payments, so it tends to be accurate.

The rest is analysis, crunching data you have and extrapolating the rest to reach conclusions. 

In August of 2024, when that previous milestone was reached, Bernstein, an analyst, issued a report. It said the 2022 inventory of 12.6 million barrels represented about 8.5 years of demand and was a 150 percent increase over the previous decade. They estimated that, depending on demand, the excess over the next five years could be as little as 500,000 barrels or as much as 1.3 million.

An old adage says that when you are up to your ass in alligators the first thing to do is stop draining the swamp.

So, the fact that bourbon distillers have cut production drastically is good news. It means they are taking steps to prevent a glut. This is unlike 50 years ago, when sales collapsed but producers kept filling the warehouses anyway. They expected an imminent turnaround and didn't want to underproduce, so they overproduced big time. 

Big picture and long-term, bourbon still has huge growth potential but it won't be realized until the trade war ends. In the meantime, you know what to do to bring down those inventory levels.

* Everything said here about bourbon applies equally to Tennessee whiskey, rye whiskey, wheat whiskey, etc. I could say "American whiskey," but it seems clearer to just say "bourbon" with the understanding that all the other types of American-made straight whiskey are included under that umbrella.

Today in Jack Daniel's Kremlinology*

 

Jack Daniel's brand family (2025)

The photograph above was used today by the Kentucky Herald-Leader to illustrate a story about quarterly results from Jack Daniel's parent company Brown-Forman. As a public company, Brown-Forman's quarterly results are public. In that they are alone among the Big Four American whiskey producers. Because they issue reports like this routinely four times a year, it's only news when the results are dramatic.

Today's Herald-Leader headline was: "Jack Daniel’s parent says profits down 14% for quarter. $59M in losses this year."

If you can't penetrate the Herald-Leader's paywall, here is the report itself. Like I said, it's public.

I'm not so much interested in the news as I am the picture. That's where Kremlinology* comes in.

If I talked to someone in Jack Daniel's PR (I didn't), they'd probably say don't read too much into it.

I'm about to read too much into it.

The photo, supplied to the media by Brown-Forman's PR department, is of the Jack Daniel's brand family. We know because that's the file name, minus the apostrophe.

It's a lineup but unlike a shelf set, the facing is staggered. Naturally, Old No. 7 is front and center. It has been the flagship since forever. I am old enough to remember when the brand family was Old No. 7 black label and Old No. 7 green label. The green-labeled stepchild was generally considered a slightly less mature whiskey but otherwise the same as black. During some of its history it was lower proof. In recent years, a whole mythology about it has evolved, which is why it's still made although distribution is limited.

Black label Old No. 7 is the flagship and there are seven products in the family. Coincidence? There are no coincidences at Jack Daniel's.

In the current family grouping, the flavored expressions are to the left, everything else is to the right. You can read that as flavored whiskey products make up 43 percent of the line. Immediately flanking the flagship, a little further back, are Tennessee Honey on the left and Jack Daniel's Rye on the right. 

Honey seems to have pride-of-place as granddaddy of the flavored expressions. The parallel high status of JD Rye, however, is a surprise. Rye was just about extinct when the bourbon boom began. Tennessee distilleries didn't make rye whiskey. Corn was their thing. Even though Jack uses rye as its flavor grain, it's barely there, much lower than virtually all rye-recipe bourbons.

Jack Daniel's started to distill rye whiskey in 2012. They even released some rye white dog to take advantage of the short-lived white whiskey craze. The mature version arrived in 2017. It's interesting that the company regards it more highly than Gentleman Jack or Single Barrel Select. Their bottles are set back even further. 

The corresponding bottles on the flavored side are Tennessee Fire and Tennessee Apple.

The bottles on each end, Tennessee Apple and Single Barrel Select, are set back a little behind their nearest neighbors. The difference is almost imperceptible, though not to a person with too much time on his hands. So, it's stair stepped like an arrow pointed at your heart.

Sometimes the term "brand family" will include every product in circulation that bears that brand name. That would be impossible for Jack Daniel's. The Jack Daniel's logo appears on literally hundreds of products. Setting aside things like mustard, barbeque sauce, and hooded sweatshirts, it's notable what's not considered a core offering. Jack Daniel's American Single Malt was introduced in 2023. It's not here. The quarterly report touts the recent introduction of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Blackberry as a boost for the brand, but it is not yet part of the family photograph.

Ready-to-Drink spirits products (RTDs) are the hottest trend in an otherwise dismal beverage alcohol marketplace, and Jack has a bunch of them, most notably a tie-in with Coca-Cola. Southern Comfort may have trademarked "The Grand Old Drink of the South," but the real grand old drink of the South is Jack and Coke. 

But at family gatherings, it sits at the kid's table. Legal drinking age kids, of course. It doesn't rate a place in the family portrait.

The prominence of the flavors and JD Rye may have strategic implications. A bottle of Old No. 7 is about $23. The flavors are similarly popular priced. So is the rye. Gentleman Jack and Single Barrel Select are more expensive, especially Select which can range from $45 up to $800 a bottle. By comparison, Gentleman Jack is only a slight upcharge, at $30.

Jack Daniel's has gotten deep into the limited edition and other collectible bottles game. Those products are very profitable but low volume. It's conventional wisdom that you use market dips to build share, which you do with volume products, not high-priced novelties. Gentleman Jack and everything to the left of it are less profitable but with unlimited volume potential. The flavors are especially good because they contain so little aged whiskey, so their volume potential is not constrained by the aging cycle. They can be cranked out as needed. 

Consumers struggling with inflation tend to trade down, buying less expensive products or their usual products in smaller sizes. Optimistically, Jack Daniel's is the first whiskey brand to release a newly legal three-liter bottle. Of course it's Old No. 7.

As a very mature product, Old No. 7 probably has peaked in the U.S. market. It's still mammoth and the brand family will continue to battle Jim Beam's brand family for category leadership, but if the Daniel's brand has any potential for growth in the USA, it's in the products that flank Old No. 7 in the photograph. Otherwise, Old No. 7's future is international, progress currently stymied by Trump's trade war, much to the delight of archrival Johnnie Walker, although Diageo has its own problems.

In conclusion, here's the brand family from 2017.

* Kremlinology: During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the Soviet Union forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and use the tiniest titbits, such as the removal of portraits, rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper Pravda, and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics. A classic instance was Myron Rush, at the time an analyst for the RAND Corporation, making a key deduction from the choice of capital or small initial letters in the Soviet press in phrases such as "First Secretary." (from Wikipedia)

Getting It Right the First Time

Finished last night after I got home from the Marty Stuart concert in Skokie.

I have a running joke with another writer on the whiskey beat. When we contrast our experiences with producers, she inevitably quips, "yes, but you're Chuck Cowdery."

That I am Chuck Cowdery is undeniable and one of the few privileges of being Chuck Cowdery is that I receive a lot of whiskey, unsolicited. I get so much that boxes may sit, unopened, for months. 

I write very few reviews. I don't find them useful, for me to write or for anyone to read. I especially don't review limited editions because they're usually so limited, or so costly, most people who read the review will never get to try them. What's the point?

Which brings me to the bottle pictured above. I have a long history with the Western Kentucky distillery now known as Jackson Purchase. I'm going to go into some of that history in a minute, but let's get to that empty bottle pictured above.

Most times, when bottles I receive are opened, I drink a little and move on to something else. Many of the samples I receive are in 200 ml bottles, or smaller. Even a lot of those don't get emptied, or I use them in cocktails. 

The point is, I have to really like something to finish a 750ml bottle of it, and I really like this Jackson Purchase bourbon. What is exceptional about it is this. It's not exceptional. No exotic finishes, fancy blends, or unique mash bills. It is a standard, rye-recipe bourbon. The only unusual thing about this release is the proof, 117.8° (58.9% ABV).

But being unexceptional makes it exceptional because this is the distillery's first release. They got it right the first time. Craig Beam is the master distiller at Jackson Purchase. His former employer, Heaven Hill, puts out whiskey this good every day, but they've been doing it for nearly a century. For most new distilleries, their first release is a little rough, a bit too young, or too harsh, or simply rough around the edges. It might be perfectly good whiskey and, hopefully, worth the price, but it's not everything it could be and probably will be when the distillery has a few years under its belt. 

The "wow" here is that they got it right, right out of the box.

So, now, some of that history.

Fulton County is as far west as Kentucky goes. It hugs the Tennessee border on one side and the Mississippi River on the other. Hickman is the county seat. It hosts about 2,500 souls. Just outside of Hickman is the distillery. It gradually emerged from a corn field beginning in about 2006. The glass-fronted still house is illuminated at night. 

Back then it was called the Fulton County Distillery. It was built by W. Ray Jamieson, a successful Memphis attorney. When I first wrote about it in 2016, I noted that although Jamieson was not a young man, he seemed in no hurry to finish his distillery. At that time it was more or less complete. He had retained the services of two Wild Turkey retirees, Curtis Smart and Donnie Sims, to run the place.

He had a 24-inch Vendome column, a 7,500 gallon mash cooker, four 8,750 gallon fermenters (with space for four more), and a 350 horsepower boiler. He had two wells with year-round cold water.

For even longer than he had been building his distillery, Jamieson had been collecting stills. "I tell people I'm lawyer turned honest bootlegger," he joked. Most are contemporary moonshine stills taken out of service by law enforcement. A few are hundreds of years old.

Jamieson envisioned a complete visitor experience at the distillery, with dining, lodging, and a museum featuring his stills collection. He predicted, not entirely seriously, that Hickman would become “the next Lynchburg.” Much like Lynchburg, Tennessee, it is not on the way to anywhere. 

After Jamieson, the place went through several owners, each with a plan to open it up and start making whiskey. None did. When the current crew took over, led by Beam and Terry Ballard, another veteran distiller, they did some upgrades and then, finally, threw the switch.

I'm not sure how widely available it is, but Jackson Purchase Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey runs about $65 a bottle. 

America Should End Its Socialist Liquor System Now

 

Karl liked his brewski as much as the next guy.

According to etymologists, the word 'socialism' has its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. To many on the political right, 'socialism' is a word they use to scare people, conjuring up the worse abuses of Soviet Russia, Castro's Cuba, or 'Red' China.

In the supposedly free United States of America, we have one very socialistic system, the way the government regulates the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. The liquor business is struggling at present. That makes this the perfect time to free it from its socialist overlords, the 50 state liquor control boards and the distribution monopolies they enable.

The trouble began with the 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, which ended National Prohibition. It is short and simple. The first section repeals the 18th Amendment. The third section gives states seven years to ratify (they took less than one).

The second section, necessary to obtain that ratification, is where the trouble lies. It says, "the transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited."

That means individual states may regulate alcohol as they see fit, regardless of any burden on interstate commerce that would normally run afoul of the Constitution's Commerce Clause. They can't ban it altogether, but they can say what can be sold, and where and when it can be sold. They can set prices and, of course, tax the hell out of it.

Furthermore, if you take alcohol into any state in violation of that state's laws, you commit a federal offense too.

Most states have used this authority to create a mandatory three-tier system for the distribution of alcoholic beverages. The three tiers are producers, distributors and retailers. The mandatory part means no tier may be bypassed by anyone, including consumers who may only legally buy from state-licensed retailers. In most cases, these laws prevent cross-ownership too. Producers may not own interests in distributors or retailers, and so on.

If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is.

Everything said about these state laws will be "in most cases" because the 50 states each regulate alcohol differently, which all by itself is a significant burden on interstate commerce. We don't have one socialist liquor system; we have 50 of them.

Here is how it works. Imagine that instead of buying L. L. Bean clothes directly from L. L. Bean in Maine and having them delivered to your home you were required by law to buy them from a retailer with no connection to L. L. Bean, who bought them from a distributor who also has no connection to L. L. Bean but has an exclusive franchise from your state government to be the state's only legal source for L. L. Bean clothing.

Under this system, retailers who want to carry L. L. Bean clothing must buy their L. L. Bean merchandise from the sole distributor in the state who carries it, whose monopoly is enforced by state law. 

The state government, as well as the independent distributor and independent retailer, all have something to say about which L. L. Bean clothes are available to you and how much they cost. Will they offer every garment in every color and size that L. L. Bean makes? Maybe, but probably not. While you probably will have a choice of several retailers who may offer different selections, the monopolist distributor will control absolutely which L. L. Bean products are available to those retailers and thus to you. Unless a state border is nearby, you're out of luck.

And even if it is you may still be out of luck because that same distributor may have obtained the monopoly in the adjacent state too. If you find something there you like, you may be breaking the law by purchasing it there and taking it home.

Now imagine that on an out-of-state trip you have discovered a clothing manufacturer that is similar to L. L. Bean but a bit more suited to your taste. You return home only to discover that none of the state-franchised wholesalers choose to carry that line. Remember, you are only allowed to buy clothes at state-licensed clothing stores. You cannot legally buy clothing online or over the phone. Once again you are stuck. Damn socialists!

Although you may travel to where that other clothing brand is sold to buy it, that may at least technically violate state and federal law.

Let's assume for purposes of our example that clothing is not burdened with excessive taxes the way alcohol is. Even so, the lack of competition inherent in this state-run system makes its products more expensive than they otherwise would be. Maybe instead of a L. L. Bean polo costing $30 it costs $50. You'll get used to it.

Free markets, baby!

Alcohol consumers, to the extent they understand it, generally hate this socialist system. So, too, do most alcohol producers and retailers. You know who loves it? Distributors. 

The three-tier system of which America’s beverage alcohol distributors are so fond imagines them as relatively small, in-state entities, and therefore easily reachable by state courts and state regulators, which might have more difficulty getting the attention of a giant multinational corporate producer. In reality, distributors have undermined this purpose by using various corporate organizational schemes to become large, multi-state operations themselves, bigger than many producers. Although they comply with the letter of the law, most now operate across state lines. Some are large and powerful national businesses. They also have found clever ways around the laws intended to prevent them from owning alcoholic beverage producers and vice versa.

Despite their advantaged position, distributors feel threatened by the desire of alcohol consumers to legally acquire beverage alcohol products monopolist distributors refuse to make reasonably available to them in their states.

In particular, distributors want to strangle the direct-to-consumer movement in its crib. They fret about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Granholm v. Heald (2005), which said that the 21st amendment does not give states the right to discriminate in favor of in-state producers in violation of the Commerce Clause. That decision has not “opened the floodgates” of underage drinking and tax avoidance that was predicted by the president of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America at the time. But since distributors still fear their privileges are at risk, they have repeatedly proposed legislation to strengthen their socialistic monopoly.

As the Court held in Granholm: “The aim of the Twenty-first Amendment was to allow States to maintain an effective and uniform system for controlling liquor by regulating its transportation, importation, and use. The Amendment did not give States the authority to pass nonuniform laws in order to discriminate against out-of-state goods, a privilege they had not enjoyed at any earlier time.”

America should end its socialist liquor system now.

To Everything There Is a Season and a Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

 

That's a wrap.

Some of you figured this out before I did. The last post on this blog was August 4th, more than two months ago. I've never posted on a regular schedule, but two months is a long break. I knew I was wrestling with some things and didn't know what my next move would be. I don't have all the answers, no one ever does, but here is what I know now.

I am discontinuing The Bourbon Country Reader, effective immediately. The last issue was Volume 23, Number 2, dated June 2025. That's 134 issues over 30 years. It was a good run.

I am also getting out of the books business. I have liquidated all remaining copies of my 2014 book, Bourbon, Strange. I am no longer supplying Amazon with copies, but they have some in inventory. When they're gone, they're gone. I liquidated them to some of my industry friends, who will make them available in some form. I'll let them tell you about that.

Bourbon, Strange will continue to be available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

My other two bourbon books, Bourbon, Straight (2004) and The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste (2012) will continue to be available, but only from me via PayPal, and maybe at some point via some of those friends mentioned above. Click on the links above if you're interested. As with Bourbon, Strange, both of them will be available from Amazon until their inventory is exhausted, and both will continue to be available as Kindle e-books.

When the current inventory is gone, that's it. I don't intend to reprint any of them. All three, as well as my blues book, Blues Legends (1995) are readily available from used book sources, though I'm told many used copies of Blues Legends don't include the CD, which is a shame.

The significance of the August 4th blog post to all this is that I stopped selling DVD copies of "Made and Bottled in Kentucky" a few years ago but only got around to digitizing it and putting it online on that date. I discovered I had, in fact, sold every DVD I had, and it took me a while to find the DVD master. I'm not, I'm afraid, very well organized. I feared it was lost. That started this whole soul-searching project. 

The documentary was made in 1992 and launched me on my bourbon journey. At this point it's a historical document in its own right, featuring interviews with Booker Noe, Elmer T. Lee, Dixie Hibbs (who died last week), and others who are no longer with us. The long moribund Kentucky whiskey industry was just beginning to show signs of revival. The 30+ years that followed saw American whiskey production and sales grow dramatically. While there is no reason to believe those gains will be lost, the much touted "bourbon boom" has ended. It was one hell of a ride.

Back to The Reader. Because I didn't know, back in June, that I was ending the newsletter, I sent renewal notices, and many people renewed their subscriptions. I don't intend to take your money without giving you something. In the coming months I will write and publish a series of essays. Every current subscriber, regardless of the status of your subscription, will receive all of them. I haven't written them yet, but I expect they will be about my bourbon journey of the last 30+ years. 

My intention is to make all Reader back issues available online in some kind of archive, but that's a future project and I'm not quite sure how to go about it. It's on the "to-do" list.

I also will continue to write the "Straight Talk" column in Whisky Advocate for as long as they'll have me.

As for "The Chuck Cowdery Blog," it's not going away. If I have something to say, about bourbon or something else, I'll say it here. I've been writing since I was in third grade, so that won't stop. That's who I am. Part of the reason for these changes is to clear the deck for what comes next, whatever that might be. In the interim since that August post, I had another birthday. I'm now 74-years-old. Some changes need to be made, not because I am stopping but so I can keep going.

So, I'll leave it there for now. I have more to say but I'll say it in those post-Reader essays, and I'll be here as well. Thanks for taking this ride with me. I'm not going away, just moving on.