America's Bourbon Industry On The Rocks Due To Unforced Error
Pour one out for Jimmy Beam.
You may remember the Bowling Green Massacre from eight years ago that was an early flashing red warning sign of MAGA’s loosey-goosey relationship with reality. It seems like some of them wanted to believe Kellyanne Conway’s hallucination about a massacre in Kentucky so badly they’ve manifested one of their own, only this time it’s more of an economic bloodbath instead of just another garden variety American mass shooting.
We’re now nearly a year into the dumbest trade war ever, and one of the first major casualties appears to be the Bluegrass state’s $9 billion brown liquor biz, due in no small part to Canadians suddenly taking a hard pass on the red state’s world-renowned hard stuff.
Global exports of American spirits fell by nine percent overall in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the previous year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Which is just a drop in the bucket compared to the 85 percent drop in sales to Canada over the same period, which CEO Chris Swonger diplomatically blamed on “persistent trade tensions” rather than us just being grossed out by y’all’s Nazi bullshit and not wanting to risk lining the pockets of anyone who voted for it. Jim Beam, one of the industry’s biggest players, recently announced it’s shutting down production at its main Happy Hollow distillery for a full year while continuing to operate two smaller ones and hoping things might turn around.
“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026,” the company said in a statement. “We’ve shared with our teams that while we will continue to distill at our [Freddie Booker 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.”
No word on what will become of the 1,500 employees represented by United Food and Commercial Workers at their flagship operation, but the company says it’s in talks with the union as it continues “to assess how best to utilize our workforce during this transition.” The news came not long after Brown-Forman, the manufacturers of both Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and Woodford Reserve, announced it is laying off 12 percent of its own workforce — roughly 650 people — and will soon shutter its Louisville facility.
It’s a Pyrrhic victory for Canadians at best, and it’s hard to wish for anyone apart from ICE goons, Bari Weiss or Cabinet members to lose their gig in today’s depressing job market.
But it’s also tough to summon up much sympathy for workers in a state Ol’ Treasonballs won by 30.5 percent in the last election, up from 26 percent in 2020. Jim Beam’s parent company, Japanese conglomerate Suntory Global Spirits, is also a longtime GOP supporter and even ponied up $100,000 last year to give their Kentucky lair a $4.2 million facelift. Blame it on whiskey goggles but fuck around and find out, although there’s certainly no need for ritual seppuku.
American hooch has been off Canadian shelves for months, and several provinces auctioned off their remaining bottles over Christmas for charity with obviously no plans to re-stock any time soon. Even Knob Creek’s special maple-flavored batch is unlikely to entice us back, and I regrettably had to end a longterm relationship of my own with Wild Turkey, which I developed a taste for as a pretentious undergrad trying to rip off Hunter S. Thompson. My own local liquor store made an exception for Skrewball in the early days because the peanut butter goodness is made in a blue state but it’s long gone now too.
Trade talks between the two countries have been on hold since October after Dear Leader pitched a fit over an ad by Ontario preem Doug Ford that aired during the World Series featuring a speech from Ronald Reagan about the suicidal stupidity of imposing tariffs on trading partners. They’re tentatively scheduled to begin again later this month but *gestures broadly at everything.
Insane tariffs aside, the bourbon industry is facing a perfect storm of other challenges as well. Alcohol consumption, particularly among the youngs, has been declining steadily for years. It doesn’t help on the domestic front to attract new customers when the US has one of the highest legal drinking ages in the world at 21, a select club the land of the free shares with the likes of the UAE, Malaysia, Equatorial Guinea, and the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. Add inflation, a shot of supply chain issues and a warehouse full of whiskey that won’t be ready to sell for another six years to the mix and you can see why Big Bourbon might be reaching the bottom of the barrel.
It’s been roughly 230 years since a German immigrant named Johannes Böhm first arrived in Kentucky, anglicized his surname like a common Friedrich Drumpf, and started running a commercial still, which is a pretty good run for a family business if this truly is the beginning of the end of a global cool factor for Jim Beam.
Which ain’t too shabby as it’s nearly as long as American democracy itself lasted.
Bottoms up.
Needless to say, I've been watching this shitshow unfold for a while now. Canada's a big part of the bourbon industry's collapse, but Bardstown has been in trouble for a while. There are more barrels of bourbon in storage now than there have been since the 90s. Sales are slumping for everyone; it's only a matter of time before Buffalo Trace, Diageo, or Brown-Forman blink.
The biggest reason for the glut is the hucksters and get-rich-quick schemers. Gimmick bourbons have flooded the market for the past 3-4 years, and naive investors with a "if you build it they will come" mentality haven't helped. It's not hard to start a "distillery" and sell a bourbon blended from other sources, but eventually you have to stand on your own two feet, and then the bills come due.
The industry doesn't view this boom-bust cycle as something new. There was a colossal glut of bourbon in 2000. The market changed, and those barrels in storage were sold at premium prices. The tragedy here is for the little guys - women-owned companies like Widow Jane and California distillers like Redwood Empire might not make it. Uncle Nearest is already in receivership.
Long story short: Screw Jim Beam and Brown-Forman. But buy the quirky brands that do things right if you want to see them survive. Otherwise, we'll be drinking 15-year-old Benchmark in a few years and tell each other how smooth it is.
The beauty of snow.
I had taken this photo a little while back when I did a series of snow pics in a local park. This one was on my phone and I totally missed it, but I am loving it, hope you do too.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-195349331?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc