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While much of what Joseph says is, and always was, true (operating capital management, marketing 101), I don't buy the bubble argument for one second. People have been saying the same thing about craft brewing for 20 years. It's still growing in volume nearly 13% year on year. Spirits are just getting started. Millennials re-wrote the markets for craft beer and wine, and they're about to do the same for spirits. They don't have the age statement bias of their parents. They're not afraid of trying new things (would you or I have ever tried a cinnamon whiskey - bleah!) They also crave experiences. So, putting capital into your location and tasting room may be FAR wiser than into name-brand copper in your stillhouse. There's also the international markets that are clamoring to experience US craft spirits. Know what an ounce of Stranahan's goes for in NL? 25€ The tired old shelf space argument never ceases to crack me up. Do you honestly mean to tell me your local liquor store had 10-12 beer coolers back in the 80s? Liquor stores are in the business of selling booze. If there's a market, THEY'LL MAKE SPACE. There's this absurdly tiny liquor store on my way home from work. Not even 500 sq ft. They are incredibly convenient though. I stopped in looking for my go-to beer (Trumer Pils) about a year ago. Of course they didn't carry it. I just mentioned to the owner that I was looking for Trumer. He said "I'll have it here next Tuesday". Now he didn't know me from Adam, but you know what? He somehow made space. Trumer Pils is always there and I pick up a six every week. 250 types of brown spirits? LOL. Have a look at the wine isle and imagine yourself in THAT market. Oh, and they're thriving. Sure, there will be some craft distillery closures. The days of "if I make it, they will come" are over. For every closure though, there will be 2+ more opening. And some of those will actually have a clue about marketing. FFS, High West just cashed out for $160M, selling whiskey they didn't even make!

I think the craft distillery industry has reached phase 2 in its lifecycle. No longer will you be able to just build it and they will come. The novelty of small batch, locally made spirits has pretty much worn off. I think that to succeed now, new distilleries have to have a strong story/brand and most importantly, make a quality product. The days of putting a still in a nondescript building and making sub par spirits are behind us (in my opinion). There is still plenty of opportunity for distilleries that provide a quality product and a compelling brand to succeed.

And this is exactly the reason that Jim Beam is paying Mila Kunis millions of dollars a year.

sadly the truth of the matter is that science is still chasing after tradition and trying to understand it all. Flavor chemistry is very complicated. The involved aromatic compounds will react with each other at each step of production and therefore they all will impact the final aroma and taste created. if you know the chemical structure of the concerned compounds you can see what fraction will separate from ethanol (basically your heart) more easily. basically figure out your cuts according to your equipment parameters. More complex flavors can be created if you keep larger cuts with less "purity" but that doesn't necessarily mean you get the flavors you want... fermentation and treatments in fermentation itself will have a big contributing factor as well. There is just so many factors to think of...so yia in the end you need to just developed a style and go with it. There is also treatments you can do afterwards (like soaking a small amount of fresh fruit in the liquor to extract the fresh completely un-reacted aroma compounds from there. More research is needed but well quite frankly analytically equipment is very expensive and flavor compounds come in very minute concentrations so detecting them is extremely hard, not to mention being able to correlate what compound causes what fraction of perceived flavor since flavor perception does not necessarily equal to chemical presence in solution... here is some links to articles.. but no one (that I know of) really has a clear cut answer to all this (I wish I could attache the actual files, I get them through school... its amazing how expensive articles can be...erg free knowledge is key to advancement) http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jf047788f http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-4530.2005.00377.x/abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12517106 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-4530.2008.00251.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-4530.2005.00377.x/abstract