Yes, it is a slow learning curve and there are many mistakes out there to make. If distillers can share knowledge about what happens when you run your still slower, and to explore the subtleties that happen with proper barrel management over time, more of those long awaited experiments will turn out well.
The rules would not pertain so much to production as they would to labeling, so that it may be determined what production techniques were used. This is more concerned with truth in labeling, so that a consumer can pick up a bottle and decipher how the spirit was made; where it was distilled, from what ingredients, what size barrel, how much time, presence of any additives... etc.
It would be a voluntary system for those who would like to have a recognized standard of quality on their label.