cowdery

"Micro" just means small and is easy enough to define, although one of the first companies to use the term "micro-distillery" was Jim Beam, about 15 years ago, in a completely phony way (for a product called Jacob's Well bourbon), and they got me fired for calling them out on it. Terms such as "craft" and "artisan" are a little trickier, and spurious trademark claims notwithstanding, they suggest that something special and individualistic is being done that makes the final product more desirable in some tangible way. It suggests that "something" is important and cannot be achieved on an industrial scale. America's industrial whiskey-makers grind their own grains, do their own mashing and fermentation, employ the traditional sour mash process, distill the beer at a relatively low proof (70% ABV is about average) using a unique double-distillation process (one pass through a column still, followed by one pass through a pot still), and age it in new charred barrels for, in most cases, no less than four years and often much more. Some, though not all, still make their own yeast. Who, among micro-distilleries, is more "craft" or "artisan" than that? My question, and it's a sincere inquiry, is if you want to make whiskey, don't you need to top that and, if so, how? To me, it comes down to the difference between a professional and a hobbyist. Nothing wrong with having a hobby, but I suspect most micro-distillers don't consider it a hobby, so how can it be wrong to bulk up on the professionalism with some standards?

Who am I? Fair question. A few of you know me. For the rest, there is plenty of information out there about me and I won't bother to repeat it here. It's easy to find. If you're interested, my web site is a good place to start. But the short answer, for purposes of this discussion, is this: I'm your customer, potentially your best customer. I am an American whiskey enthusiast and so are my readers. We prefer American whiskey to all other alcoholic beverages. We can't get enough of it and are always interested in something new and different, but we're not chumps. We don't like to be zoomed. We're not children and we don't need to be told that our whiskey was made by elves in a hollow tree. And although we aren't, for the most part, distillers, we know that a pot still is that thing pictured at the top of this page, and not a Holstein or anything else with a rectification column on it. Therefore, pot still vodka is a joke. So if you don't care what your customers think or want, or you don't care how American whiskey enthusiasts generally approach and consider American whiskey, then ignore or disdain me. Otherwise, let's take each other seriously and have a dialogue. Was that piece meant to be provocative? Of course. As Bill Owens said when he asked me if he could republish it, "let's see if anybody is awake out there."