I Read 10 Books So You Might Want to Read 1 or 2
This issue features a special cover feature, The Great Eight, recapping the eight (more accurately, ten) most monumental books in the history of American craft distilling. I read and recapped all ten, on the hope that you might want to read one or two for yourself. It’s an unnatural act to read and review ten books in four days. But you’re worth it.
Author Biographies and Contacts
For 15 years, Distiller Magazine’s writer biographies have only been available on the Contributors page, hidden in the front of the book, with no email addresses. Sorry about that. Now we’re hiding them in plain sight, right at the end of each piece. Feel free to contact our authors. They want to hear from you.
Silicon Valley Wants to Eat Distilling (Someday)
Venture capitalist Marc Andreesen’s famous claim that “software will eat the world” has come true in many sectors: retail ecommerce, payments, sales, education, policing and tax collection, dating, telemedicine, remote working. Our interview with Goat Rodeo Capital venture capitalist Carlton Fowler and review of Hubert Germain-Robin’s Maturation of Distilled Spirits each gave a glimpse of technology’s future impacts on distilled product traditions, processes, ingredients, and how we acquire and experience them. Fowler says ecommerce will soon crush prohibition-era alcohol regulation. Germain-Robin predicts that technology will at one point forever change the manufacture, aging, selling and experience of distilled spirits. Silicon Valley is coming. As Mel Brooks would say, “be afraid, be very afraid.”
Why We’re Covering Swedish Craft
It’s not because we like cold weather (which we don’t) or Swedish standouts like smorgasbord or Henrik Lundquist or Bjorn Borg or Ikea or H&M or Spotify or Volvos (which we do). There are three other reasons. First, Sweden is a leader in craft distilling in Europe, setting the continental pace in still-centered alco-tourism. Like Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail, Macmyra’s Whisky Village 90 minutes outside of Stockholm is a must-see for its 35-meter-high gravity still. Second, because Sweden took a different path than America out of its own version of prohibition. Whether you know it or not, Absolut was a state monopoly brand until the late 1990s, when the law changed to allow privateers. That’s when Macmyra entered the scene with American and Scottish-style whisky (they don’t spell it with an “e” in most of Europe) and a gin in 1999, and now they’re the second-largest distilled spirit brand there. And third, remember that the vast majority of native European distilling is fruit-based, while European drinking tastes are trending toward grain-based spirits. (Think grapes for cognac and brandy and sherry, think pears for schnapps, think apples for Calvados.) In addition to the attraction of reaching these new customers, fruit-based distilleries are learning grain-based distilling because you can run your still all year round, rather than just during the weeks following the fruit harvest.
Cheers,
Jay Whitehead, Editor, Distiller Magazine
