politics

Reassuring to see the young people will still be killing luxury industries when Millennials are no more

sales of Bulleit, a Kentucky distillery that makes bourbon, rye and whiskey, where down 7.3% this fiscal year.

you can tell it’s not an AI article because of good old fashioned typos like this

It's not a mystery. Bourbon got huge because really good stuff was readily available for pretty cheap. Henry McKenna 10 year was the poster child for this, it was really solid and you could find it everywhere for $25. Now it's a semi-premium offering for $60-75. The boom made all the producers invest in more infrastructure and now that infrastructure is delivering more and more product to an already flagging and overpriced market.

i stopped drinking whiskey (i was a bulleit fan even!) because it got popular, then too expensive, and worst part, too samey. i originally drank bulleit cuz it was a great drunk for 18$. now they're too proud of themselves and to my palate all bourbons taste pretty much the same, the better ones just burn less.

so now i drink barrel-aged gin or mezcal, or nothin cuz i can't pay the price for that vice.

All us millenials are old as dirt and the hangovers are too bad so we cut down our drinking too

clean three months, mostly because mental health reasons, not going back ever.

I just can't afford a cocktail

As soon as I discovered weed, alcohol was dead to me, gotta be a few of those cases going around.

Anecdotally, all the early 20’s I’ve met smoke over drinking, but my crowd is made up of ND potheads so idk if that’s worth much to generalize off of

As American as apple pie, Kentucky bourbon was booming after the last Great Recession ended. But as the economy has waned post-Pandemic - and with multiple trade wars on the horizon - the market may be drying up.

Although the whiskey, which is traditionally made with corn and aged in charred oak barrels, has roots going all the way back to the 18th Century, it wasn't until 1964 that it became an iconic piece of Americana, when Congress passed a law declaring it a "distinctive product of the United States".

But drinking trends come and go, and by the end of the 20th Century, bourbon was considered a bit old fashioned - pun intended.

"You often see these kind of generational shifts where people don't want to drink what their parents drink," said Marten Lodewijks, the US president of IWSR, which collects alcoholic beverage data and provides industry analysis.

Then, as the world recovered from the 2008 recession, drinkers seemed to rediscover this classic spirit, for a few different reasons.

For starters, the price point was good, which made it attractive for bar managers to purchase and incorporate into cocktails and for younger drinkers to sample. Then, in 2013, a law was passed in Kentucky that made it easier for companies to purchase and resell vintage bottles, opening up a high-end collectible market. Add to that the rise in mid-century nostalgia fuelled by shows like Mad Men, and bourbon was due for a full-blown Renaissance.

Sales of bourbon grew by 7% worldwide between 2011-2020, which is more than three times the growth of the decade prior, according to industry data company ISWR.

Soon, some bourbon distillers were becoming quasi-celebrities, and people were starting to buy up bourbon bottles not to drink, but as an investment.

"Everyone was going crazy over the bourbon market, and treating like a commodity, like a stock," recalls Robin Wynne, a general manager and beverage director for Little Sister in Toronto, Canada, who has been a bar manager for about 25 years.

"People would go in as a prospector, to flip bottles for two to three times the value."

But like most market bubbles, this one was bound to burst. The pandemic's lockdowns tanked bar sales, and inflation has made many would-be bourbon drinkers choose less expensive options - or forgo drinking all together. Amongst Gen-Z, many 20-somethings are drinking less than their older siblings and parents did at their age.

Those factors have contributed to declining alcohol sales, with bourbon sales specifically slowing down to just 2% between 2021-2024, according to ISWR data.

President Donald Trump's global tariffs have been the final straw. The EU has announced retaliatory tariffs against US goods, including Kentucky bourbon and Californian wine, although implementation has been delayed for six months.

Meanwhile, most provinces in Canada have stopped importing American alcoholic beverages in retaliation. The country accounts for about 10% of Kentucky's $9bn (£6.7bn) whiskey and bourbon business.

"That's worse than a tariff, because it's literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves ... that's a very disproportionate response," Lawson Whiting, the CEO of Brown-Forman, which produces Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester, said back in March when Canadian provinces announced their plan to stop buying US booze.

Trump has said that tariffs will boost made-in-American businesses.

But Republican Senator Rand Paul, who represents Kentucky, said the tariffs will hurt local businesses and consumers in his home state.

"Well, tariffs are taxes, and when you put a tax on a business, it's always passed through as a cost. So, there will be higher prices," he told ABC's "This Week" in May.

Whiskey is too damn expensive these days. Copper pipes and cracked corn wins out again if you catch my drift

Ketamine > alcohol

Ket has been a functional replacement for alcohol for me. It makes me dance and there's no hangover (relative to alcohol)

Alcohol fucks with my meds, I switched to weed.

I will gladly not drink out of spite.

Turns out delegating porky to have all the fun has consequences. Us young people are just raring to go and work when you change your mind, porky.