450 - Is American Single Malt On The Rise? with Steve Hawley, President of American Single Malt Whiskey Commission

Bourbon Pursuit

Hobbies, Food, Arts, Leisure

4.9 • 866 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a few things we talk about from time to time on the show. Sometimes it's RTDs, sometimes it's tequlia, and one spirit that seems to make it's way into more conversations is American Single Malt whiskey. However, I told myself that if we're going to talk about American Single Malt whiskey then we need a person that can really go indepth. What better person than Steve Hawley who is the President of the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission. Steve joins the show to talk about his background starting Westland Distillery and then formed the commission. We talk about the growth of the category, production methods, exports, and it's current journey to being recognized by the rest of the world. Show Notes: Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about the effect of climate change. How did you get into the whiskey business? If barley grows so well then why isn't there a history of it? What is the importance of trying to make American Single Malt an approved category? How did you become the president of the commission? How have case sales grown from 2010 till today? Is the SMWC analogous to DISCUS or KDA? What is the proposed definition of American Single Malt and what's the current status of it? What rules were valid versus ones that seemed really weird? Why do people prefer pot still for single malt production? When a heritage brand creates a single malt like Jim Beam and Heaven Hill, does this hurt or help? Are American Single Malt producers starting to look at exports instead of domestic education? Support this podcast on Patreon

Transcript

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0:00.0	The funny thing about this is that I've had probably at least three or four other American single malt company and PR people like reach out to me.
0:09.8	They're like, oh, have somebody come on and talk about American single mall and whatever.
0:13.0	And I was like, listen, we got a guy and that's going to cap all the allocation for American single malt talk for the entire year.
0:21.1	You got the you got the guy.
0:22.7	This is Bourbon Pursuit, the official podcast of Bourbon, bringing to you the best in news, reviews, and interviews with people making the bourbon whiskey industry happen.
0:44.5	And I'm one of your hosts, Kenny Coleman.
0:46.4	There's a few things we talk about from time to time on the show.
0:49.3	Sometimes it's RTDs, sometimes it's tequila, and there's one spirit that seems to make its way into more
0:54.5	conversations, and that's American Single Malt Whiskey. However, I told myself that if we're going
0:59.8	to have anybody on the show to talk about American Single Malt, then we need a person that can
1:03.9	really go in depth. And what better person than Steve Hawley, who's the president of the American
1:09.4	Single Malt Whiskey Commission.
1:11.5	Steve joins the show to talk about his background, starting Westland Distillery, and then form the commission.
1:16.5	We talk about the growth of the category, production methods, exports, and its current journey to being recognized by the rest of the world.
1:24.2	With that, enjoy this week's episode, and now here's Fred Minnick with Above the Char. I'm Fred Minnick, and this is Above the world. With that, enjoy this week's episode, and now here's Fred Minnick with Above the Char.
1:28.7	I'm Fred Minnick, and this is Above the Char. This week's idea comes from Kevin, who writes
1:35.9	me on fredminic.com. Are distillers concerned about the effects of climate change on their
1:42.3	product? On one hand, longer, hotter summers could mean
1:46.0	faster aging and reduced costs. On the other, I could see factors like increased angel share
1:51.9	or increased variability. Well, that's a great question, Kevin. And there's a couple things to
1:58.4	unload here. One, the most important factor for climate change
2:04.5	in terms of whiskey production is going to be the barrel and it's going to be to the water.
	...

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