The Definition of Craft Whisky

Adam Quirk (co-founder of Cardinal Spirits) has an excellent post on craft distilleries:

The shelves at any given liquor store are full of bottles that appear to be very different products, made in different places by different companies.

But peek behind the curtain, and the majority of the “craft spirits” in those bottles are manufactured at a handful of huge distilleries.

Whisky makes an impression. Part of that is the bottle, marketing, and the story behind the drink. Sometimes those stories are made-up. In this way, whisky is no different than any other other industry--to succeed you need an excellent product with fantastic packaging and marketing.

Adam makes the point that by not having a definition of craft whisky, the consumers are going to loose trust over labels shared by big whisky manufacturers and true small craft distilleries. In this case, the burden is on the consumer to do additional research beyond what's written on the bottle.