State of Kentucky’s bourbon industry: ‘We’re in the middle of the storm’
Bourbon might not be booming at the moment, but it isn’t dead yet, according to speakers on Monday at the annual James B. Beam Distilling Industry conference at the University of Kentucky.
But there is no doubt that Kentucky’s signature industry is dealing with a lot of headwind at the moment.
“We’re in the middle of the storm,” acknowledged Kaveh Zamanian, founder of Rabbit Hole Spirits, Mary Dowling and Mash & Mallow Whiskey Cos in Louisville.
Zamanian, along with Jim Beam master distiller Fred Noe and Andrea Wilson, master of maturation and chief operating officer at Michter’s Distillery.
But Noe pointed out the whiskey industry has weathered many a storm before including the near-death knell of Prohibition.
“I wasn’t around with Prohibition was repealed,” Noe said, but he remembers the 1970s, “when everyone was drinking vodka” as another bleak time. And his father, Booker Noe, helped revive sales by inventing the small-batch bourbons that pushed the product into new hands.
That’s the kind of inventiveness that Noe and the others said will be necessary to ride out the current storm of declining consumer confidence, slipping spirit sales and an unfriendly global trade atmosphere.
The overriding message: Don’t quit. Don’t stop making whiskey now, because in 10 years, you’ll need it, Wilson said.
“Don’t start taking shortcuts. Keep the quality of your product there,” Noe said.
The decline in whiskey sales
At the beginning of the year, Beam took its home distillery at Clermont offline for the entire year. Noe confirmed that production has come down some because of that but said it has increased at Beam’s other plants.
“We made decision to pause the Clermont plant, but we reassigned employees, that was very important,” Noe said. No Beam employees were laid off, he said.
Noe said the decline is real but he doesn’t attribute it to any one factor such as the impact of THC or less drinking among Gen Z drinkers.
Gen Z is still drinking, but there are signals that there are changing habits, Wilson said.
“The difference is the context. There is a cultural shift. They have a lot more optionality on how they spend their social dollars,” Zamanian said. “It’s not about drinking less but better, around particular occasions and demanding higher quality products.”
The key is to connect with consumers in real and meaningful ways, Wilson said.
“Whiskey is experiential,” she said, pointing to tourism as a way to rebuild the market. People are looking for “moments they can’t forget. ... The Kentucky Bourbon Trail was nothing, but now we have 2.7 million people who come to state of Kentucky for the sole purpose of tourism. They want to maybe meet Fred, meet Kaveh, get a signature on a hat.”
And the end result of the current storm may be a good thing for bourbon overall, Zamanian said.
“Bourbon is not for the faint of heart. That’s just the reality of it,” he said. “We’ve seen lot of people get in the game in last 15 years and good number of them don’t belong. They got in for the wrong reasons … if you’re thinking about it for a quick buck, quick return, you’re in the wrong industry.
“We’re going to see a bit of rinse cycle, going to see a lot of folks washed out … and that’s good for the industry.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2026 at 1:19 PM.
