Angel's Envy made at a factory in Indiana!?

[Robin Garr]

Outed in a national article on the Daily Beast:

Angel’s Envy buys Indiana rye, puts it in old rum casks to soak up a little sweetness, and then charges a hefty markup.

The whole article is worth a read for booze geeks and those who enjoy a nip now and then:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... diana.html

What's the scandal? This is talking about the product they market as "Angel's Envy Rum-Finished Rye," not about Angel's Envy bourbon. Not being a rye enthusiast, I can't say that product has been on my radar as something to try, but if it was, the fact that it was distilled in Indiana wouldn't be off-putting.

Also, until they get the planned Main Street operation up and running, there's no Angel's Envy distillery, so anyone who knows anything about bourbon would assume their bourbon is distilled for them by one of the ten or eleven major Kentucky distilleries. SOP in the bourbon industry. They do very clearly claim their bourbon is made in Kentucky, which they do not claim about their rye.

[Robin Garr]

What's the scandal?

"Scandal" is a stong word, Jeff. It still seems a bit cheeky to me when a producer through omission leaves consumers to assume the details. I don't like it in the world of beer (Blue Moon or Shock Top, for instance, craft-look brews made by Coors and Anheuser-Busch, respectively, but positioned to compete with local beers) or of wine (the many Gallo brands whose labels carry an artisanal look but that actually come from Ernie and Julio's dark satanic mills in Modesto.

Fair enough, but I think in the whiskey world - especially in bourbon, but maybe in rye and others too - it's a bit of a different situation. Production has been consolidated to just a few producers (a fraction of the number of brands and labels) since the end of Prohibition. Not so in the beer and wine worlds.

[Robin Garr]

Fair enough, but I think in the whiskey world - especially in bourbon, but maybe in rye and others too - it's a bit of a different situation. Production has been consolidated to just a few producers (a fraction of the number of brands and labels) since the end of Prohibition. Not so in the beer and wine worlds.

Fascinating point, Jeff, and I agree, mostly. However! Bear in mind that the beer industry has undergone an incredible evolution since the 1980s. Precisely the same kind of consolidation took place there, to the extent that the US was down to less than 30 breweries then. Now it's up to more than 3,000. This is a good thing, although a handful of majors - now mostly internationals - still dominates the marketplace in production and sales.

In both cases, I'm all in favor of transparency, and keeping consumers informed, and, quite frankly, naming and shaming when producers are less than open about this kind of thing. Note that I'm not calling for laws, criminal sanctions or censorship. Just public naming and shaming.

The difference in beer and whiskey is that beer takes 6 week to get a viable high quality product from malt to bottle. Whiskey takes 5+ years.

The entire booze business is built on marketing dollars, romance along with lots of smoke and mirrors. As a liquor store owner, I am a bit more jaded than normal.

With wine, there are lots of producers but the big boys continue to put out way too many labels with very little info about the actual wine other than California and a catchy name. Gallo being the biggest culprit.

Even the actual whiskey producers love to use made up stories to sell their product. "Makers is a tiny little distillery in Loretto run by the Samuels family". "Elijah Craig invented bourbon." Or the whole old rip van winkle distillery nonsense. These NDPs are just following the lead of the big boys. Small lies about provenance and distilleries that don't actually distill.