Pour one out for American whiskey — the industry isn’t doing too hot, rocked by job cuts, falling revenue, changing consumer tastes, and tariffs.
- Bulleit and Wild Turkey both saw sales drop this year, and several brands, including ~150-year-old Kentucky Owl and Garrard County Distilling, have filed for bankruptcy.
Despite the current climate, entrepreneurs David Mandell and John Hargrove are taking their shot anyway.
They recently launched Whiskey House, a new-age distillery that's leveraging tech to bring the outdated world of whiskey into the future, per Wired.
Not your typical distillery
Whiskey House is a contract distillery, so it doesn’t produce its own consumer label but creates whiskey for other brands.
Its 110k-square-foot Kentucky facility “looks more like a data center than a distillery,” Wired writes, because “in many ways, that’s what it is.”
- The equipment and production floor are outfitted with 1.5k+ sensors that collect data to track and record every aspect of production — temperature, reflux ratios, etc. — in real time.
- Operators use the sensors and analysis software to make decisions, unlike traditional operators who go off intuition.
- Even the barrels have sensors, so customers can receive web-based insights throughout the aging process. Whiskey House uses QR codes to track barrels and hundreds of sensors to monitor storage conditions.
The result: more control over the process, meaning less room for human error, maximized efficiency, and a more consistent, high-quality product.
But its greatest strength…
… is its customizability. Whiskey House can produce up to 120k barrels a year, including small batches of 50 barrels for brands interested in experimental varieties.
- The 1-year-old company, which already has 35 customers, has made spirits using 56 different mash bills, the grain combinations used to make whiskey.
- Why that’s impressive: For context, Maker’s Mark only used one type of mash bill between 1954 and 2025, when it added a second.
The bigger picture
Traditional whiskey makers pride themselves on their old-school, hand-crafted methods, but the greater alcohol industry is facing a technological revolution.
Already, AI is being used for flavor development and personalization, and blockchain for authentication.
And while Whiskey House’s sterile operations might not have the same allure as the old guard’s, those hoping to survive the short-term chaos, one expert told Wired, would do well to embrace tech solutions to succeed in the long run.
