I talk a lot of shit about guys who collect Blanton’s stoppers. And the thing is, they deserve it. It wasn’t too long ago that it felt impossible to buy Blanton’s or any decent bottle of mid-shelf bourbon. Call it whiskey mania, or the bourbon boom, or the tater takeover. Whatever you call it, brown liquor was absolutely flying off the shelves earlier this decade. The outsized demand gave rise to obnoxious consumer behavior, hilarious scams, and a veritable gold rush of investors into the segment. It couldn’t pan out, and it wouldn’t, even if the second Trump administration hadn’t taken a hot shit on the international market for American whiskey, which it did. Now, with the trade trying to tiptoe across a high wire without falling into a full blown glut, it’s worth taking stock of how we got here.

Joining The Fingers Podcast today to do just that is Clay Risen, a longtime New York Times staffer and the author of many books, including a few on American distilling. Having gotten his start reporting on the spirits industry in the late Aughts, the Nashville native has as good a perspective as anyone on how whiskey got hot, and why it’s cooled off. On this episode, we discussed the evolution of spirits media, the moment he realized the bourbon market had blown up, his upcoming history of the Whiskey Trust and its foes, plus much more. Tune in.

While the excerpts below are free, the full interview on The Fingers Podcast is exclusively for paying subscribers. Tnd there are two ways to listen:

I’m working on getting the The Fingers Podcast archive back online, too. There were some real bangers in there! More to come soon.

The transcript excerpts below have been edited for length and clarity. This interview was recorded July 10th, 2026.

Infante: I've been on this beat like a decade and a half. Probably a little less time than you. When did you first get into covering the booze business?

Risen: It was the late 2000s, and at the time, the amount of industry news that was online was pretty sparse. Honestly, the areas of the internet or places where you could actually learn about the bourbon industry specifically, or really any beverage-alcohol industry, were pretty thin. And so—

Infante: What was the go-to? Like, what was the forum everybody was on back then?

Risen: StraightBourbon.com. It was a very vibrant message board, and everyone was there. Chuck Cowdrey was there, Julian Van Winkle was there. They were dropping knowledge. Someone has archived everything, and it is amazing. You want to know the story behind this particular Willet release of you know like Doug's Green Ink? Well, Doug, the Doug, is there in the forum talking about the time that he was at this bourbon festival and he met up with the Willets and and just started talking and there next thing you knew they have Doug’s Green Ink. I was learning a lot there, and lot of my first couple years were just personally figuring it out, which I know sounds self-serving. So many of the books that were out there at that time were really good for the industry circa 1995. But even then, they weren't capturing a lot of what was starting to happen. What was Willet doing? What was Julian doing? What was Marci Palatella doing? There was a lot going on, but no one was talking about it, and no one really knew that this was going to be a thing, so it wasn't really being documented.

I was lucky to have an editor who, at this time, I was freelancing. I was actually writing for The Atlantic online. They had an editor, still do, who ran a food channel, and he was really interested in this emerging scene. He was aware of that, and so I was able to write really kind of base-hit stories, like profiles of distilleries that were as much about educating myself—

Infante: Right, like “Oh, what’s the angle?” I don’t know man, the angle is that it exists.

Risen: Right! Stuff like, “Let me tell you this crazy story because everyone who hears Four Roses today thinks it's garbage, but actually, it used to be great, and then it was garbage, but not in Japan. And then the Japanese bought it, and now it's awesome.” That kind of that kind of story that is also kind of a metaphor for the industry as a whole.

Infante: When do you when do you remember things starting to shift in the whiskey market?

Risen: I'd say 2011 is when I was really started to become fully aware of the scope of the craft movement. I'd been hearing about craft distilleries and visiting them for a while at that point, but that's when the critical mass really hit, where it was starting to generate its own heat. People started talking about craft whiskey outside of the circles of craft whiskey, and and you started to really hear about some big plans. This is about when Michter's really hit its stride. You know, started seeing bottles from distilleries that maybe I'd read about or I'd heard about online, and all of a sudden, here they are showing up in New York. There was just an energy that took over then. That’s one milestone.

Then another is probably 2014 or 2015. I knew a guy, as everyone knows a guy, who had a family liquor store. He was a whiskey guy and he had a lot more stuff upstairs, and we were up there kind of rooting around, and he said, "You know, I've got I've got the Weller 12 here. Do you want it? I can give it to you for 35 bucks.” And I was like, "Why would I want Weller 12? I already know Weller 12.” He said, “Things are changing really fast, and this is about to go through the roof.” But I had a wishlist, and that wasn’t on it. Lo and behold, within the next six months it was $120 on the shelf. I remember very specifically walking into a store, and just going, "Man, he was right. What the hell?!” It was that puzzle piece that made me suddenly realize the whole puzzle. It's like, wow, price taking is really happening, and the industry is has changed fundamentally.

And then you know the next milestone is probably COVID and just the the hyper-speed that things entered at that point. Those are my three milestones in the boom.

Risen: Sazerac is so good at it, for better or worse. IHate them, love them, but—

Infante: And plenty of people do both.

Risen: Oh, right. There are people who love to hate them, and people who hate to love them. They they line up for their stuff even though they know they shouldn't. Sazerac is very very good at it, and the other distilleries figured it out. Heaven Hill is pretty good at it. Many of the small distilleries are good at it. I one of the things I did a big profile of Dixon Dedman right when he and Mark Carter sold Kentucky Owl to to Stoli. That was huge deal in the industry. That was also a turning point. I remember he was very, very open about the both the shock of when he went out to market with those first bottles of Kentucky Owl, and maybe not really realizing that he had organically created a tater bottle without really—I mean, I think he knew, but he also was surprised at how dramatic the demand was. How it took off. Suddenly it was going for $300 when he had originally thought, “Maybe I can get $50 or $60.”

For a follow-up story, a couple years later, I remember, Dixon had some great quote where he’s like “$90 is the new $60” This was like 2022. There had been a huge sea change, and bottles that you normally would think would max out at $60… they're not even special bottles. They're just special enough.

Since starting The Fingers Interview series back up, I’ve spoken with:

Before I wound it down, I spoke with a bunch of very interesting folks from inside the booze business, and beyond it. Including:

And probably a few more that I missed as I navigated the depths of the archives.