I like whiskey—the bite, the burn, the sphere of ice lolling around the glass.
But I’m also suspicious of it.
While some whiskey is better than other whiskey, I have my doubts that some whiskey is worth thousands of dollars more than other whiskeys. (I have the same doubts for wine and other luxury goods, by the way—but my focus here is on the whiskey.)
First, there’s the scarcity mindset at work. There’s only a barrel? A few hundred bottles? That fact alone sends enthusiasts running to the nearest stocking liquor store. Does the quality even matter if there are other a few hundred people lucky enough to own the one-off bottle?
There’s nothing wrong with this, of course—this is great marketing! I don’t begrudge distillers manufacturing enthusiasm for their products, even if it’s blatant persuasive marketing.
But these specialty, high-end bottles are just a sliver of the overall market for whiskey.
The industry refers to it as “heritage storytelling,” and it’s a big reason why Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam, and other American whiskey brands are so famous. Even though the modern operations have little to do with their historical origins—most are owned by giant, multinational corporations—these brands still trade on their “authentic” history.
The resulting state of affairs is that every distillery feels pressured to tell some story. The market demands more than a quality product; the market demands a quality story.
That brings me to the odd case of Widow Jane. For a long time, the Brooklyn-based distiller claimed that their signature whiskeys were proofed with water from the Widow Jane Limestone Mine in upstate New York.
The only problem with that? It’s wasn’t true.
Here’s an NBC News article:
And despite [a representative of Widow Jane] claiming they have a “tap” into the Widow Jane Mine to extract water, [Henry Lowengard, the current president of The Century House Historical Society, which owns the Snyder estate and the Widow Jane Mine] disputed that as well: “The source of their water, Turco Brothers’ mine, is still not connected to the water of the Widow Jane Mine, and we have no connection to Widow Jane Whiskey.” A representative of Turcos Brothers water also confirmed Lowengard’s statement, saying Turcos doesn’t have access to the Widow Jane mine itself.
For what it’s worth, Widow Jane seems to have changed its tune: the website now reflects a more generic claim about how their whiskey is “proofed with a hard-yet-sweet pure limestone water from the Legendary Rosendale Mines of Upstate New York.”
But still—you can see them edging into the story from the side. Even after being called out, they can’t abandon the story entirely.
This insistence storytelling—even when it’s partly bullshit—is one reason that whenever someone trots out a whiskey anecdote, my hackles go up.
Taylor Coe 