Craft this and craft that

Craft beer is something.

It's good. It was a revolution against a marketing dominated choice and quality drained market

Craft distilling or craft whisky is something else. Here is a comment on the difference I made on facebook the other day

The term "craft" is inspired ("stolen" is what I really mean) from the breweries. With beers it makes sense. If you have the skills, a skilled brewer can open a small brewery and make fantastic beers the next day. If you got the skills as a whisky maker, you have a few problems that the brewer doesn't have. The term "craft" is usually associated with small producers. Beers and whisky alike. The one difference is: Craft beer is fantastic, Craft whisky is terrible (with exceptions in both catagories). Why is this so? Whisky takes time. So far craft distilleries haven't had time to proof their value. But there is another factor. Making world class whisky is also a game of chance. If you got a million barrels maturing and carefully watch them, you fnd a few of them to be brilliant in 20-30-40 years. With only a 100 casks in the warehouse your odds in that lottery is simply smaller.

Another factor is that these socalled craft distilleries are often forced to bottle their production at young age. So the term "craft whisky" is also associated with spirits that doesn't taste very good, usually for the reason of being far too young and not ready for drinking.

End of the day I do like the term "Craft Beer". It has a positive association. "Craft Whisky". or "Craft Spirits" on the other hand doesn't have the same positive association. Quite the opposite actually. But I hope one day time will prove me wrong. As Adam from LA Whiskey Society once said "There is hundreds and hundreds of small new distilleries. Some of it is bound to be good one day"

LAWS did spot one gem themselves, Charbay

You can also argue that craft beer grew on the base that the market was filled with boring tasteless massproduced beers. You can't say that about whisky. And if you do, I can argue that the independent bottlers are the place to go for the concerned whiskyentusiast