Once upon a time, most whiskey drinkers were brand loyal. They’d buy the same bottle again and again. Because they liked it, of course, but also because there wasn’t all that much choice. Selection was dominated by a few big brands and no one questioned it; they just bought their favorite, took it home, and drank it.

Those days are long gone. Like Oreo flavors and potato chips, whiskey’s array of choices has grown exponentially. And not only that: for a certain kind of whiskey drinker, buying the same bottle twice is now anathema. Former K&L spirits buyer David Driscoll, who now consults for distilleries and retailers, wrote about the trend in 2023, and says it’s only gotten worse. “It’s even more compounded now,” he says, adding that he tells his distillery clients to go for “singles, not home runs.” In terms of selling new whiskey, he explains to his clients, “you’ve got a month, max, and then everyone’s done.”

How did we get here? It started with whiskey enthusiasts—many of whom, at Driscoll’s store, were coming over from wine—who were excited to find a cool bottle, open it, and drink it at their leisure. But, Driscoll says, “it evolved into a social media phenomenon.” As whiskey’s popularity went mainstream and influencer culture arose, showing that you had a new whiskey wasn’t just about sharing your excitement, “but rather trying to be the first person with something to say because it adds credibility to your online persona as a whiskey expert.”

Layered on top of this is the desirability of allocated or rare-coded whiskies; a social post that shows off a $500 bourbon, or one of a 200-bottle run, instantly raises the poster’s status. But it also feeds an insatiable beast, as the audience scrolls on, and the whiskey influencer has to find another bottle to attract their attention, and the whiskey producer has to come up with even more new bottles. And on and on it goes, with nothing deep accomplished—just a thumbs up, or a floating heart or, at best, an envious comment.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to whiskey. You can see the shallow pursuit of the singular thing or experience, and its effects, all over the place: among sneakerheads and Lego brickfluencers, and especially in dining. There are more and more “hookup restaurants”—places that people visit once to document on social media, and that subsequently close because, after showing off once on their Instagrams, those customers never return. When the point of the game is to collect them all, and there’s a nonstop conveyor belt of limited-edition Jordans or Lego sets or tasting menus, the game is, ultimately, unwinnable.

New > Good

Not every whiskey drinker shows off their latest pour on social media, of course. The vast majority don’t. But like pretty much all fandoms nowadays, whiskey has fallen prey to influencer culture, and it has an outsize effect on trends. The loudest voices get the most attention, and often control the conversation. For new producers—of which there are more and more, as people flock to the booming industry—it means that the old model of making good whiskey and selling it at a fair price no longer works. Generating buzz through novelty is their only real strategy.

Driscoll has seen it play out among his retail clients. When they’re offered an allocation of a new whiskey, “the first email usually sells out. And then when they reinforce supplies with extra inventory, there’s little to no excitement from the second email,” he says. So he advises retailers not to bother restocking, and just to move on to the next new thing.

This holds true even for the whiskey establishment. The big distillers have taken to releasing limited-time offerings—LTOs—in a bid to create excitement, hoping for a “halo effect” on the core, much-more-available bottling. But even they are struggling. “If the LTO was getting their core brands the halo effect that they were hoping for, then you would see fewer and fewer LTOs,” Driscoll says. “But the fact that every brand is releasing an LTO every couple months tells you that they're not finding growth.”

And bear in mind: all this takes place regardless of the quality of the newest limited-edition offering. “In many cases, a new whiskey is better than a good whiskey,” Driscoll wrote in 2023. He maintains that’s still the case—compounded, again, by the influencer effect. “People are being paid to shill mediocre whiskey,” he says, noting that if there’s a discussion of flavor at all, “that’s never where [their pitch is] leading from.” Having tasted hundreds of new whiskies in the last few years, I can confirm that there’s a surplus of fair-to-middlin’ liquid being promoted as New and Exciting. 

The only upside is that it all floats by pretty quickly, because the next new bottle is always coming down the pike.

Where Does It End?

All of this is frustrating for actual whiskey drinkers. We’re deluged with new releases and have almost no reliable sources to help us pick out the actually good stuff from the growing pile of mediocrity. (I’m trying, though!) The loudest voices in whiskey culture come from the influencer side, which can make a person feel out of touch or boring or naïve if they choose to pick up regular Old Forester at their local liquor store instead of entering a sweepstakes for the chance to travel to Kentucky to buy a bottle of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon.

And the cycle feeds on itself, as producers must continually scramble to launch new whiskies—which, because making whiskey is a years-long process, are really just iterations on often-unremarkable liquid. Hence the explosion in cask finishes, a quick method of “innovating” that often simply slaps an additional layer of flavor on top with little regard for whether the bourbon would benefit from it or not. (It almost never does.) Ditto the rise in whiskies bottled at different, usually much higher proofs; add a little less water, label it “Distiller’s Cut” or “Full Proof” or some other meaningless term, and voila! “New” whiskey, overnight.

Much like the endless scroll, this pattern looks like it can go on forever. But it’s unsustainable. All these whiskey producers breaking their backs to release new bottle after new bottle? Eventually they’re going to look at the numbers and realize they can’t make them work. And influencers, an increasingly crowded group, will lose interest when they fail to get the eyeballs and clicks (or freebies) they desire. Regular whiskey drinkers, frustrated at never being able to snag the LTOs they’ve seen paraded across TikTok, might keep on buying their old standbys. Or they might just move on from whiskey altogether.

However it all goes down, the cycle of novelty will taper off eventually. Driscoll thinks that the correction will come soon, as bourbon enters a surplus phase. “You’re going to see a return to an era when whiskey is going to be older and a better value than it’s been for the past decade,” he says. “They’re going to have to pack as much value into every bottle they can. There’ll be no choice but to sell 15- and 20-year-old whiskies at prices we haven’t seen since 2010.”

Bad news for many whiskey brands, especially non-distiller producers who won’t be able to compete with the scale of the big guys. But good news for actual whiskey drinkers! Especially if the return to competing on quality, rather than novelty, means that ponying up for an unknown bottle isn’t as much of a gamble—in price or flavor. 

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