CRAFT by Under My Host® Issue No. 17 Made in America: Part II | Page 118

W W W. C R A F T BY U M H . C O M
tion ended with a thunderclap at 5:32 pm, eastern standard time, on December
5th, 1933; and the federal government instituted the first ever farm subsidy
with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 in an effort to lessen the effects
of the Great Depression on farmers. It was already noted that the stock of well-
aged American whiskey was very low when prohibition ended. Congress could
have acknowledged that The Noble Experiment was a failure and declared a
distillation holiday in advance of repeal in order to allow American distilleries
to replenish their stock, however, they chose not to do so. As a result, Ameri-
can distillers were put at a massive competitive disadvantage to imported aged
spirits. In late 1933, there were advertisements for bourbon that contained as
little as 17-percent aged whiskey and the rest was unaged spirit. Boatloads of
well-aged Scotch were waiting offshore in the northeast, truckloads of aged
Canadian Whiskey were waiting to cross the border from Canada and ships
full of mature rum were waiting in the Caribbean. The astute American distill-
er quickly realized that when getting back into the business, they would not
be able to compete on quality, and they would have to resort to competing on
price.
The bourbon distilleries in Kentucky were better situated to build large facilities
to garner economy of scale. There was plenty of land and a very well-developed
rail system (many of the bourbon distilleries moved to rail-side locations in the
1840’s). Conversely, most of the rye distilleries in the east were on small farm
plots with poor infrastructure and were not well funded. Additionally, the first
farm subsidy bill supported corn but not rye. Rye was not added to the subsidy
list for several years. As a result, it was cheaper to make bourbon than it was
to make rye. Sadly, almost none of the Monongahela rye distilleries were able
to come back when prohibition ended. It is more difficult to process high per-
cent rye than high corn, so the decision to focus heavily on bourbon was easy to
make.
From the end of Prohibition until 2006, rye whiskey was in steady decline. With
few exceptions, the independent rye whiskey brands either died off complete-
ly or were bought up by the larger bourbon distilleries. The bourbon distiller-
ies would switch to rye whiskey distilling for one or two days per year as they
continued to meet the ever-declining demand. No marketing money was being
spent in support of the rye whiskey brands, and it appeared that they were col-
lectively headed toward a long downward spiral until they died off completely.
When someone was asked, “Who drinks rye whiskey?” The answer was either,
“Nobody I know,” or “Maybe my Grandfather.” By 2006, there were only about
150,000 total 9-liter cases of rye whiskey sold in the United States, compared
with 14.7 million cases of bourbon.
In 2001, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the Wine
and Spirits Wholesalers’ Association (WSWA), and the Mount Vernon Ladies’
Association partnered to begin a campaign to publicize the fact that George