THE FUSE

So much can change in 25 years. American whiskey’s trajectory in the past quarter-century has been nothing short of extraordinary. Although bourbon and rye were cornerstones of drinking culture from the 1800s up to Prohibition and beyond, whiskey’s dominance ended in the 1970s as baby boomers turned away from older generations’ preferences en masse. The decline lasted decades. In 1999, Kentucky distillers made fewer than 500,000 barrels of bourbon, and almost no rye.