The ideal situation for any maker, in the words of the poet W.H. Auden, is to be considered “local, but prized elsewhere.” Auden might have been specifically comparing poets to makers of “some local cheese,” but that lofty aspiration also applies to drink makers, too. In the case of most whiskeys, his aphorism holds true: Japanese whisky is a local product that is beloved outside Japan. Scotch is considered the standard of quality around the globe. And Irish whiskey is growing so fast it might catch up to Scotch in the U.S. in less than a decade.
But American whiskey, and bourbon in particular? Well, not so much.
In terms of Auden’s axiom, our national spirit is now in a bizarre Upside Down. Paradoxically, bourbon is a local drink for U.S. consumers that is currently prized almost to the point of ridiculousness at home, with interest approaching “mania,” as noted whiskey journalist Clay Risen wrote late last year. Prizes are getting stratospheric, with some drinkers complaining that they can’t find certain bourbons for sale at less than two times the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Rare and allocated bourbons, like the bottles in the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, can be exceedingly hard to find, with more than a few reports of fistfights taking place among would-be customers who stumble across one.
And yet “elsewhere,” meaning outside the U.S., there’s no such mania — not even in Europe, home to the biggest whiskey drinkers in the world. According to Stefan Wyrsch, founder
