American whiskey: where the category actually is, and what the divergence tells commercial teams

American whiskey is in the middle of two corrections that are running simultaneously and require different responses. Treating them as one problem produces the wrong answer to both.

The first correction is at the production and inventory level. Between 2015 and 2022, demand for American whiskey – driven by the bourbon boom, the premiumisation of the spirits category, and the global spread of US cultural exports – generated a surge in distillery construction, barrel put-away, and bulk whiskey production. MGP Ingredients, the Kansas-based third-party distiller that supplies whiskey to a significant number of US brands, confirmed in its FY2025 earnings release that full-year brown goods sales fell 52% as “many large customers paused purchases, including to balance their whiskey inventories and manage their working capital.” MGP CEO Julie Francis stated that “elevated inventory levels will continue to pressure our brown goods business in the near-term.” In Q1 2026, MGP’s brown goods sales fell a further 56% year on year to $14.9 million. The company’s total consolidated revenue has fallen from $706 million in 2024 to guidance of $480–500 million in 2026. No single data point more clearly quantifies the scale of the production overcorrection than MGP’s results.

The second correction is at the consumer and brand level. American whiskey volume in the US declined 4.3% in the twelve months to July 2025. Within that decline, not all American whiskey is telling the same story. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey is declining in Germany (–7%), the UK (–9%), France (–7%), and Spain (–4%) simultaneously, per Brown-Forman’s FY2026 results published 4 June 2026. In the same results, Woodford Reserve is growing. Old Forester has tripled in volume over the past decade. The two corrections affect different brands differently – and the distinction between them is not primarily about category or price tier. It is about the nature of the consumer relationship that each brand has built.

The production correction – what MGP’s data confirms about the supply side