The American Single Malt Is Now Official, So What Next?

By Richard Thomas

On December 13, the US Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) made an announcement that had been years in the making, and long awaited among many craft distillers: the American Single Malt was created as an official alcohol category.

The Details
The American Single Malt Whiskey Commission (ASMWC), a trade group founded to push for this achievement, has heretofore been the only body stipulating what an American Single Malt actually was, and their rules were: made from 100% malted barley; made at a single distillery; distilled and matured in the US; matured in oak casks (new or used) not exceeding 700 liters capacity; distilled to not higher than 160 proof; and bottled at or higher than 80 proof. This represented a blend of American and wider malt whiskey practices (i.e. Ireland, Scotland, Japan), and was distinct from the already existing category of American Malt Whiskey. The latter is best represented by products like Woodford Reserve Straight Malt, which is made from a mash of mostly malted barley, but also corn and rye, and matured as required in new oak barrels.

The TTB’s new category for American Single Malt gives the makers of such whiskeys everything on the ASMWC’s list and then some, because it also allows for the addition of caramel coloring. This coloring has long been used in Ireland, Scotland and those countries which have borrowed from their production model. It alters the flavor profile either minutely or not at all, and is usually added to make what would otherwise be a pale, white gold colored whisky more attractive.

OK, But What Does That Mean To Consumers?

One could argue that the birth of the American Single Malt as an official category has been waiting ever since St. George’s Spirits released Lot 1 of their single malt twenty four years ago. Or perhaps since Stranahan’s bottled their first Colorado Single Malt in the middle 2000s. Reaching all the way back into the period I refer to as “craft whiskey before there was craft whiskey,” this moment has been a long time in coming. More recently, the industry has been waiting for the TTB to rule on this issue since at least 2022.

But as for what it means to both consumers and to people who make the whiskey in the near term, after the hoopla and toasts die down, I would argue not much. The importance of this making this step forward is one that will yield dividends in the middle term, and a brief story about the last time an American whiskey-maker lobbied for his product to receive its own category reveals why.

Reagor Motlow, the grand-nephew of Jack Daniel’s, was the first from that company to lobby to US government to recognize Tennessee Whiskey as a unique category, pointing to their use of the Lincoln County Process as making them distinct from bourbon and other forms of whiskey. The Federal authorities agreed in 1941 they were special, but not in the way Motlow hoped for. When I read the documents, my take on the wording is that it is so neutral as to be almost back-handed. Yet Motlow’s successors continued to build up the idea of “Tennessee Whiskey” as a unique category in their marketing, and finally achieved their ambitions through a patchwork of trade agreements, marketing and education, and finally a Tennessee state law in 2013. Today, that seventy years of work has turned Lincoln County Process is a critical part of the identity of not just Jack Daniel’s, but Tennessee Whiskey made by other distilleries.

Stipulations and special categories add value to the products made under them, in much the same way that DOCs do for wine and regional protections do for particular cheeses and cured meats. That is what official recognition does for the American Single Malt, in confirming the work already begun by the ASMWC and others. Just as Tennessee’s state level law was the final girder in a legal framework defining and protecting Tennessee Whiskey, Federal recognition defines and protects American Single Malts.

Now those making American Single Malts have a leg up in their work of educating the public as to what a single malt made in America is, how that makes it both cousins to the familiar Irish, Scottish, Japanese and other single malts made abroad, but also how they are special in their own right. Again, these distinctions matter: just think about the way enthusiasts already enjoy the nerdy details of bourbon or Scotch. Promoting the details of the new category can only enrich the experience of American single malts, American whiskey and single malts generally.

I say it does not matter much in the near term in the sense that I do not expect the news to change anything in 2025. The second Trump Trade War, for example, will matter far more to the makers of American single malts in coming year than this victory with the TTB. For the here and now, this announcement is big news for folks who pay close attention to the whiskey business as a business, not the consumer.

But in the middle term, I expect the announcement will matter in two important ways. The first has already been described: confirmation of the category bolsters efforts to distinguish it and the story behind its whiskeys. The other is that it signals America’s major distilling companies that investing in the development of American Single Malt brands is a safe diversification of their line-ups. Some major companies had already moved in this direction, but products like Jack Daniel’s Single Malt or Beam’s Clermont Steep Single Malt may now receive bigger marketing pushes.

Heretofore, the craft and mid-sized distillers that entered the American Malt space did so precisely because it was an area the Big Distillers were not. That had its blessings, but also its negatives, and one of the negatives was that this collection of small companies had to do all the heavy lifting on marketing not just their own products, but the category as a whole. It’s easy to imagine that if Brown-Forman or Suntory Global decided to put some real resources into pushing their own American single malts, that push would rival the combined efforts of the ASMWC. And just as the Tennessee Whiskey category has been good for everyone making it, even if it was almost entirely Jack Daniel’s/Brown-Forman pushing it forward all these years, it’s a good guess that having the big players take the category more seriously would be a tide that raises all boats.