Women and Whiskey

One thing I was thinking about that we didn't discuss in our final class was the gendered marketing and perception of whiskey as a man's drink and wine (or if looking just at spirits, vodka) as a woman's. The advertising in the spirits industry has used gender-specific ads for decades: from Jack Daniels splashing its logo on NASCAR cars to Jim Beam's ads: "'the men who rode into the saloon' is never followed by 'and ordered Merlot'" and "Civil war soldiers getting their leg sawed off weren't given a vodka cranberry."

One of the most popular whiskey sites for a while was realmendrinkwhiskey.com. Whiskey is touted as a a man's drink, the drink of choice of powerful men from George Washington to the fictional Don Draper. The vocabulary and emphasis on benefits plays to gender stereotypes too: advertising for men emphasizes a spirit's bold and aggressive flavors, while for women there's a focus on "skinny" and low-cal.

I dug a little bit into the numbers: in the 1990s, only about 15 percent of whiskey drinkers were women. As whiskey has increased in popularity in the US over the last two decades - Americans drank 24 million cases of American-produced whiskey in 2014, a 30% increase from the decade before - the demographics of whiskey drinkers are changing too. Now according to Fred Minnick, the author of "Whiskey Women", women make up close to 40% of whiskey drinkers in the US.

It makes sense - women have been a bigger part of the history and story of whiskey than we think. In the 18th century, women produced most of the whiskey. Heather Greene, author of "Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life) and instructor of Whiskey Tasting courses at the Flatiron Room, explains that women were the first distillers out of necessity: they would produce whiskey in the kitchens and use it as medicine. "It was the tylenol, the ibuprofen of the day." The skill of making whiskey was so valued that classified ads would be put out in the 1700s looking for women who were good at distilling. During World War II when the majority of male bartenders were away at war, women were finally allowed behind the bar, mixing and pouring drinks. Initially instructed that they would have to leave their posts once the “real” bartenders returned, many of these female bartenders devoted themselves to retaining their gigs once the men returned.

History is coming full circle, and there are more women than ever in the whiskey distilling business: as distillers, tasters, blenders, and brand ambassadors. The big whiskey brands are starting to take notice and shift their marketing strategies  - Jim Beam made Mila Kunis the new face of the brand, and Jack Daniels and Jameson are marketing directly to women (introducing sweeter flavored whiskeys). 

So cheers to whiskey, one where "women are absolutely the future," as Minnick puts it.