Women take the lead in whiskey as more female drinkers and distillers change the industry

SHOREHAM, Vt. (AP) — Meghan Ireland has always loved chemistry, but as a college freshman studying chemical engineering, she didn’t know she could channel her passion for science into the art of whiskey-making.

It took an article about a female chemical engineer who became a master whiskey distiller for something to click: While her fellow students in Ireland were getting into plastics and pharmaceuticals, she was getting into the whiskey business.

“It was kind of a connection, like, ‘Hey, I can see someone who looks like me, with the exact same education and background, doing this,’ and kind of opened it up as an option,” said Ireland, who is now the head blender behind Vermont-based whiskey brand WhistlePig.

Ireland is among a growing number of women becoming leaders in a traditionally male-dominated industry that has not always welcomed outsiders. Women are launching their own brands and finding new ways to innovate distilling and blending at a time when more and more women are drinking whiskey.

There is a widespread and persistent suspicion among some male colleagues and consumers that women who specialize in the industry even like whiskey.

Becky Paskin, a journalist from the UK and founder of the OurWhiskey Foundation, an organization that encourages and supports women in the whiskey industry, said she was asked this question while serving as a judge at a whiskey tasting event.

“This is a beverage that comes with certain expectations about which gender drinks it and which gender makes it,” Paskin said, adding, “No other beverage or food is subject to this much scrutiny.”

Paskin says part of her job is to create stock images of women consuming whiskey that do not present women as sex objects and do not have a public service warning.

“Images of women drinking whiskey were only depicted as pregnant, drunk, naked, or pregnant, drunk, and naked,” he said.

Whiskey making has long been considered a masculine profession in America; A drink especially enjoyed by men who swirl the golden liquid around in dark, smoky rooms. But industry experts and historians are quick to point out that women have always been involved and have been key to survival in the United States.

According to bourbon expert Susan Reigler, the first still was created by a woman named Maria Hebraea, a 2nd-century alchemist. From there, distilling came to be viewed largely as women’s work, as they were responsible for home brewing, making medicine, and taking care of the home.

Women managed distilleries, especially in Kentucky in the 1800s, where Catherine Carpenter recorded the first known recipe for sour mash, now the most common type of American whiskey. While women led the temperance movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, some historians estimate that there may have been more female bootleggers than men during the Prohibition era — in part because women were less likely to be sought by the police, according to the book “Whiskey Women” by Fred Minnick.

Reigler says he has often marveled at the transformation of the U.S. whiskey industry, which suffered a severe downturn in the 1990s when he first began reporting from Louisville, Kentucky. As distilleries sought to make whiskey attractive to American consumers, Reigler began documenting how women were contributing to the effort, from wives making key marketing decisions that boosted distillery tourism to female bartenders designing new whiskey cocktails.

Reigler was the co-founder of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a novel idea at the time that was copied across the country, including Peggy Noe Stevens, the world’s first female Master Bourbon Taster, working at Woodford Reserve, as well as Donna Nally with Maker’s Mark and Doris Calhoun with Jim Beam.

“There have always been women in Bourbon,” she said. But most of this was behind the scenes.”

The Vermont, Ireland native has been responsible for keeping WhistlePig’s whiskey consistent since 2018, but he also oversees experimental batches. The first whiskey innovation was Boss Hog VII, which quickly received praise and awards for its decision to finish the whiskey in Spanish oak and Brazilian teak barrels.

Ireland says more women getting involved in the industry has made whiskey “a drink for everyone”.

“Everybody likes it and women do it too,” he said.

Judy Hollis Jones spent years as a senior executive in the food industry before starting a whiskey company in Kentucky in 2019. Her move into the world of whiskey mimicked the boardrooms she had been in for decades, where she was often the only woman present.

Hollis Jones is the president and CEO of Buzzard’s Roost, the whiskey brand he founded with Master Blender Jason Brauner. She describes the whiskey industry as a “tough business” that has ebbed and flowed over the years, but the number of women attending tastings and tours willing to join in the whiskey experience has steadily increased.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘Oh, you’re not wearing jeans, boots and a cowboy hat,'” he said. “And I said, ‘No, I don’t. And not every woman who drinks bourbon drinks. We have a very broad spectrum of people who love bourbon.’

Associated Press reporter Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed.