the way they treat it,” Edelstein emphasized. “You spend a lot of time making the best distilled spirits that you can and you don’t want a consumer who mistreats it.” She suggested having tour guides explain to guests the proof of what they’re about to drink. “For a lot of visitors to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, they aren’t used to a spirit that hits them that strong. We have to education them on what’s in their glass.” For more education, the KDA just opened a DRINKiQ exhibit at the Frazier Museum, the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in Louisville. Modeled on the same exhibit created by Diageo for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, DRINKiQ is an online quiz visitors can take on monitors mounted to bourbon barrels at the Welcome Center. It consists of multiple choice and true/false questions on alcohol consumption. It’s a way to bring the consumer into the conversation while educating them at the same time. The KDA has also partnered with Better Drinking Culture (BDC), a national organization based in Michigan that promotes responsible imbibing of alcoholic beverages. “These guys do not advocate for abstention,” she pointed out. “They just advocate for drinking in a positive way. It makes moderate consumption aspirational.” Edelstein added that Better Drinking Culture’s manifesto poster is available to download for free online.
WHY IS THIS ISSUE I MPORTANT? “(The KDA) made it a strategic priority for all of our distilleries in 2016,” said Edelstein, “because we believe it not only reduces y’alls liability when it comes to fines and reputational damage and even your license to operate within a community, but it also preserves your industry’s ability to grow.” Smith added another reason for endorsing social responsibility. “They are absolutely 100 percent a silver bullet when you are going to your legislators and looking to change laws in your state,” he emphasized. “Especially if you partner with your guild, you get a lot of bang for your buck because 90 percent of these [practices] cost you nothing. Doing those very simple things and getting privileges that you may not have currently in your state, legislators want to see that. There is always that question, what are you doing to mitigate risk? If you have that data, especially from a distillers association, you can say these are the things we are already doing that meet your requirements so you feel better about supporting these bills.” Edelstein mentioned several laws that passed in Kentucky the past few years, like allowing distilleries to ‘sell by the glass,’ adding cocktail bars to tasting rooms in 2016, allowing the sale of vintage spirits in 2017, which allowed out-of-circulation bottles to come back onto the market, and in 2018, Kentucky became the eighth state in the US to allow direct shipment of spirits to customers from distillery visitor centers. Edelstein declared, “What we’ve found with these best practices is when people know better, they do better.”
For KDA’s best practices documents and more visit: kybourbon.com/responsibility/kdas-responsibility-initiatives. For more info about Better Drinking Culture visit betterdrinkingculture.org. YEASTS & FERMENTATION SOLUTIONS
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