By Richard Thomas
(Credit: Richard Thomas)
The Bourbon Boom is over. Although just how bad the current whiskey sales slump is unclear to outsiders, the slump is very real. Attending this slump is the bursting of the investment bubble that led so many techfinance bros to sink their excess cash into barrels of whiskey and warehousing ventures, while also leaving some over-leveraged companies crumbling under the weight of their debts. The highest profile and most shocking of these recent events is the $108 million lawsuit filed against Tennessee’s Uncle Nearest by their bankers, but it is not the only one.
“Beloved” Luca Mariano Distillery Goes Bust
If you have never heard of the Luca Mariano Distillery in Danville, Kentucky, then you are not alone and should probably ask Kevin Harrish why he described them as “beloved” in his article for Men’s Health. Founded and owned by Francesco Viola on a farm adjacent to Danville, Kentucky, it seems no sooner had the distillery opened its doors that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Contrary to what Harrish thinks, they are so new and so little known that in the couple of questions I have fielded about them, I had to make sure to dispel confusion between Luca Mariano and AMBRAbev (also located in Danville) in my answer. The bankruptcy was filed in Michigan, the principal place of business for Viola, who describes himself as an actor, producer and entrepreneur on his IMDB page, and claims between $1 and $10 million in liabilities on Luca Mariano in the filings. The company is also in “Bad” standing with the state of Kentucky, meaning they have not complied with all of the state’s corporate legal filing requirements.
Garrard County Distilling Shuttered
When Garrard County Distilling opened in Kentucky last year, I was unable to attend the press event. However, I remained in touch with their people after that and periodically asked about arranging an individual visit to their distillery. They were superficially receptive, but never actually followed through on setting up a date. I cannot help but wonder if there was not something more to that in light of recent events. After all, this is the same company that hired Lisa Rope Wicker, one of the most widely experienced names in whiskey distillery consulting, only to fire her less than a week later.
Located in Lancaster (between Danville and the Lexington exurb of Nicholasville), Garrard County Distilling closed in June 2025. Their contractors, Steel Services and Doss & Horky, has filed a more than $2 million in liens against their parent company for unpaid construction costs. That company also has a quarter million dollars in unpaid property taxes. The distillery has already been put into receivership in April, and subsequent court filings revealed as much as $29 million is owed to its creditors. Their major creditor, Truist Bank, claims to be owed $27 million and ended July by pressing for the sale of the distillery.
The Strange Case of Uncle Nearest
News broke earlier this week that Tennessee’s Uncle Nearest was facing a $108 million lawsuit from its creditor, Louisville-based Farm Credit Mid-America (FCMA). In the lawsuit, FCMA claims Uncle Nearest is in default, that the company’s founders had misused $2 million of that money to purchase a home in Martha’s Vineyard, while not meeting their financial reporting and disclosure obligations. The company founders, author Fawn Weaver and husband Keith Weaver, either deny the substance of these claims outright and point the finger at their former CFO, who they have alleged engaged in fraud by misrepresenting company assets while drawing on more credit from FCMA.
(Credit: John Rayls)
Uncle Nearest is named for Nathan Green, the enslaved distiller who taught a young Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. Although this story was never a secret, it went viral after it was related by the New York Times in 2016. Fawn Weaver, who was traveling in Singapore at the time, read about it and reacted by both starting research on Nathan Green and launching the Uncle Nearest whiskey brand in 2017. The Uncle Nearest visitor center was opened in Shelbyville, Tennessee in 2019; it has yet to become a working distillery.
Given the newness of this story, little is known about the veracity of the claims and counter-claims. But there are two observations I want to make at this time.
- In my opinion, Uncle Nearest is an overvalued company. Last year, their valuation passed the $1 billion mark. Although the brand has enjoyed rapid sales growth, that valuation number needs to be put into perspective. Campari, owner of Wild Turkey, Cinzano, Skyy Vodka and four dozen other brands, is valued at just $8 billion dollars. The world’s largest and best-selling whiskey brand, Johnnie Walker, has a stand-alone value of just $2.4 billion. Uncle Nearest’s valuation was partly based on its distribution and sales success, but also partly on being a very well-promoted brand (for which Fawn Weaver deserves much credit) during the years when the Bourbon Boom-driven bubble was rapidly inflating.
- In an Instagram post, Weaver dismissed coverage of the story as “hit pieces.” If there have been any actual hit jobs done in print on this matter, I am unaware of them. The same media that has spent almost a decade fawning over Weaver’s book and her whiskey company has stuck to just-the-facts reporting on this matter, offering little if any opinion or analysis of it. Implying “they’re all out to get me” merely for reporting on your being sued is not a good look.
(Credit: Mackmyra)
Continuing 2024’s Bad News
These developments continue a 2024 that helped signal the end of the larger World Whisky Boom. Sweden’s Mackmyra, one of the forerunners of whisky-distilling’s spread around the world, landed in receivership in August 2024. Yet that story ended (for now) on a positive note, when Mackmyra’s principal investor, Lennart Hero, mustered the necessary capital to buy the company and stabilize its finances.
Shortly after Mackmyra was saved, Kentucky Owl went under with its parent company, Stoli Group, in November 2024. After acquiring the Kentucky Owl brand, Stoli annouced ambitious plans to create a 420-acre distillery, warehouse, hotel and hospitality complex in Bardstown, the bourbon industry center. Observers had wondered in print for years over whether those ambitious building plans would ever be realized, and if so in what form, but as it stands now the actual bourbon brand itself is in limbo.
Crossing the Atlantic again, news broke in November 2024 that Ireland’s Waterford Distillery had run afoul of its creditors, failing to open more credit and defaulting. The ultimate fate of the whiskey company has yet to be decided. Founder Mark Reynier making some statements about saving the company in some form or another, but there has been no news about Waterford for the whole of this year.
Play Fast And Loose, Fall On Your Face
Circumstances have lately reminded us that when the music stops, players should have a pretty sturdy chair ready to plop down on. I won’t examine the factors in the whiskey market’s prevailing downturn in this article, as it’s a substantial enough matter to merit it’s own essay. However, when one reads these stories a common factor presents itself, one beyond betting the game of musical chairs would go on a while longer and getting caught out when the market soured.
A few years ago, I was contacted by a couple of finance bros in New York. They were also bourbon bros, and a recent deal of theirs had landed them ownership of some land in Central Kentucky. This pair knew I was not just a whiskey author, but also a general contractor and realtor. They were interested in using their property to get into the bourbon business, and wanted my advice on how to do that. I sketched some ideas for them, but it soon became clear the pair wanted me to do a great deal of unpaid exploratory work for them. I declined, so the whole thing went nowhere. I recalled this little episode upon learning about the Luca Mariano issue, looked up the records and saw that the property still belongs to them, but has not been additionally developed in any way. It’s still being used for what it had been in 2022.
I tell this story because it underlines just who and how many people were drawn into trying to carve off a piece of the Bourbon Boom. In past works, I have commented that one of the key features of the craft whiskey movement was how many small distilleries were started by refugees from the corporate world who were starting second careers; what they might not have known about making whiskey, they more than made up for with organizational, financial and sales know-how. But that was 15 years ago, in the wake of the Great Recession. Later on when the Bourbon Boom became the Bourbon Bubble, it attracted a whole different group of people into it. That group that included bros looking to invest their crypto profits into a few dozen barrels of MGP whiskey, opportunists, and fraudsters, among others.
Not every bankruptcy during this last year and a half is necessarily due to fecklessness or dishonesty. Skuttlebutt says Waterford’s ultimate downfall had a lot of do with founder Mark Reynier’s insistence that he wouldn’t repeat his experience with reviving Bruichladdich Distillery in partnership; instead he would go it alone and keep the reins in his hands. Critics say that led him to overly complicate Waterford’s portfolio of whiskies and hence its marketing (because no one could really challenge those choices), but also left him without partners to assist in matters of capital, credit and absorbing expense.
But in looking at the several stories of whiskey companies going bust as detailed above, as well as several more not related here for reasons of brevity, one thing stands out: many of these tales will have more to them than merely a sales slump causing the books to hemorrhage.
