American Whiskey’s Next Growth Story Is Global

By Michael Bilello, President & CEO, American Whiskey Association

American whiskey enters the latter half of 2026 at an inflection point.

There is no benefit in pretending the domestic market is operating at the velocity it did several years ago. The U.S. American whiskey category was valued at approximately $12 billion in 2025, down 2.2% from the previous year, while volume declined 3.2%. Inventories have grown substantially after years of investment and expansion.

But “slowing” and “shrinking away” are not the same thing.

From 2020 through 2025, American whiskey still generated approximately 3.7% compound annual growth. The category remains substantially larger, more diverse and more globally relevant than it was before the pandemic. What we are experiencing looks much more like a normalization after an extraordinary growth cycle than the disappearance of consumer interest.

The question is what we do next.

From my vantage point, the answer increasingly begins outside our borders.

American whiskey contributes approximately $5.1 billion annually to the U.S. economy. In 2025, American whiskeys remained by far America’s largest spirits export category, generating approximately $1.08 billion in exports. Yet that figure was down 19% from 2024.

Those numbers should get our attention.

They tell us both how important exports already are and how vulnerable the category becomes when access to major international markets is disrupted. Canada provided the most dramatic recent example, while uncertainty in Europe has also affected trade flows. At the same time, markets across Asia and elsewhere offer enormous long-term potential. We need tariffs to come down in India so we can compete on even ground there with Scotch and Irish.

For American whiskey, market access is growth policy.

This is particularly important because whiskey is unlike many manufactured products. Production cannot simply be relocated abroad to avoid a tariff, and supply cannot be turned on and off in response to the latest quarterly sales report. Whiskey reaching a consumer today may have been distilled four, six, eight or twelve years ago. The grain was purchased. The barrel was made. The capital was committed years before the bottle reached a shelf.

American whiskey inventories have roughly tripled since 2012. In that environment, diversified and predictable export markets become not simply an attractive opportunity, but a strategic necessity.

Yet opening markets is only the beginning.

I think about this in three stages:

Market access. Shelf access. Consumer access.

Government can help secure commercially viable market access by reducing tariffs and addressing non-tariff barriers. Importers, distributors and retailers can provide shelf access.

Consumer access has to be earned.

That is where I believe the American whiskey community has an extraordinary opportunity—and responsibility.

We cannot simply ship more cases overseas and assume consumers will understand why American whiskey deserves a place alongside Scotch, Irish whiskey, Canadian whisky, Japanese whisky and the world’s other great spirits.

We have to educate and engage them.

American whiskey has one of the richest supply-chain stories in beverage alcohol. It begins with grain grown by American farmers and American white oak. It moves through cooperages, distilleries and warehouses where climate and time shape maturation. It continues through glassmakers, printers, packaging companies, logistics providers, distributors, retailers, bartenders and hospitality businesses.

In 2023 alone, U.S. distilleries used approximately 2.8 billion pounds of grain across spirits production. An exported bottle therefore represents far more than liquid crossing a border. It represents an American agricultural and manufacturing value chain reaching a global consumer.

And innovation is occurring across virtually every point in that chain.

Inside the bottle, producers continue exploring grains, proofs, finishes, blending, maturation and new expressions—from bourbon and rye to Tennessee whiskey and American Single Malt.

But some of the industry’s most interesting innovation is also occurring around the bottle.

Labels and packaging are becoming consumer-engagement platforms. QR codes, NFC capabilities, authentication and traceability technologies can connect a physical bottle to provenance, production information, cocktail education and brand storytelling. Packaging communicates quality before the cork is ever pulled. New formats create opportunities for different occasions and new consumers.

Hospitality, tourism, tastings and cocktails are equally important. Younger legal-age consumers increasingly approach beverage alcohol through occasions, experiences and discovery rather than rigid category loyalty. That demands more from us than simply making excellent whiskey. We have to create compelling reasons to discover it.

This is where tradition and innovation must coexist.

Innovation without identity risks commoditization. Tradition without innovation risks irrelevance.

American whiskey should do neither.

We can defend rigorous standards, provenance and geographic indications while simultaneously innovating in flavor, packaging, technology, formats and consumer engagement.

That will require buy-in across the entire category—not just from distillers, but from farmers, cooperages, suppliers, distributors, retailers, hospitality operators and policymakers.

At the American Whiskey Association, we describe our ambition simply: Make American whiskey the world’s whiskey.

That is not an assertion that American whiskey should displace anyone else’s.

It means earning a place among the world’s great whiskey traditions by ensuring consumers can access it, understand it and ultimately choose it.

The next growth cycle will not come from waiting for the domestic market to return to yesterday’s conditions.

It will come from opening doors around the world—and then doing the work required to give consumers a reason to walk through them.