Kentucky’s Bourbon problem

Bourbon and Whiskey distilling is big in Kentucky and always has been. But it saw a huge surge in the early 2000s, so much so that customer demand outstripped how much Kentucky distilleries could even produce. There were several reasons for this, but personally I feel like everyone was getting into "brown liquors" in the cocktail and bar scene as bourbon and whiskey was pushed at every restaurant I went to and in every lifestyle magazine I opened back then.The thing about Kentucky Bourbon is you take some corn/grain mash and cook it and then distill that and take the liquid that comes off and you put that into barrels. But then it has to sit for at least one full year before it can be sold, while anything called Kentucky Straight Bourbon takes at least two years. Most distilleries focus on their highest margin varieties, which are premium versions aged 5 to 10 years.Aging barrels takes up a lot of space that can't be used for anything else for years on end. The last time I was back in…