As 2025 winds down, Frey Ranch Distillery co-founder and whiskey farmer Colby Frey shared his predictions on where he thinks the American Whiskey category will head in the new year.
2026 Predictions
The American craft whiskey industry will continue to contract, Frey believes, while the big players see an ongoing downturn in sales. Brand authenticity and a finely tuned narrative will be paramount to both trade and consumer traction.
Because of this downturn in consumption both domestically and globally, pricing will also contract – especially with the more established whiskey brands looking to grow volume.
Finely tuned storytelling & hands-on brand experiences will become more important for bartenders and trade to generate share of voice and secure on-and off-premise recommendations to consumers.
American whiskey brands will aim to find new revenue streams.
Whether that’s selling used barrels to the highest bidder or repurposing spent grains, new revenue streams will be important for the health of the industry as it weathers this storm.
Farmers are inherently efficient, economical, and resourceful. As an example of this efficiency, Frey Ranch sells its spent grains to the neighboring dairy farm as cattle feed. The dairy farm then gifts Frey Ranch Distillery the cow manure to fertilize its grain fields, creating an environmentally-friendly ecosystem that benefits both parties.
Frey also believes more American whiskey brands will explore estate distilling.
We saw a notable rise in the “estate distilling” movement with the creation of the Estate Whiskey Alliance.
Whiskey fans are starting to understand and look at ingredients in the same way that wine drinkers do. If you care about the grapes, where they came from and how they were grown and harvested, why shouldn’t it be the same with whiskey? How the grains are grown, the variety of grains, the soil type, the climate, and the geographical location all factor into the quality of the whiskey.
Many American whiskey brands source their grains from Germany, Canada or elsewhere across the U.S. To “tariff proof” their inputs and find cost savings, more American whiskey brands will explore “estate distilling” – or look to source their grains as locally as possible – to “tariff proof” their production inputs (i.e. grains), which cuts back significantly on shipping and trucking costs of overseas grains.
Increased age statements will be more prevalent as whiskey companies & barrel investors have older stocks to sell off.
The new product pipeline across the whiskey board will see a spike of 10+ year age statements and blends, which may have an impact on overall pricing – especially for high-value LTOs that lean specifically into older whiskey as a point of differentiation.
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