Most Big Spirits Brands Are Just Marketing

There’s a moment most people have had, whether they admit it or not.

You’re standing in front of a shelf of spirits, not really sure what you’re looking for, but convinced you’ll know it when you see it. You pick up one bottle, then another. Turn them over. Read the labels. Put them back.

At some point, the decision starts to make itself.

The heavier bottle feels better.
The cleaner label feels more considered.
The higher price starts to feel justified.

You don’t say it out loud, but the thinking is there:

This one must be better.

It’s a neat system. Easy to follow. And for the most part, it works just well enough that no one questions it too hard.

But it’s not built on what people think it is.

A while back, this came up properly in conversation with my brother; I need to buy a bottle of whiskey (in North Carolina where liquor is state controlled (and they dont have 1919) what do I buy and how do I tell if its a nice bottle? The question was simple: why does craft cost more, and why do people push back on it?

This question was also recently raised by Matt from Sea Lovers Gin put it better than most:

“You’re not paying for volume — you’re paying for decisions.”

It sounds obvious when you hear it. It doesn’t feel obvious when you’re standing in front of a shelf trying to decide what to buy.

Because from the outside, everything is flattened. Every bottle is reduced to a few cues: label, price, a handful of words that are supposed to signal quality. Words like premium, small batch, handmade. They’re everywhere.

Take Tito’s Handmade Vodka. It’s a good example, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because it shows how far the language has stretched. It sells somewhere around 12 million 9-litre cases a year in the United States alone. At that scale, whatever “handmade” once meant, it’s clearly not describing a couple of people carefully working through small runs. It’s describing something else entirely: a position, a perception.

And that’s the part that quietly shifts once you notice it.

Because if the same word can apply to a brand operating at that level and to a small distillery like 1919 Distilling running a few batches at a time, then the word itself isn’t doing much work anymore. It’s not telling you how something is made. It’s telling you how it’s meant to be seen.

None of this is a criticism of scale. Large producers are built to do something very specific: deliver consistency, efficiently, at volume, across markets. That’s not easy, and they do it well. But it’s a different model. You don’t get to millions of cases a year by chasing variation or making slow, manual decisions at every step. You get there by controlling variables and removing as much uncertainty as possible.

A small (craft) distillery sits at the other end of that spectrum.

You don’t have the option of buying everything in and smoothing it out later. You’re working with what you make. You’re choosing your inputs, running your ferment, deciding where to make your cuts. You’re accepting that smaller batches mean less efficiency and that trying to push quality often means giving something else up: yield, time, margin.

It’s not romantic when you’re doing it. It’s just how it works.

And it carries through everything that follows. If you’re ageing whisky, you’re filling barrels and waiting. Years, not months. Paying to store it, watching volume disappear to evaporation, knowing that not every cask is going to land where you want it to. Some won’t get bottled at all. They still count in the cost.

That’s before you factor in where it’s happening.

In New Zealand, wine has had decades of coordinated support: export development, global positioning, industry backing. Spirits haven’t had the same runway. Producers are working with high excise, limited support (if any), and a need to compete internationally almost immediately.

So when a locally made craft spirit sits at a higher price point, it’s not simply a matter of branding or margin. It reflects a set of conditions that are fundamentally different from those of a global-scale producer.

All of this sits behind that original moment in the bottle shop, even if you don’t see it.

Because the shelf hasn’t changed. The labels still say the same things. The signals are still there, trying to guide you.

But once you’ve looked past them, even briefly, the decision starts to feel different.

You stop asking which bottle looks more premium, and start wondering what actually had to happen to get the liquid inside it.

Strip everything else away, the branding, the weight of the glass, the positioning, and that’s the only question that really holds.

What’s in the bottle, and what did it take to make it? Who made it?

Because at the end of it, that’s the only part that hasn’t been designed to persuade you.

At 1919 we’re not trying to win on the label.

We’re trying to win in the glass.