Will the whiskey slump end soon? Depends on who you ask.

When I ask whiskey makers’ opinions about the current sales slide in American whiskey, the answer I hear often is, “Depends.”

Deep, right?

What they’re saying is it depends on which brands I’m inquiring about. If it’s a mega producer like Buffalo Trace or Heaven Hill or Wild Turkey, the downturn is viewed as an overdue correction in the market, a post-Covid inevitability, not really a big deal. Not only can they benefit from building up their stocks and aging them further, their sales forecasts center on much bigger opportunities than those of a few years back.

Well established and large contract producers are also confident—mostly, anyway. They’re not crazy about the decline in bulk whiskey prices, but they’re certain excess stocks won’t go to waste. To play on P.T. Barnum’s old saw, “There’s a bourbon brand born every minute,” and they believe that trend will continue.

Smaller producers, NDPs especially, are more concerned. Whiskey shelves at liquor stores are crowded, and getting attention for their brands is more difficult than ever, especially when powerhouse producers can reduce prices to keep sales moving. Even lower bulk whiskey prices don’t have them enthused if consumers aren’t scooping up bottles.

What will cheer all of them up?

It depends.

Large producers have a long-term mindset that anticipates international whiskey sales as key to the returning their investments in those mega-expansions. To them, the opportunity is endless, and it’s impossible to miss their eagerness to take the fight to far-flung international locations and teach people about bourbon, rye and American single malt whiskies.

Large contract producers are also prepared to fill their customers’ brand expansion visions overseas, but both parties know that growth in the domestic market will remain essential to brand launches that solidify awareness and, ultimately, drive consumer loyalty. In other words, it’s a slower, tougher grind at the middle tier.

This is where small NDPs tend to be more nervous than their peers. Domestic sales are everything, and getting consumers to pay more for their products when money’s tight is a challenge. A bottle that may have thrilled drinkers when pocketbooks were fatter now seems spendy given high food prices. From what I’m hearing, distillery experiences are more important than ever to draw drinkers in for a closer look and to be convinced that paying $70 for bottles is worth it.

Making sense of all this sometimes requires stepping back from the micro-view and examining things from 10,000 feet. One of only a few brands that’s visible from that far up is Jack Daniel’s, and its sales are and will always be an important measure of market moves everywhere. And Jack’s sales are down. According to an analyst report from Royal Bank of Canada, the softness currently endured by the famous Tennessee brand won’t firm up significantly anytime soon.

“While we believe we are in the later innings of this normalization process, we are still cautious on overall category demand given consumer pressures and trade down,” the RBC report said. “Our recent channel checks indicate the spirits industry was down around 5% over August/September in volume terms and expectations around the holiday are poor. Preliminary expectations for 2025 skews negative.”

Now, of course, the spirits sun doesn’t rise and set on Jack Daniel’s sales alone, but it’s certainly a gauge worth monitoring for its considerable bearing in the global market.

Or maybe that depends on who you ask. With the rate of distillery construction and expansion underway in Kentucky, the never-ending clamor tends to drown out skeptics and deafen optimists. Those with sunnier dispositions have no doubt that whiskey will be back. They believe that the past 20 years has built such a deep appreciation and craving for American whiskey that domestic market sales will not only return, enthusiasm our spirits will spread overseas.

I’m rooting for Team Optimist.