Whisky - UK (2020-05)

THOUGHTS FROM

LIZA WEISSTUCH

Issue 167 | Whisky Magazine 11

THE CURRENT DYSTOPIA

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I

f you had told me four weeks ago

that hand sanitiser would be the

hot topic in whiskey chatrooms,

at dinner tables, and even in the US

Congress, I would have laughed. Loudly.

Then again, if you had told me four

years ago that Australia and California

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have applauded you and introduced you

to my friend in Los Angeles who writes

for network comedy shows.

And yet, here we on the precipice

of spring. On the early April day on

which I write this, I sit at my desk in

my generally quiet neighbourhood in

—‡‡•ǡβ‹˜‡‹Ž‡•ˆ”‘‹‡•“—ƒ”‡

and 2.5 miles from Elmhurst Hospital.

If you had told me that on this day,

Times Square would be a ghost town

with a few ambulances and police cars

cruising through intermittently and

Elmhurst Hospital would teem with

an international crowd of people; if

you told me that the Times Square

billboards would perform their giddy,

garish electric spectacle for almost

no one while news teams and cops

set up outside the public hospital, I

would have told you that you have it

completely backwards. And yet, the

hospital is now the centre of national

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the US to be overwhelmed by Covid-

patients, leading to extreme shortages

of both ventilators and personal

protective equipment.

Now, each day, instead of hearing the

familiar ambient noise of cars cruising

by and the rumble of the subway on

the elevated tracks a block away, I hear

sirens. Lots of sirens. On the occasions I

do venture outside, I watch the subway

trains pass: each car as empty as the

last. To say that it feels like a living in a

dystopian novel is cliché at this point,

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Amid all this “new normal” of streets

lined with shuttered pubs, nail salons,

gyms, hardware stores, phone stores

and Starbucks, and headlines that

scream of doom, I am heartened by

the industry we all know and love. No,

dear reader, not because of the delight

I take in a glass of Longmorn 16, and

not because the bottle of Octomore I

take a deep whiff of a few times a day

reassures me of my health. (Reports

show that losing your smell is an early

symptom of Covid-19.) It’s because

of news stories like “Distilleries are

making hand sanitizer with their

in-house alcohol and giving it out for

free to combat coronavirus” (CNN on

Shine Distillery in Portland, Oregon)

and “Anheuser-Busch and Distilleries

Race to Make Hand Sanitizer Amid

Pandemic,” New York Times. And those

are just the national publications. Local

publications tell more of the same.

Of course, no good deed goes

unpunished. As if the logistics of call-

to-action production, sourcing bottles

and creating labels weren’t enough of

a hassle, the evil gnome of American

bureaucracy reared its head.

The industry had to battle to get tax

relief for distilleries engaged in this

valiant, resourceful effort.

From a piece on Politico, “The

provision excusing distillers from

excise taxes on alcohol used to

make hand sanitizer is barely even

a rounding error in the $2 trillion-

plus law passed last week. (The Joint

Committee on Taxation says that it will

cost less than a half-million dollars

over 10 years.)”

This should give everyone pause.

At this moment in Our American

Experiment, a product that’s necessary

and universally useful, yet lacking in

abundance, became suddenly available.

And most distilleries distributed it

for free to hospital workers, to boot.

Eventually the tax exemption was won,

but the regulatory purgatory in which

it hung represents the callousness and

anti-small business sentiment that

American lawmakers are increasingly

known for. The Distilled Spirits

Council said tax relief was vital for

the hundreds of clever distillers that

pivoted to hand sanitisers as other

parts of their business, like tasting

rooms and tours, shuttered. (For the

record: bigger distilleries stepped

up in a big way, too.) It may sound

lofty, but in the end, as a righteous

effort prevailed, the growing distillery

industry embodied America’s

signature resourcefulness and good

samaritanship, demonstrating that

it’s a cornerstone in this country’s

business community.

The growing distillery

industry embodied

America’s signature

resourcefulness

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