Craft or Heritage, What's Actually the Difference?

These two words get used like they're opposite ends of a quality scale, but the real difference is about philosophy, not which one is better.

Heritage means consistency

Large, established distilleries with decades of production behind them prioritize making sure a bottle tastes the same whether you buy it this year or five years from now.

Craft means flexibility

Smaller, newer distilleries are more willing to change recipes and techniques from batch to batch, trading some year-to-year consistency for more room to experiment.

Why scale matters

A heritage distillery can afford to let inventory age for a decade while still selling plenty today. A craft distillery, without that same scale, often has to make different choices, smaller barrels, shorter aging, or sourcing whiskey from elsewhere in the meantime.

What this means for you

A heritage bottle should taste basically like the last one you bought. A craft bottle might not, and that's simply the nature of a smaller, more experimental operation, not a flaw.

Ask us next time you're in whether you're looking for something reliably consistent or something more experimental. We can point you either direction.