The rise and rise of single country or region dominated bar specialists offering only products produced sourced from that source have blossomed around the world.
Barring spirits produced from outside a territory in a sense becomes a form of Spirits Chauvinism, which we can define as a "biased devotion to any group, territory or region produced and sourced spirit."
There’s nothing inherently bad about Spirits Chauvinism, in fact to the contrary in most cases it reflects the renaissance of spirits distilling, enabled by educated consumers.
The USA, UK, Italy and Spain are some notable countries where established single sourced regions or territory spirits (or wines for that matter) are available in exclusive bars or bottle shops, only serving from that territory.
A recent visit to Melbourne revealed what we believe is the first Australian bar sourcing and selling only Australian produced spirit, wine, cider and beer. Called Bad Frankies, this eponymous liquor locker offers an unbelievable 200 plus range of liquor SKU’s excluding locally produced craft beers and all the other good things.
With a population of about 24 million, it’s was inconceivable just 5 years ago that Australia could ever produce such an incredible range of spirits from as many producers!
The micro distilling and brewing movement has produced more and more nuanced or otherwise producers, searching for their special niche or chunk of someone else’s pie. Throw in the other disruptors - beer and cider makers turning their hands to spirits and there you have an explosion of new world choices.
One could imagine that the ever growing number of producers/brands will create “wine paralysis” effect whereby too many different offerings within the same category creates potential consumer confusion, where the final default position could be based on familiar "mass" brand.
How will potential consumer paralysis be turned into positive outcome? Your guess is as good as ours!