BARDSTOWN, KY — The cheering inside the tasting room at Hollowcreek Distilling lasted exactly one minute and twenty-eight seconds Wednesday morning, which is how long it took CFO Randall Teague to finish his victory toast, set down his glass, and be gently informed by a summer intern that the 25% tariff President Trump had just announced on European Union imports was the kind of economic policy that tends to come with a return address.
Teague, who had opened the Bulleit-soaked press conference by calling the tariff “a long overdue win for the American palate,” visibly paled as the intern, a college junior named Megan, pulled up a 2018 Wall Street Journal article on her phone and began reading aloud from the section titled “EU Retaliatory Tariffs on American Whiskey.” Staff described Teague’s expression as “the exact face a man makes when his Peloton says his membership has expired.”
“We were told this was going to be great for American manufacturing,” said Teague, recovering with a second pour. “Nobody mentioned that European manufacturing might, in some capacity, have access to the same news.”
The 25% tariff, announced by the President during a cabinet meeting in which Elon Musk reportedly took four separate phone calls, targets European imports across roughly every category the President can name off the top of his head, including cars, wine, cheese, and, according to a footnote nobody on cable television has mentioned yet, industrial copper stills manufactured almost exclusively in Germany and Italy. Hollowcreek ordered two of them in November.
“The tariff is a tax on Americans who want to make American whiskey using the only equipment that actually makes whiskey,” said Dr. Pria Vellanki, a trade economist at the Cato-adjacent Hensley Institute, who has spent the past six weeks explaining to reporters that tariffs are paid by importers and not, as the President continues to suggest, by a large building somewhere in Brussels. “It’s a bit like putting a 25% tax on flour to support American bakers. The bakers are confused. The flour is confused. Only the policy is not confused, because the policy does not know what flour is.”
By noon, Kentucky’s congressional delegation had issued a series of statements carefully worded to support the President’s trade agenda without actually endorsing any specific element of it, a rhetorical maneuver Senate staffers have privately begun referring to as “the Mitch.” Senator Rand Paul’s office released a single tweet reading, “Tariffs are taxes,” and then went silent for the remainder of the afternoon.
Across the Atlantic, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis convened an emergency meeting in Brussels during which, according to a leaked agenda, the first bullet point was simply “Bourbon?” followed by three question marks and a smiley face that officials insist was a formatting error. The Commission is expected to announce retaliatory tariffs on American whiskey, motorcycles, and peanut butter by Friday, a list so familiar to trade reporters that one correspondent in Brussels reportedly filed his story before the press conference began.
At Hollowcreek, Teague spent the afternoon on the phone with a broker in Rotterdam, attempting to reroute the pending copper-still shipment through what he described as “a friend in Canada who owes me a favor,” a plan that collapsed roughly forty minutes later when Canada was added to a separate tariff list by executive order. Teague was seen briefly placing his forehead against the tasting bar.
“We support the President,” said Hollowcreek founder Dale Hollowcreek, a phrase he repeated four times in under a minute in a way that suggested he was mostly trying to convince the room. “We just also happen to sell 38% of our production into Germany, Ireland, and France, and we would very much like to continue doing that, if at all possible, thank you.”
Analysts at Morgan Stanley noted that the broader bourbon sector, which had enjoyed a quiet decade of double-digit export growth, is now pricing in what one research note called “the 2018 experience, but stupider.” The note, titled “Pour One Out,” recommended investors rotate out of American spirits and into, somewhat counterintuitively, Mexican tequila, which remains on a separate tariff list scheduled for a different Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in Bardstown’s town square, a small pro-tariff rally organized by the local Republican club featured signs reading “BUY AMERICAN” and “DRINK AMERICAN,” held aloft by attendees who, according to a reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal, were being served complimentary glasses of Hollowcreek Reserve — a product now 25% more expensive to bottle and, beginning next week, 50% more expensive to export.
Back inside the distillery, Megan the intern was reportedly offered a full-time position in the regulatory affairs department, which until Wednesday had consisted of a single part-time consultant and a filing cabinet. “She’s the only one here who reads,” Teague said, pouring himself a third glass. “That’s apparently a competitive advantage now.”