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Comment by noarchy | Hacker News Reader

Can we assume that the big spirit producers would embrace this kind of process, or instead, seek to tighten laws as to what can actually be called X or Y spirits, in order to specifically exclude these new processes?

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I suspect they'd do both; use a process like this to drastically improve their low-end products, but make a labelling distinction between 'natural' and 'artificially-aged' scotch/rum/etc.

Big spirit producers will embrace it- consistency of product is more important than tradition. Seagram's basically grew from blending the products of smaller distilleries to produce a more consistent product, then developing processes that allowed them to maintain consistency even as they closed the original distilleries down, until in the ultimate act of MBA-inspired transcendence nothing was left except the brand, which was sold so the owner could play movie mogul.

They would probably do both. A Johnny Walker label without the word 'Whisky' would still make people think of it as whisky.

many laws already exist. for example, scotch has to be aged at least 3 years in scotland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky#Legal_definition

Only sort of. Their laws have no jurisdiction outside of Scotland. Except in some cases based on trade agreements, as the wiki says. You could probably distill and sell Scotch in the US if you like. Various state regulators may not give you the necessary licenses to sell but it's probably not illegal.

Except you couldn't call it Scotch due to the name being a protected mark, with most countries, the US included, participants in treaties that protect those marks.

same with Champagne and a few other protected names.

all scotch is whiskey, but not all whiskey is scotch sort of thing.

he is essentially just creating hard liquor with aging characteristics as I see it. He could technically create any new name to differentiate his product and make it more marketable as the other protected names have done.

Depends on who moves first and how much clout they have. If it's not the more powerful producers, they could seek any path that defended their turf.

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