It’s probably been more than 25 years since the theme or topic of “women in whisky” first got written about in the modern circles of whisky publishing. By which I mean the new wave of books and magazines that started to emerge in the 1990’s, and the endless number of blogs, forums, and social media outlets in more recent times. Indeed, flicking through my old back issues of Whisky Magazine from the early 2000’s, it didn’t take me long to find articles, profiles, and feature pieces that all revolved around women and whisky, or women in whisky.
It is an interesting topic to write about in 2023. In some ways, there is a valid sentiment that holds this shouldn’t be a thing anymore. Afterall, we’ve had several decades now of articles, interviews, and profile pieces highlighting the wonderful work of female distillers, master blenders, brand ambassadors, writers, journalists, bartenders, visitor centre managers, mixologists, and so on. Women are prolific in so many corners and reaches of the whisky industry these days, one could be forgiven for questioning if gender needs to be an issue anymore. And yet…