Bootlegging Blanton's in Sazerac's backyard

Last time I wrote about the potential dangers of counterfeit booze in a gutted American regulatory state, I got an email from a Friend of Fingers suggesting that big beverage-alcohol firms would interdict contraband that mimicked their premium brands in the marketplace to protect their intellectual property. To be clear, their contention wasn’t that bottom-shelf drinkers didn’t deserve to be protected from potentially painful disfigurements and deaths via alcohol poisoning. Just that Big Booze had the incentive and know-how to keep, say, fake Blanton’s from flooding the market if federal and state regulators were too understaffed or -funded to keep waging that war. And that they’d bring it to bear to protect the integrity of their super-premium lines first and foremost.

Would corporate brewers, winemakers, and distillers acting in their own best interests to safeguard their bougiest brands really be able to prevent bunk booze from reaching more moneyed customers’ lips? Sure, to some extent, some of the time. But an analysis of the United States’ regulatory history, its contemporary counterfeit-booze landscape, and the nature of the still-unfolding anti-constitutional assault on its administrative state suggests that there would be more breakage—even at the highest pricepoints.

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