I went to the grocery store over a couple of weekends ago (I started this post a couple of weeks back) and, on the way out, stopped in the liquor store. There was a big display saying "buy local", and a huge selection of various alcoholic products made in Wyoming.
I was, quite frankly, quite surprised. There are now a lot of them. As recently as a couple of decades back there were none. Now there are several breweries and a couple of distilleries. Indeed, there's one distillery here in town and there's rumors (I haven't followed it) that a second one will soon be here. And there's going to be a couple of microbreweries here in town soon, something that has occurred all around the state.
According to Wikipedia we now have twenty three Wyoming breweries, and my guess is that list is probably a little light. I don't how many distilleries we have but it'll soon be at least four and my guess is that there are more than that. And there are even apparently a handful of wineries.
I'm not sure what all this says, but it is quite a reversal of the trend towards bigger and bigger just a couple of decades ago. Consolidation is still going on in the alcohol industry on the big end, with some giants seemingly buying up everything. But down on the consumer end the local is really making a comeback.
I like the trend. I'm not going to go out and buy a bunch of local whiskey or wine, but I'll sample the beer, and I like that this is very local. Subsidiarity in action, if wet.
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