It happens every holiday season. I’ll get a pitch from a PR agency touting a whiskey as the “perfect gift for the man in your life” or some such phrasing in the subject line. They start trickling in around late October, and carry on through mid-December. They always get banished to my inbox unread after a sufficient period of eye-rolling.
I don’t have time for them because “whiskey gifts for men” pitches and the holiday-themed articles they inspire should not exist. But here we are, in the year 2025, immersed in an era of award-winning and industry-shaping women distillers, and we’re still seeing articles that have zero problem assuming the consumption and enjoyment of whiskey over the holidays is strictly a guy thing. I’m hoping you are as exhausted by this tired cliché as I am, because it’s frankly bullsh*t. It’s also not good enough to just call it such anymore. It’s overdue to deconstruct why the “whiskey gifts for men” angle is bullsh*t.
Being Ignorant of Market Share
There have been numerous white papers and status reports on whiskey consumption habits published since the pandemic. While there is some variance in the percentage of women who drink whiskey, the number consistently lands in the 30–40 percent range. Based on this data alone, any “gifts for men” holiday article instantly excludes about one-third of the whiskey consumer base. This makes the trope more than a terrible story concept. It makes it a profoundly inane marketing idea from a business and economic standpoint.
“Women typically own the purchasing power in the household,” says Casey Rizzo, brand manager for Laws Whiskey House in Denver. “By excluding women in these ‘gifts for men’ articles, the marketers and the brands they represent are cutting themselves off by not marketing the product as something for everyone to buy and enjoy.”
The willingness to disregard a healthy chunk of the potential consumer base by pitching and publishing male-focused whiskey narratives feels particularly egregious at a time where the whiskey market is in a downturn. If the industry wants to recover from its current slump, perpetual ignorance will do very little to achieve that goal. “The industry is in desperate need for customers, period,” explains S.C. Baker, bar lead at Epiphany in Louisville. “There’s this old-fashioned thought process in marketing that men — specifically white men — will be the ones that will sustain bourbon through the market’s manifold changes. But men can’t keep bourbon alive. It will take the entire consumer base to do so. We have to make sure we’re inviting women as well as queer and non-binary people to the table.”
An Outdated Idea
There is no love lost for “gifts for men” stories in the distilling or the bar industries.
“The whole idea is ridiculous, short-sighted, and not based in reality,” says Sienna Jevremov, head distiller and head blender at Widow Jane Distillery in Brooklyn. “It starts from a place of misogyny, but it also exists out of laziness. It just assumes that men would love whiskey gifts and women would hate them. The truth is, I’ve had so many husbands come into our distillery and buy whiskey specifically for their wives.”
The one-two punch of misogyny and laziness suggests marketers leaning into this angle seemingly foster an unwillingness to acknowledge drinking culture’s evolution from the “Mad Men” era, when gender roles and the very notion of gender itself were much more rigid. Such stagnation also ends up projecting a reductive, stereotypical viewpoint of their target male audience. “‘Whiskey for men’ is a one-dimensional idea that makes a lot of assumptions,” says Baker. “So are a lot of those other ‘x for men’ gift ideas, like flannel pajamas or golf balls.”
These assumptions can admittedly (some would argue unfortunately) be true on occasion. There are indeed dudes whp dig bourbon, play golf, and reside a little too comfortably in Ron Burgundy’s orbit of leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany. Still, this represents a small sliver of whiskey drinkers, and it’s far from accurately defining the category.
This isn’t a one-sided issue when it comes to pigeonholing genders. Marketers and PR agents apply this same diminished formula to women on “gifts for her” lists, with Champagne, white wine, or clear spirits replacing whiskey as the featured alcohol. These lists are equally absurd in the eyes of the industry. “I know plenty of women — myself included — who have always enjoyed whiskey and never drink wine,” Rizzo says. “We’re the demographic that gets completely ignored by both of these kinds of articles.”
A Greater Issue Beyond Gift Lists
From a marketing standpoint, a “gifts for men” story can come across as an outdated device to peddle whiskey to a little less than half of the United States population. But there’s a bigger issue at play that goes beyond an annoying form of brand awareness. While it may not be the marketer’s intention, the trope can inadvertently reinforce bigger societal issues involving drinking, gender, and behaviors.
“These lists promote such a primitive way of thinking. You know — ‘Man hunt. Woman stay home,’” says Oscar Simoza, director of spirits for the Boston-based hospitality group BCB 3. “It’s like they give men the license to cosplay as a ‘whiskey man,’ whatever that is. Even worse, it reinforces a mentality of toxic masculinity where men must behave in a certain way.”
The rough and rugged behavioral codifying implied through these lists bleeds into other parts of the drinking culture. In the bar, this manifests in absurdities like requests for a “manly” cocktail glass or rejecting a fruity drink with an umbrella. Such behaviors are neon signs of insecurity among bartenders. “I’ve had people tell me they don’t do tiki drinks because they don’t look manly enough, even though there’s enough rum in some of those drinks to kill a horse,” says Hank Murphy, head bartender at Club Frills in Providence, R.I. “It’s ridiculous. If your sole purpose for drinking whiskey is to make you look manly, it really makes you less of a man.”
These lists also fortify certain misogynistic sentiments around whiskey and whiskey enjoyment. “I still get men that come in and try to mansplain whiskey to me,” Jevremov states. “I really love telling them I’m the one making the whiskey.”
“I get questions from guys at events like, ‘Are you the owner’s daughter?’ or, ‘Oh! Do you like whiskey?’ in this surprised tone,” says Rizzo, who is not the owner’s daughter. “I’ll reply with something like, ‘Yes. I do like whiskey. It’s why I built my entire career around it.”
The misogyny can also swing to the other side of the stereotypical spectrum, where men end up hypersexualizing women whiskey drinkers. “Certain men give weird, illicit responses to women when they find out they drink whiskey, like they’re ‘the full package,’ whatever that is,” Jevremov explains. “It’s why if I’m on a dating site, I never mention what I do for a living.”
Pushing Back on the Concept
As much as I’d love to see these “whiskey gifts for men” article ideas turn into the ghosts of Christmas pitches past, I sadly must resign myself to knowing they’re likely not going away any time soon. I must also admit, albeit reluctantly, that they probably resonate with the public just enough to justify their existence. The reason why has very little to do with whiskey and significantly more to do with traditional hierarchy.
“It’s not the whiskey’s fault,” Baker says. “All misogyny is going to come from a patriarchal society. These viewpoints are ingrained, and they’re things that we struggle with as a society.”
“As a Venezuelan, I see this issue falling under a bigger umbrella of cultural behaviors associated with machismo,” Simoza says. “We don’t have cowboys in Venezuela, but we do have a mentality built around the manliness of Scotch drinks.”
This knowledge helps bartenders deal with the residual attitudes that may buoy interest in these types of articles. But there are opportunities to change them. Some of this involves creating the right environment: While the bar scene is far from perfect, the establishments worth their salt invest ample time and sweat equity into building safe, inclusive spaces where everyone can feel welcome and drink whatever the hell they want. It also involves bartenders teaching guests about who may be behind their favorite brands. “It’s important for guests to understand the impact of women in the whiskey industry,” Simoza says. “It’s always great to tell guests it takes a lot of bad-ass women to make whiskey for them to enjoy.”
Change Is Good
While it’s frustrating these “whiskey gifts for men” articles still exist at this moment in time, it’s perhaps even more vexing to realize how easy it would be to move away from the trope without disrupting its intention to put whiskeys on gift-givers’ radars. All it takes is a switch to neutral language.
Changing a pitch from “whiskey gifts for men” to something like “whiskey gifts for the adventurer” or “gifts for the whiskey enthusiast” instantly opens the whiskeys to a wider audience. It also brings additional flair — an “adventurer” looks infinitely cooler than a “man.” This change can carry a positive impact to any “whiskey as a gift” piece regardless of where it lands. This includes publications in the men’s magazine circuit, a category where some may argue “whiskey gifts for men” content makes sense.
“Masked lesbians and non-binary individuals also read men’s magazines,” Baker notes. “Not using inclusive language in whiskey-gifting articles cuts them out of the conversation.”
Of course, pointing out the ease of change and actually making the change are two different animals. Given how difficult it can be to move away from decades of societal tradition, moving away from “whiskey gifts for men” doesn’t seem plausible in the near future. For those of us who know better and understand that whiskey is a brilliant beverage for everyone to enjoy, it’s best to just treat them like lumps of coal until they finally go away.
