I wonder if this is the market reacting to a difficult regulatory environment. When you consider the laws pertaining to production, distribution, and sales of spirits, It seems like it would be darn near impossible to bootstrap such a business without significant outside investment. And who would invest in a company that has no intention to take a single dollar of revenue for years to come?
You might think that, but practically the entire Scotch whiskey industry also rolls up into Diageo, Bacardi, and Pernod, and it might be hard to argue that the regulatory environment in Scotland disfavors distilleries.
To be clear, most of these (Aberlour, Glenlivet, Longmorn, Laphroig, &c) are totally separate distilleries run in some cases by people who were involved in the process since before Chivas bought them out. There are also several distilleries operated by Pernod that don't sell direct to the public, but instead contribute to Chivas blends (the Craigellachie distillery grounds were literally our backyard on vacation a few weeks ago, and despite it being essentially an industrial distillery, you wouldn't really have been able to tell it apart from Benromach by the exterior).
So this is a situation not at all like the MGP product situation. Aberlour and Longmorn aren't selling the same distillate (although they probably source the same malt).
It's maybe a little tricky to see the entrepreneurial activity in Scotch whiskey at a distance, because there are so many silent distillery sites throughout the country. People gut and rehab mothballed distilleries rather than build new ones. But the Benromach distillery, for instance, is entirely new on the inside; and it was started by a Scotch retailer.
