WhistlePig Denies Whiskey Fungus Allegations But Agrees to Clean More Homes ‘In The Spirit of Cooperation’

WhistlePig has denied responsibility for the first outbreak of whiskey fungus in New York. (Photo: AP Photo/John Amis)

The Adirondack Explorer reported on Thursday that though WhistlePig Whiskey continues to deny responsibility for a major outbreak of whiskey fungus in a New York neighborhood, the brand offered to expand its cleaning radius.

In April, the state looped in the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department of Environmental Conservation to put additional pressure on the whiskey brand after initial accusations that the brand had a hand in causing the outbreak surfaced in December.

WhistlePig denied responsibility for the outbreak in a letter to the DEC and claimed it did not “objectively believe” it was responsible for the case of whiskey fungus.

“In the spirit of cooperation, we are willing to make a further good-faith adjustment to our existing practice of washing nearby homes,” WhistlePig Director of Operations Ahren Wolson said in the letter.

The brand did not specify exactly how it would adjust its cleaning practices but implied it would look into cleaning homes southeast of WhistlePig’s rickhouses.

The letter additionally claimed that the DEC did not have the proper equipment to fully identify the samples and conclude they were, in fact, whiskey fungus. WhistlePig claimed the state organization’s accusations against the brand were “founded more on conjecture than on any objective evaluation.”

The latest outbreak of whiskey fungus, or baudoinia compniacensis, marks the first known outbreak to occur in New York.

Though WhistlePig distills its whiskey in Vermont, the brand uses rickhouses in a New York neighborhood called Mineville to store some of its aging spirits. Residents have been complaining about the outbreak since December and are fully intent on escalating matters with state environmental organizations.

The DEC claimed it is taking the complaints very seriously, but WhistlePig has not been cited with any violations at the moment.

This incident does not mark the first time whiskey fungus served as a source of tension between a distillery and its neighbors. In August, some residents within the city of York, Maine, clashed with the Wiggly Bridge Distillery over a baudoinia outbreak.

Tensions reached a boiling point when the distillery expressed interest in expanding its facilities, and ultimately the neighborhood planning board denied Wiggly Bridge Distillery expansion rights in October due to allegations of a recent whiskey fungus outbreak. Wiggly Bridge Distillery’s response was similar to WhistlePig, and the brand claimed there was not enough evidence to tie it to the fungus.

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