When Did ‘Willy Wonka’ Become the Booze World’s Favorite Cliché?

In March of this year, noted British journalist Stephen McGinty wrote a feature for The Sunday Times about Dr. Bill Lumsden.

He detailed Lumsden’s longtime work as master distiller for Glenmorangie, revisiting his early days in Glasgow and then Edinburgh, where he earned a Ph.D. in fermentation sciences at Heriot-Watt University.

He told of Lumsden’s latest projects: making cologne with luxury brand Givenchy, welcoming Harrison Ford as Glenmorangie’s brand ambassador, and crafting a whiskey named SirDavis for Beyoncé.

And in both the headline and opening lines of the article, McGinty colorfully labeled Lumsden as the “Willy Wonka of Whisky.”

By now, Willy Wonka is as indelible a fictional character as exists in our world. The eccentric, reclusive, child-torturing chocolatier first appeared in Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and its 1972 sequel, “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.” He has been portrayed on screen by Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” Johnny Depp in 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and Timothée Chalamet in 2023’s prequel “Wonka.”

Today, though, if someone is compared to Willy Wonka — or something is described as “Wonka-esque” — it’s usually in relation to the beverage alcohol industry.

Why Willy?

The earliest mention I can find of a booze-maker being compared to Wonka comes in the September 2004 issue of American Whiskey. In a piece about the A. Smith Bowman Distillery in Fredericksburg, Va., writer John F. Lipman claimed the producer’s pot still looked like something designed for Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

A few years later, Nick Kindelsperger of The Paupered Chef said Maker’s Mark was very “[m]uch like Willy Wonka’s Factory.”

Some two decades later, everything and everyone in booze is seemingly Wonka-related.

“Buffalo Trace is to bourbon as Willy Wonka is to chocolate.” Heaven Hill’s Bernheim plant is “a sort of Willy Wonka’s for whiskey,” while Heaven Hill’s Evan Williams Experience is “like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for grown-ups.” Meanwhile, new(er) kid on the block Rabbit Hole “is like Willy Wonka’s factory for the 21-plus crowd.”

It’s not just bourbon producers.

There’s “Hawaii’s Willy Wonka,” Royal Hawaiian Spirits; Illinois’s Tierra Distilling with its Wonka-esque mash; and California’s Gold River, which “feels like working at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”

Credit: The Rum Lab

Up north in Canada, Devine Distillery & Winery is the “Willy Wonka of spirits.” And, across the pond, Midleton Distillery — the producer of Jameson, Redbreast, and the Spot Whiskeys — is “The Willy-Wonka Distillery of Ireland.” Bowmore “feels like the Willy Wonka chocolate factory of Scotch distilleries,” according to award-nominated journalist Brad Japhe, who stood by the comparison when I recently followed up with him on it.

“Clichés are clichés for a reason. They speak to fundamental truths, albeit in a tired way. As such, only lazy writers lean on them,” he told me. “But only foolish writers avoid them outright.”

There are a lot of foolish writers out there, I guess.

Sometimes an entire multinational conglomerate like Diageo is dubbed “The Willy Wonka of Whiskey,” as in this “Esquire” piece. But it’s not just whiskey makers, either. In 2021, “Delish” claimed “The Bombay Sapphire Distillery is like Willy Wonka’s factory for adults.” Or maybe it’s smaller Pickering’s that is the gin brand most akin to Wonka, what “with a knack for the unconventional,” according to “Fortune.”

“I get why [writers] are tempted to do it, even though it’s lazy, but the truth is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a distillery that matches the true wonderment of Wonka’s beloved chocolate factory,” says Jonah Flicker, a booze journalist who, as far as I can tell, has never used the cliché. “There are some that are more interesting than others, but most are pretty similar in a lot of ways.”

“So far as distilleries are concerned, the vast majority are soulless industrial worksites. Any perceived romanticism is merely a projection of effective marketing.”

Then again, it’s not just the press making the comparisons — many distillers love to liken themselves to Wonka.

“[S]tep into our distillery and you might just feel like you’ve wandered into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory,” claimed Minnesota’s O’Shaughnessy Distillery on Instagram. Elizabethtown, Ky.’s Whiskey House told the press it aspired to be the “Willy Wonka of whiskey.” While Robert Patton-Spruill of New England Sweetwater Farm and Distiller in Winchester, N.H., told his local paper: “I get to Wonka my way around all day long.”

But what does it even mean to be Wonka?

The Wonka Worksite

“We don’t call Steven Grasse the Willy Wonka of whiskey for nothing!” exclaimed Brian Beyke of retailer Seelbach’s earlier this year on Instagram.

Now that one certainly makes sense, as Grasse and his Tamworth Distillery are easily among the more avant-garde spirits producers in the land, having created Bird of Courage — essentially an entire Thanksgiving dinner in a bottle — and Corpse Flower, a brandy flavored with the notoriously stinky durian fruit. Sure, these aren’t as mind- and body-altering as Everlasting Gobstoppers or Fizzy Lifting Drinks — a soda that causes one to float — but they’re certainly way out there compared to any other finished bourbon.

And yet, visit Tamworth Distillery and you’ll see the expected copper pot still and column still, fermenters, mash tuns, and a barrel house. Sure, the charming facility is set on a pastoral property in small-town New Hampshire, situated at the foot of the White Mountains, and nestled along a river — but is it really akin to Willy Wonka’s magical factory?

(Full disclosure: I co-wrote a book with Grasse in 2022, in which he likened himself more to Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, or Jules Verne.)

When you break it down, most of these so-called “Wonka-esque” distilleries are fairly normal by industry standards.

Credit: RHS Distillery

At Glenmorangie you’ll see Scotland’s tallest copper pot still, while enjoying a stunning view of the Dornoch Firth. And, sure, Dr. Bill Lumsden is an excitable guy… but Wonka?

Maker’s Mark still has a mom ‘n’ pop feel with its iconic black-painted buildings with red shutters — and you might even get to wax-dip your own bottle. But Wonka?

Bombay Sapphire Distillery has stunning glasshouses (not glass elevators). But Wonka?!

“So far as distilleries are concerned, the vast majority are soulless industrial worksites. Any perceived romanticism is merely a projection of effective marketing,” Japhe says.

Still, no other industry remains so likened to Willy Wonka. You won’t read articles about textile mills or sneaker factories where the foreman thinks he’s some Willy Wonka-like character. And sure, occasionally a modern candymaker is compared to Wonka, but it’s mainly distilleries that get the Wonka treatment these days.

Maybe it’s because so few people understand distilling, so they see it as inherently magical. Likewise, maybe they view these distillers as eccentric geniuses, blending science and art behind the scenes.

Or is it simply the fact that distilleries are one of the only factory settings that people willingly pay to visit — and so they have no choice but to feel like Charlie Bucket once there?

Lost Wonka

Then there’s one distillery that, over the years, seemingly couldn’t be written about without being compared to Wonka — with dozens of articles and even videos repeating the same refrain over the last decade.

In an investor pitch deck, the company compared itself to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, claiming, “There are no stainless steel pipes or racks of barrels here.”

“Inside the Willy Wonka of Booze” wrote the Gourmet Globetrotter, while another blogger thought it had “Willy Wonka vibes.” “[G]o down the rabbit hole into the Willy Wonka-esque factory for adults,” wrote Forbes. “Willy Wonka … had he traded his chocolate for hooch,” claimed InsideHook, while ABC7 called it a “Willy Wonka-esque production facility that’s part amusement park, part laboratory.”

Lost Spirits distillery was founded in 2010 by partners Joanne Haruta and Bryan Davis, the latter an artist who had once built amusement park “atmospheres,” and who believed he had harnessed a technology to rapidly age both whiskey and rum in a matter of days. When I first interviewed Davis back in 2015, he told me he considered his company more of a “bio-tech.” Critics seemed to admire his experimental efforts, and the heavily peated Abomination scored well in various publications; I was never quite as bullish, though I certainly thought some of the funkier rum releases were quite good.

In an investor pitch deck, the company compared itself to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, claiming, “There are no stainless steel pipes or racks of barrels here.” Instead, the Los Angeles distillery dedicated unique environments for each product: a rotating turntable ride, a Singapore-like swamp boat, a tasting room that looked like a rum-loving pirate’s house, an enchanted tiki gift shop, robotic voices speaking in different languages and accents — everything designed in the hopes of “disorienting” people through time and space as they walked through the facility.

For what it’s worth, Lost Spirits co-founder Bryan Davis was aware of the Wonka comparisons but often shrugged them off, instead comparing himself to another literary character: “The things that I love about ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau,’ what makes the book so fun, is that he’s basically exploring … ‘how far is too far with the new unlocked powers that science gives you?’” Davis told InsideHook in 2019.

In 2021, the distillery moved to Las Vegas, where it perhaps became even more Wonka-esque with an entry room that felt like being in a submarine; circus-style entertainment like aerialists, burlesque dancers, and magicians; fish with human faces; serpentine pathways; and a “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”-themed fine-dining restaurant. And yes, rum was somewhere, somehow being produced there.

Credit: Gold River Distillery via Instagram

This “high-end Willy Wonka experience for adults,” according to Smithsonian Magazine, was reportedly making over $12 million a year. Unfortunately, in April of last year, the distillery closed, citing overwhelming debts due to the pandemic.

But the Wonka comparisons didn’t die with it — they just moved on to other distilleries. Just a month later, the “American Whiskey Show” was so impressed with Alabama’s Dettling 1867 bourbon that it compared the distillery to the famed chocolatier.

“You just gotta really mean it when you unleash it,” says Japhe. “In the hands of a less scrupulous scribe, the temptation to liken every distillery visit to Willy Wonka will never subside. It is, after all, the most famous worksite tour ever depicted in art.”

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