If you’ve paid any attention to spirit sales in the last decade, it should come as no surprise to you that the bourbon and whiskey market is booming.  According to the Associated Press, U.S. bourbon and whiskey exports continue to skyrocket, surpassing one billion dollars in total this past year.  On the home-front, things are going just as well, with revenues increasing 10% last year alone.  You can read more about the dollars and cents here.

This isn’t just good news for a grain supplier like us.  This is good news for everyone.  With demand continuing to grow, more and more craft distilleries and cropping up around the country, which means more and more whiskey options to go around.  According to the NY Daily News, Kentucky production alone exceeded five million barrels in 2013, the most since 1977.

Of course, nailing down the exact number of US whiskey distilleries is a bit like hitting a moving target.  New distilleries pop up frequently, so it’s changing all the time, but latest counts put the number of US whiskey distilleries well north of 125, nearly ten times the amount from just fifteen years ago.  Fortunately, the wonderful crowd-sourcing folks behind Wikipedia continue to put in the hard work of keeping track of it all.  Here is their list of US whiskey brands, arranged by producer.

So what should you do with all this newfound information? Drink, of course!  Right now is the age of enlightenment for whiskey spirits in the United States. The good stuff is all around you, ripe for the picking.  Odds are your state has a distillery.  In fact, chances are good you are a short drive from home to more than one whiskey maker.  Just think, the perfect bourbon for your palate (we all taste things differently, after all) is out there, and you might not have tried it yet.

Explore, taste, imbibe – it’s 2014 and the country is your whiskey oyster.