Submission guidelines for whiskey makers
All American Whiskey is not a review site. We don’t do tasting notes or rate a mash bill (ours is different). So there’s not necessarily an obvious reason for you to send samples. However, we do write about whiskey and the people who make it. It’s helpful for us to understand the flavor profile of what a maker makes. So go ahead, send us your best bottle.
Submission guidelines for writers, photographers, and filmmakers
As of July 2022, when I’m writing this, we’re not paying content creators because we don’t have a budget for it. Therefore, we are not soliciting work. However, we are an award-winning whiskey website; an emerging whiskey writer may want to see their by-line under our header. So we will accept unsolicited pitches for stories, photography, and videos.
If we accept your work, we will treat it like glorious, magnificent art. We will promote it in our newsletter, on our social media instances, and with all associated parties. It will get a lot of attention—you know, exposure. But the artist will not be paid.
One day, we will have a budget for paying writers, and when that day occurs, you can bet we’ll call up the people who write for free and solicit the shit out of them for new work. Until that day . . .
What we’re looking for:
Submission guidelines for articles
- Stories about the people who make, move, market, and pour whiskey.
- Stories about farmers, coopers, bottle makers, and anyone associated with whiskey production, procurement, shipping, and serving that’s not immediately adjacent to a distillery.
- Stories about whiskey in all its aspects, from when it is water to when it is a Manhattan. What does that mean? We don’t know.
- Fulfillment of our editorial department questionnaires:
- Prosaic accounts of notable dive bars for our DEATH BY DIVE BAR section. DBDB has special writer’s guidelines. Mention whiskey.
- Prosaic explorations of philosophy related to whiskey (See “What Whiskey to Drink . . .”)
- Prosaic articles about authors who drank whiskey and the whiskey they drank.
Submission guidelines for photography
Please note that we have a distinct visual style on our website. Photographs featured on the front page will be altered to fit our aesthetic. Photography featured in a post will not be altered.
We’re looking for postcard-worthy photographs of the people who make, move, market, and pour whiskey. We are looking for photo essays of distilleries, grain farms and farmers, notable dive bars, taverns, and whiskey libraries. Essentially, if it’s related to whiskey pitch us. We’ll let you know.
Submission guidelines for video
We don’t really know. Pitch us.
Article Style Guide
We follow the Chicago Manual of Style when we remember to.
Whiskey with an /e/ unless there is a damn good reason to omit it.
We want 600 to 1200-word articles written in an old-school magazine style—engaging, entertaining, clever, and correct. Read what we’ve got up there now. Do that.
What we don’t want
- We cover independent distilleries and brands. We’re not interested if they’re owned by Suntory, Beam, etc. They have plenty of publicity. They don’t need us.
- We do not review whiskey.
- We do not use descriptive tags for race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual identity, or one’s favorite football team except wherein the story would not work without such tags. For instance, if a distiller wins an award or is recognized for their exceptional work and is tagged by the awarding body, we will report that. If the person we’re writing about specifically requests to be identified by such a tag, we will oblige them.
- We’re not interested in hyper-masculine booyah drunk-ass rolling coal bullshit.
- We don’t do politics or religion.
Send a query or a pitch to:
Bull Garlington
Chief Creative Officer | Senior Writer
All American Whiskey, Inc.
bull@allamericanwhiskey.com
