The news came bittersweet to two Oregon spirits pioneers.

The Bitter Housewife learned in late June that they had won the 2025 Good Food Award for their craft cardamom bitters, their ninth award in a decade, but the news came a bit too late: the company had already closed down.

The many awards and dozens of accolades were not enough to prevent owners Genevieve Brazelton and her husband Dan from shuttering the doors to their craft bitters company last month.

“It truly is bittersweet,”says Brazelton. “My gut says that people are changing the way they drink and the way they spend money on drinks. While there is a rise in (non-alcoholic beverages) and they may be drinking less, there is a shift, as people are more intentional on how they spend their money on alcohol, and a really discretionary product like bitters isn’t on their list.”

The Bitter Housewife grew from a corner of their kitchen, where Brazelton made homemade bitters, and when they debuted in 2014, they quickly became noted for their delicious and inventive flavors.

Many craft liquor brands and assorted businesses, like bitters, are facing challenges, and several, like The Bitter Housewife are quietly closing. According to VinePair, “craft distilleries are in trouble.”

Among the many shutterings include bankruptcy filings this year by Boston Harbor Distillery in Massachusetts, House Spirits Distillery in Oregon, and Stoli USA. Whisky Advocate reports that these filings are just a few of the many. The renowned whisky publication also noted that “in even stranger news, Garrard County Distilling Co. made headlines last week when, just a year after opening, it shut down, with a $2.2 million lawsuit at its doorstep.”

“There’s been a lot of quiet shuttering in alcohol in the last year or so,” Brazelton says. “The last couple of years have been really hard for spirits, wine and beer, but I think spirits and wine are taking the brunt of it.”

Like many in the spirits space, The Bitter Housewife, “never really recovered from the pandemic and a couple of rough years of sales,” she says. “I suspect you will see even more spirits companies close, or you will just notice that some brands very quietly shutter, and you didn’t even hear about it.”

The pandemic took its toll, but then supply issues cropped up, and now tariffs create other challenges for liquor brands. “Glass is going up for sure, and U.S.-manufactured glass is hard to find,” Brazelton points out. “A lot of us have had a number of years of struggles with the supply channels, and the tariffs made things more difficult for a lot of us. It’s the instability of things.”

But the biggest thing, she says, was the pandemic. “A lot of us smaller businesses never really recovered from it,” Brazelton says. “A lot of us took big loans, and we thought we’d be able to pay them back when things got back to normal, but they never did.”

At one time, The Bitter Housewife employed a staff of ten, and they were distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest and even in California. Brazelton says their company earned lots of accolades in its nearly 11-year run, including product of the year from the Specialty Food Association. “We're no stranger to making flavors that people appreciate and love, but it was not enough,” she says. “We should have closed sooner, but we were always hoping that things would turn around. They never did.”

Part of the problem, Brazelton says, is that they made such a “super niche product” that at most tastings, she had to spend at least half of the time educating people about what bitters are.

Closing a business is not something most people talk about.“You hear about the big wines, the multi-million or billion dollar acquisitions, but we don’t talk about the small brands that are struggling and how we put on a good face for social media and our websites, but truthfully, for many of us, it’s really hard.”

“We don’t hear enough about the struggle,” she says simply. “We held on too long, and we should have gotten out sooner. We could have done it more gracefully and saved ourselves a lot of stress, but it’s hard to give up.”

“We don’t hear enough about the struggle,” she says simply. “We held on too long, and we should have gotten out sooner. We could have done it more gracefully and saved ourselves a lot of stress, but it’s hard to give up.”

“We chased a lot of dreams and long shots,” Brazelton says. “We should have just grown more slowly and solidly from the beginning. Everyone wants to be that break-out brand, but the true is few and far between so you’d better make sure that foundation is a solid one.”

Brazelton says she and her husband learned a lot in their decades-long journey of entrepreneurship, and her husband is currently pursuing a new business. “I have a lot of experience in branding, brand communications and flavor development, and that's where I would like to stay, especially in beverage, but I’m open to other lifestyle brands, and I'm doing some consulting,” she says.

Brazelton herself has become a consultant, and her business, Palate Playbook, helps brands with flavor and product development, as well as brand strategy. “I have a lot of experience in branding, brand communications and flavor development, especially in beverage, but I’m open to helping other lifestyle brands,” she says.