WhistlePig Whiskey has told New York regulators it will not apply for an air permit the state says is required to control roughly 531 tons of ethanol emissions a year from its Mineville aging warehouses. The Vermont-based distiller sent a 40-page rebuttal to the state Department of Environmental Conservation on October 26, arguing the facility needs neither a permit nor emissions controls, and it has asked the agency for a sit-down meeting.
The standoff traces back to a letter the DEC issued in late June directing WhistlePig to apply for what's known as an Air Title V permit, according to Adirondack Explorer. Those permits apply to major sources emitting 50 tons or more of air pollution annually, and the DEC pegged WhistlePig's ethanol output at about 531 tons a year — ethanol being a volatile organic compound that the Clean Air Act classifies as a fugitive emission when it escapes spirits-aging warehouses. The agency gave the company until the end of October to file the application, which it required to include an air-pollutant compliance analysis and a long-term plan addressing ambient air-quality impacts.
WhistlePig is pushing back hard. According to the same report, the company said flatly that it does not believe its storage operation requires a permit or controls, pointing to a 2016 DEC determination that found no air permit was needed when the company first bought the Mineville land from the Essex County Industrial Development Agency to process, age and bottle spirits. WhistlePig also said no change in state or federal law justifies the agency's reversal.
A Regulatory Reversal Years in the Making
The DEC's shift didn't happen overnight. Per Adirondack Explorer's reporting on the Moriah facility, the agency began fielding more complaints about fungal growth starting in 2023 and, after collecting samples, determined the culprit was whiskey fungus — the black grime that forms on surfaces exposed to ethanol vapor. In 2025 the DEC asked the EPA to weigh in on whether WhistlePig qualified for Air Title V regulation, and the agency cited two prior EPA decisions, in Indiana in 2016 and Tennessee in 2024, as precedent for regulating emissions from spirits-aging warehouses on a case-by-case basis.
Ahren Wolson, vice president of operations at WhistlePig subsidiary Moriah Ventures, criticized the DEC's change in position as regulatory overreach, the outlet reported. Wolson did not respond to Adirondack Explorer's request for comment for its most recent story. WhistlePig has also hired the firm Ramboll to analyze potential emissions controls; the company said the options Ramboll identified would be costly, running upwards of $25 million to implement, with Ramboll estimating the technologies could cost between $47,225 and $52,059 per ton.
Dueling Science Over the Black Stains
At the center of the dispute is whether the fungus coating buildings near the warehouses is actually whiskey fungus at all. WhistlePig contracted a University of New Hampshire researcher, Serita Frey, to run a DNA analysis of samples collected near its Mineville facility. Frey, who has conducted nearly 200 similar investigations, and her lab collected 20 samples around the warehouses in August 2025 — though none came from the black stains on the buildings themselves. In a December 2025 report, Frey said no whiskey fungus had been detected among the 334 fungi her team identified, but WhistlePig did not share that report with the DEC until October 26, the same day it submitted its 40-page response.
Frey has said visual microscopy cannot definitively detect the fungus known scientifically as Baudoinia compniacensis, first documented in the 1870s in Cognac, France, because many fungi look alike under a microscope. She described what her team found in Mineville as a typical environmental surface community rather than a public-health hazard, saying there was nothing unusual about it. Mycologist James Scott, however, has called the DEC's original fungus-identification method highly unconventional and said DNA sequencing should be capable of detecting the fungus even if its ability to quantify it remains uncertain. Scott also noted that Neocatenulostroma, a close cousin of Baudoinia in the same fungal family, shares similar characteristics, and that the relationship between ethanol emissions and those traits remains an open question.
Cleanup Deal Still in Place, Company Still Disputing Blame
WhistlePig has maintained since 2024 that it is not responsible for the black staining and has said it does not concede that mold in the Moriah community is attributable to its barrel-storage operations. Even so, the company agreed under a DEC corrective action plan to pay for cleaning homes near the warehouses, though the exact radius has been reported two different ways: Adirondack Explorer's permit-standards story cited a 960-yard radius, while its earlier report on the Moriah facility cited a 900-yard radius. The resident cleaning contract reportedly states that the company does not admit liability or unlawful conduct, and it prevents residents who sign it from suing over the substance. WhistlePig says it continues a voluntary power-washing program for neighbors.
The DEC, for its part, said only that it is reviewing WhistlePig's response and declined further comment, according to Adirondack Explorer. The EPA has said regulation of alcohol emissions has been handled on an ad hoc basis nationally and that it is considering broader Clean Air Act rulemaking, though it generally leaves Air Title V permitting decisions to state and tribal air agencies.
A Pattern Playing Out Beyond Mineville
WhistlePig's Mineville complex, about 28 miles from the company's Shoreham, Vermont, distillery, includes roughly a dozen 14,000-square-foot warehouses and one bottling plant permitted by the Adirondack Park Agency in the Moriah Business Park. The company purchased the land about a decade after launching in 2007, having earlier sought a farm exemption under Vermont's Act 250 in 2013 that a state appeals court rejected in 2015. In March, an entity called Zags 26 purchased the spirit-aging warehouse complex for more than $17 million; local official Matthew Brassard said he understood Zags 26 to be a group of investors and that the sale freed up capital for WhistlePig, as reported by Adirondack Explorer. WhistlePig has also expanded storage this year at Times Union notes was Maine's Wiggly Bridge Distillery, where a DNA analysis submitted to state regulators found no trace of whiskey fungus on or near the property, according to Seacoastonline. Similar fights have played out elsewhere in whiskey country: residents near Jack Daniel's in Tennessee sued their county over permits for expanded warehouses, a lawsuit that, per the Times Union's earlier coverage, delayed but did not stop the company's expansion plans.
