Yes, I'll be posting about WhiskyFest eventually. However, I was struck by what I actually brought back from Chicago: Three gins, two Scotches, a rye, a Bourbon, an American whiskey, and a rum. This might be from the under-representation of gin in Minneapolis, but really it's an appreciation that a good gin is worth the effort.
Curiously enough, I did quip during the return that, "it's not like there'd be a 'GinFest'." But really gin and vodka are an underpinning that contributed to the diversity of WhiskyFest.
These days it's popular to finance a new distillery by first bottling a vodka or a gin while the whiskies of the future rest in casks. Two of the three gins I bought fall within that class: Junipero from Anchor Distilling and Blackwood's. Anchor is really stretched thin on their stocks, so a certain percentage of the raw spirit is being bottled as a gin. Blackwood's, the future spoiler to Highland Park's claim of the northernmost Scotch distillery, hasn't even built any stills but is using an unspecified distillery to sell vodka and gin even before they have a still of their own.
Other distilleries who have stocks of aged whiskies will still sell vodka and/or gin to subsidize their current expenses. Examples of this would be Penderyn, Buffalo Trace, and Cooley (Clontarf).
Sadly, most newer stills are sticking with vodka rather than dipping a toe into the botanical bathtub of gin. For those that do put forth the effort, they can be rewarded handsomely for their efforts. A good vodka is revered for its lack of taste, while a good gin is revered for its taste's complexity. Care to guess which of those attributes is prized in the aged spirits?