My writing – Christopher Wink

Rye whiskey is much harder to make than bourbon

Rye requires more precise temperature control than corn or barley when being passed through a still to produce a spirit to age into a well-liked whiskey.

Cook corn and barley a bit too hot, and there’s more room for error. Do the same with rye, and you end with a burnt mess.

I wrote about this for Men’s Journal here.

“It’s pretty well known that rye can be tricky to work with,” said Herman Mihalich, the chemical engineer turned founder of Dad’s Hat Rye, “and that ranges from small guys to even bigger guys.”

I got this story idea in my head back in March 2024 when I visited my friend’s small micro-distillery (pictured above), and he shared that without more precise temperature control tools he found rye more difficult than bourbon.

Keynote: What marketers need to know about the creator economy

The creator economy may be big, or not. The numbers are somewhat divided because definitions are still evolving.

I took what I did know from covering, living and curating creator campaigns, and gave a keynote on the topic for the Philly Ad Club’s annual conference. They had roughly 150 marketers on site at the cozy innovation space of Independence Blue Cross’s headquarters.

Find my slides here. A rough audio recording of the presentation can be found here (or here).

I published here a piece on Technical.ly informed by this work.

Why are there so few tech apprenticeships?

Backed by a research project on tech workforce development that I am leading with Technical.ly for our client Accenture, I got the chance to share high-level findings.

Ahead of National Apprenticeship Week, I gave a 10-minute talk, which was broadly about apprenticeships but included a bit of general tech workforce and tech economy basics and some Philadelphia-specific detail. Find the slides here, and a story I wrote on the topic here.

Storytelling and data work together for ecosystem building

Too often when tech, startup and local economic development leaders I know say they want more “storytelling” about their “ecosystem,” they just mean “I want more people to know about my stuff.” They mean marketing and promotion alone.

But when we evoke the word “storytelling” we need more meaning. All the brain science makes clear, storytelling works when the audience learns something about themselves. With the help of strong data-backing, today storytelling can mean: Using fact-finding and people stories to help a community identify the closest approximation of its truth. It sounds like my old definition journalism.

This idea of marrying data with storytelling for local economic organizers was the focus of a keynote, and subsequent discussion, I led at SuperConnect, the user conference of Baltimore-founded startup Ecomap. It was informed in part by the “ecosystem stack” concept I’m tinkering with.

My slides are here. Earlier this year, I presented a webinar for the firm, and those slides are here.

Free speech guarantees your right to speak, not your right for it to be heard

At 3:40 in this interview, Walz speaks of misinformation on elections

This was originally a social video here.

That’s Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in an interview last year that’s being resurfaced now that he’s the presumptive Democratic nominee for Vice President. And for good reason, critics are rightly pointing out that he’s flatly wrong when he says (at roughly 3:40 in the video) that free speech doesn’t protect misinformation or hate speech.

Temple University is a mess. Let’s fix it.

This was originally a social media rant published here.

Temple University is a mess. Let’s fix it.

I’m an alumnus of Temple, and a resident of Philadelphia, but even if you aren’t either of those things, what the school represents can matter to you if you care about the future of cities, and economic mobility and, sure, higher education too.

The Undercover Economist: notes from Tim Harford’s 2005 debut

“Economics is about who gets what and why.”

It’s a fundamental part of how the world works, so everyone should better understand how an economy works. So argues business journalist Tim Harford in his 2005 debut book The Undercover Economist, informed by his syndicated columns. Published the same year as the breakout success Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist helped establish a category of pop economics nonfiction books to help explain the world. They’re heavily influenced by behavioral economics and mix in lots of real world examples. Harford was part of a wave of writers that brought in greater familiarity with otherwise arcane economics concepts, a trend that has only continued the last 15 years.

That’s fitting a trend to less academic and more practical uses of the field of economics. Keynes wanted economists to be not great theorists but “rather like dentists” to solve everyday problems. Harford has been part of the movement to make it so.

Below I share my notes from the book for future reference.

The Authoritarian Moment: notes from Ben Shapiro’s 2021 book

Ben Shapiro is combative and media savvy enough that he has quickly become one of the country’s best known stewards of conservatism’s future.

The conservative commentator and Daily Wire founder has staked out some considerably right-wing opinions and built a reputation for college-campus debates, in which he and progressive 20-somethings spar for social media attention. In July 2021, he published The Authoritarian Moment, his argument against the popular narrative that conservatives represent the greatest risk of authoritarianism. The greater risk is from the left, he says.

I read generously, but Shapiro just does not come across like a good-faith actor.

Some whiskey stories

I reviewed a turkey-flavor whiskey, and prominent radio show Preston & Steve referenced my review — by literally reading my words without exactly referencing them 🙂

I also wrote about Pennsylvania’s rising rye whiskey.

I did a weekly whiskey review clip with my friend April.