It would also COST a lot more to have Jimmy Russell or Elmer Lee (or Al Young or Glenn Glaser) tweaking the knobs. A LOT more!!
A friend of ours owns a Bourbon Bar in Kawasaki, Japan. When he visited with us a few years ago the conversation turned to the infamous poison blowfish dish that is popular there, and Koji told us something about that meal that I will never forget, because it's uncannily true about so many other things as well...
Most people are familiar with the story. The blowfish has a gland which secretes a deadly poison. Very fast-acting, it will paralyze and suffocate a human being in seconds, before first-aid can be applied. The chef must cut carefully around the gland in order to prevent the poison from getting into the meat, and traditionally the chef himself takes the first bite.
All very exciting. But Koji told us that avoiding the poison gland on the blowfish is easy. Anyone can do it. In fact, you'd have to be a total idiot to cut where the gland is located. EXCEPT... that if you do that, no one will come to your restaurant and order it. You see, the whole idea is for the chef to cut JUST CLOSE ENOUGH to the gland to allow only a small amount of poison to leak -- the diner's lips should tingle, but no more. If that doesn't happen, the dish is as much of a failure as if the diner had croaked (and he's just as unlikely to return for another meal).
The wonderful flavors that we who have tasted them (well, some of us, anyway) enjoy so much come from esthers and fusal oils that are really, really hard to keep in the distillate without bringing over some of the headachey, nasty stuff, too. That's because they become volatile at higher temperatures, closer to the boiling point of water. If you want to be safe and keep your temperatures low (meaning higher proof), you won't get those congeners. You have to run the temperature up and stay right on top of the process every minute if you want those flavors (and not the puke). And you need to know what you're doing. In other words, you have to be talented in ways like Jimmy, Elmer, Glenn, Al, and several others who don't do that stuff anymore are. It's so much cheaper to go for the broad whiskey flavor and not worry about the finer points. But isn't that what we're all about?