Bourbon’s All-American Roar(5)
Jim Beam has found that to be true with its Red Stag Black Cherry bourbon, introduced in 2009. “What it has done is what we thought it would do, which is broaden the audience to bourbon to people who were not bourbon drinkers,” said Bill Newlands, Beam’s president for North America.
Whereas sales of traditional bourbon skew 80 percent male to 20 percent female, he said, Red Stag runs 50-50, and a bit younger. In January, he said, Beam will add two flavors to the line: Red Stag Spiced and Red Stag Honey Tea.
Beam has been particularly aggressive with new product lines, including Maker’s 46 and Devil’s Cut. “We’ve been going at it full tilt,” said Frederick Booker Noe III, the master distiller and a great-grandson of Jim Beam.
(The company, which spun off from Fortune Brands in October, also jumped into the fast-growing Irish whiskey category. This month, Beam agreed to acquire Cooley, an independent Irish whiskey distillery, for $95 million. Last year, the Irish whiskey category grew 11.5 percent, to 4.86 million cases, according to Impact Databank.)
Mr. Noe is a seventh-generation master distiller who, like many in his trade, is part scientist, part historian and part showman. Recently, he answered an unusual call of duty. To celebrate the brand notching its one-millionth fan on Facebook, Mr. Noe, 54, agreed to get a tattoo of the Jim Beam logo. “I’ve done crazier stuff than this, I imagine,” he said.
A day later, at the Knob Creek Guest House on the Jim Beam grounds in Clermont, Ky., Mr. Noe pulled out some Red Stag Spiced and Red Stag Honey Tea, bottled the day before and ready to be shipped in January. He set them down next to Red Stag Black Cherry and Devil’s Cut for a tasting.
“Red Stag was a gamble. I’ll be honest with you,” Mr. Noe said as he tasted it. “I was the biggest naysayer in the company.” Would black cherry confuse consumers, he wondered? “I was wrong,” he said. “Nonbourbon drinkers try it and say, ‘Wow.’ ”
