Bourbon’s All-American Roar(7)
Red State is Republican red, featuring the traditional elephant. Blue State is Democratic blue, with the donkey mascot. Heaven Hill said it would track retail sales by label to try to infer political preferences among its bourbon drinkers. (There will be no difference between the two whiskies.)
But bourbon isn’t just for red and blue states. Distillers are increasing production and creating vast supply chains to quench the thirst of whiskey lovers worldwide.
Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey account for about 70 percent of the $1.1 billion of distilled American spirits that are exported, according to Frank Coleman of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Total exports have been on a tear for the last decade and are up 17 percent this year through October, over the year-earlier period. Mr. Coleman estimated retail sales in the United States to be $6 billion.
The council has recently gotten behind new American craft distilleries, Mr. Coleman said, like the Louisville Distillery Company, founded by Lincoln Henderson, the former master distiller at Woodford Reserve, and his son, Wesley. So when the council invited about a dozen small distillers on a trip to Shanghai in November, Wesley Henderson jumped at the chance to promote Angel’s Envy.
Introduced in April, Angel’s Envy is a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey aged for at least four years and then transferred into used port barrels for four to six months. The curvaceous bottle with angel’s wings describes the end result as Kentucky bourbon with a port barrel finish.
One place the American distillers visited in Shanghai was M1nt, a private club that caters to young, diverse and upscale Chinese customers looking for a premium spirit, Mr. Henderson said. The company’s current presence in China is tiny, at only a select few bars in Shanghai, said Samira Seiller executive vice president and managing director.
Back home, meanwhile, most of the attention is on the eight states where Angel’s Envy is being sold. Louisville Distilling reached out to bartenders like Mr. Sarkis of Sable to help spread the word to others who were fans of the whiskey and the company’s independent vibe, said Ms. Seiller, who is based in Chicago. “The idea of independence is in everything we do,” she said.
That makes lining up bartenders, retailers and wholesalers easier, she added. “In talking to people, you want to make them feel, ‘You’re in this with us.’ ”
To be sure, while the industry is booming now, the economic climate could suddenly deteriorate, or the industry could be hit with unexpected excise taxes, warned Ms. Azer, the Citi analyst, in a recent report.
What’s more, many distillers in Kentucky have been expanding. In five to 10 years, will their products be in such high demand? The industry is banking on big growth in India and China, said Charles K. Cowdery, author of “Bourbon, Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey.” “If those markets develop as has been anticipated, no one will have made enough,” he said. “If they don’t, everyone will have made too much.”
Consumers’ tastes, meanwhile, can shift with the wind. “Bourbon and rye are now hip among young American trend-setters like we’ve never seen before,” Mr. Cowdery said, “but trends can change on a dime.”
