Popularity of Flavored Whiskeys

[ThirstyinOhio]

I don't mind Red Stagg and always have a bottle on hand. I don't drink it straight, but I do enjoy it mixed with homemade lemonade and a sprig of mint.

[P&MLiquorsEric]

Many of my favorite stores don't even HAVE endcaps...

[Kalessin]

The name of the business is currently Sav-Mor Spirits, they didn't change the sign to reflect that. Inside, some reasonable chaos, a fantastic beer selection, a cement floor, a fun attitude; and outside, an infamous sign:

[higgins]

A timely story from Shanken News Daily:

http://www.shankennewsdaily.com/index.php/2013/04/11/5559/exclusive-two-years-after-launch-jack-daniels-tennessee-honey-nears-half-a-million-cases/

"According to Impact Databank, Tennessee Honey ($22 a 750-ml.) advanced by 52% to 485,000 cases in the U.S. last year..."

Last time I checked, Maker's Mark is producing about one million cases. I knew flavored whiskey was popular, but I would have never guessed that it sells this well.

[cowdery]

You can hate the flavored products but you can't deny their success. This from Shanken today.

"According to Impact Databank, Tennessee Honey ($22 a 750-ml.) advanced by 52% to 485,000 cases in the U.S. last year, while its global net sales nearly doubled in the nine months through January, marking the first three-quarters of Brown-Forman’s fiscal year. In addition to the U.S., where off-premise growth has been accelerating, the U.K. is also driving global sales for the brand."

I don't think Red Stag is quite that high, but it's in the same ballpark. Compare that--400,000 to 500,000 cases--to something like Maker's Mark or Wild Turkey, which each sell about a million cases. Tennessee Honey, on the market for less than three years, is half the size of Maker's Mark, on the market for 50 years.

(Higgins and I appear to have posted simultaneously.)

[higgins]

Didn't mean to step on your toes there, Chuck! I should have figured that you get their emails as well.

[cowdery]

No problem. Great minds.

[P&MLiquorsEric]

You can hate the flavored products but you can't deny their success. This from Shanken today.

"According to Impact Databank, Tennessee Honey ($22 a 750-ml.) advanced by 52% to 485,000 cases in the U.S. last year, while its global net sales nearly doubled in the nine months through January, marking the first three-quarters of Brown-Forman’s fiscal year. In addition to the U.S., where off-premise growth has been accelerating, the U.K. is also driving global sales for the brand."

I don't think Red Stag is quite that high, but it's in the same ballpark. Compare that--400,000 to 500,000 cases--to something like Maker's Mark or Wild Turkey, which each sell about a million cases. Tennessee Honey, on the market for less than three years, is half the size of Maker's Mark, on the market for 50 years.

(Higgins and I appear to have posted simultaneously.)

Cant deny their success (or the fact that we will see many more flavors of "whiskey" in the future).

However, I am also curious if those number are cases shipped to distributors, cases sold from distributors to stores or cases sold to consumers. BF has made a big push for "placements" with the Tennessee Honey line. Placements can help sales but also might artificially inflate the numbers if the source is cases shipped to distributors or cases sold by distributors. If stores are sitting on huge inventories of these products (like we are right now), those numbers may not be indicative of sales to the consumer.

[jburlowski]

Here's some sales figures:

http://www.beveragemedia.com/index.php/2012/08/bourbons-new-frontier-the-innovation-path-leads-to-growth/

In 2011, its first year, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey sold 320,000 cases. Launched in 2009, Jim Beam Red Stag sold 300,000 cases in 2011, up 40% from 2010; the brand also just introduced two new flavors—Honey Tea and Cinnamon. Performance in 2011 was also solid for Wild Turkey American Honey (230,000 cases), Evan Williams Honey Reserve and Cherry Reserve (100,000 cases) and Seagrams 7 Crown Honey and Cherry (80,000 cases). Evan Williams added a Cinnamon Reserve in February 2012 and is introducing a new seasonal product called Apple Orchard in September 2012. Hailed as the first bourbon-based apple-cider liqueur at 34 proof, the point of sale materials will promote “A Bushel of Flavor Meets a Barrel of Smoothness.†Apple Orchard retails for $11.99.

Diageo’s popular Jeremiah Weed brand offers a Sweet Tea Bourbon as well as a 90 proof Cherry Mash Flavored Blended Bourbon. And in a clear sign that the company is bullish on flavor, earlier this year Diageo acquired Cabin Fever Maple Flavored Whisky, a small New England-based craft brand aged 3 years and infused with dark maple syrup.

[Flyfish]

You don't suppose anyone could confuse Red Stag with that other Stagg? Nah. Totally improbable.

[Alden]

I have to be honest. I have not had any super sweet whiskey since I was 16 and guzzled a pint of Southern Comfort in 10 minutes, then threw half of it up, then passed out for about 12 hours.

[squire]

Hey, if my honey wants honey that's what she gets.

[cowdery]

Cant deny their success (or the fact that we will see many more flavors of "whiskey" in the future).

However, I am also curious if those number are cases shipped to distributors, cases sold from distributors to stores or cases sold to consumers. BF has made a big push for "placements" with the Tennessee Honey line. Placements can help sales but also might artificially inflate the numbers if the source is cases shipped to distributors or cases sold by distributors. If stores are sitting on huge inventories of these products (like we are right now), those numbers may not be indicative of sales to the consumer.

Edited April 12, 2013 by cowdery

[MauiSon]

Luckily, none of us has to deal with it. We can blithely ignore it. Flavored whiskies are competing with flavored vodkas. My interest in either is equal to the null set. When Four Roses puts out a flavored whiskey, I'll start idly wondering why. As for the rest, could anyone imagine a better way to dispose of rot-gut whisky than to flavor it?

Edited April 12, 2013 by MauiSon

[callmeox]

I have to be honest. I have not had any super sweet whiskey since I was 16 and guzzled a pint of Southern Comfort in 10 minutes, then threw half of it up, then passed out for about 12 hours.

IIRC, Southern Comfort hasn't had a whiskey component in a long time. I believe it is GNS based now.

[Alden]

IIRC, Southern Comfort hasn't had a whiskey component in a long time. I believe it is GNS based now.

[callmeox]

Great New Stuff?

GNS is Grain Neutral Spirits

Check here for acronyms and other good to know stuff

http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/announcement.php?a=8

[Leopold]

Let's not forget that some of the best selling and most highly regarded whiskies in the world are flavored.

Or does malted barley normally taste like peat smoke?

[TheNovaMan]

It tastes like peat smoke if the barley is malted over a peat fire. I don't know how many outfits actually do that anymore, but that's how they did it "back in the day."

As with anything that enjoys sudden, explosive popularity, I wonder if flavored whiskey is a fad. One can only hope...

[cowdery]

That's a funny situation, with Southern Comfort. When Brown-Forman acquired the company in 1979, it was a 100% GNS base. A few years later, they reformulated it to contain a little bit of bourbon, I guess so they could call it a whiskey liqueur, rather than just a liqueur. Apparently, although no one will give me the details, they reverted back to 100% GNS a few years after that and that's what it is now.

It's mixed and bottled at Brown-Forman in Louisville. The GNS comes from some GNS supplier like MGP or ADM, the fruit concentrate (mostly apricot) is made at a Brown-Forman facility in Puerto Rico, and the final ingredient is sugar. I remember being in the room one time when they were bottling it. It goes through a filtration system and after a while, the filter module looks like a honey comb, with sugar syrup oozing out of it at every opportunity.

If you know your American whiskey history, compound or 'fake' whiskeys were a big problem pre-Prohibition. Southern Comfort can be traced back to 1874. You might consider it history's most successful compound or 'fake' whiskey. They didn't call it whiskey, of course. They called it "The Grand Old Drink of the South." Another funny thing, it never sold that well in the South. When I was working on the brand, its #1 state was New Jersey.

[higgins]

We know that flavored whiskey is popular, but do we know who is actually buying this stuff? MauiSon proposed vodka drinkers, but I always see Shanken News and others claim that these drinks are targeting the "young brown spirits drinkers" category.

Are these products 'winning over' vodka drinkers, or are they just competing with other low-priced bourbon?

[Flyfish]

If you know your American whiskey history, compound or 'fake' whiskeys were a big problem pre-Prohibition. Southern Comfort can be traced back to 1874. You might consider it history's most successful compound or 'fake' whiskey. They didn't call it whiskey, of course. They called it "The Grand Old Drink of the South." Another funny thing, it never sold that well in the South. When I was working on the brand, its #1 state was New Jersey.

[TheOakMonster]

Ok, I ran some numbers at work today. All reported numbers below are our store's sales, so far, for 2013 (January to present):

Jack Daniels Black // all sizes we carry

1.75l = 151 btls

1L = 98 btls

750ml = 132 btls

375ml = 57 btls

Jack Daniels Honey // all sizes carried

1L = 35 btls

375ml = 12 btls

Jim Beam White //

1.75L = 102 btls

1L = 116 btls

(we also carry 750ml and 375ml, but sales are fairly low)

Jim Beam Red Stag// all sizes we carry

1.75L = 15 btls

1L = 38 btls

So, yeah, we sell some flavored whiskey, but the numbers don't add much to our bottom-line. I mean, there's certainly items in the store that sell far, far less than Jack Tennessee Honey, but Jack Honey isn't keeping the lights on.

[CoMobourbon]

One question to inform this discussion: are the margins on flavored whiskeys significantly higher than those of regular bottles?

I would guess the answer is yes based on the following speculations:

-they can put cheaper / lower quality / less aged whiskey into flavored bottles

*-they can and do mix in some GNS, which is of course much cheaper than aged spirits

-at scale, the cost of the sweetener/flavor rounds to zero

-they can consistently charge as much or more for the flavored bottles as the regular bottles (they do around here)

If these speculations are right, then someone somewhere along the supply chain is making a relatively high profit per bottle. Is it the retailer (like TheOakMonster) or the producer? I would guess the producer.

Then, in that case, does that explain why producers are pushing it so hard?

Edited April 14, 2013 by CoMobourbon
good point squire

[squire]

Not only younger (cheaper) whiskys but lower alcohol proof as well so the profit margin is greater. Is there any GNS in these things?