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Bourbon Roundtable Roundtable
A Malt Advocate Distillers Roundtable Interview
Early last November, the afternoon of WhiskyFest New York, we managed to get representatives of almost every producer and bottler of American rye whiskey in a small room at the Marriott Marquis for an hour and a half. Everyone was there because rye whiskey is suddenly hotter than a $20 Rolex. We asked them why, and what they've got, and why they don't have more, and what they're going to do about it.
Kris Comstock
Buffalo Trace Distillery, Brand Manager
Larry Kass
Communications Director, Heaven Hill
Drew Kulsveen
Sales Director, Kentucky Bourbon Distillers
Bernie Lubbers
Whiskey Professor, Jim Beam
Fritz Maytag
President, Anchor Distilling
Joe Nardoci
Executive Vice President, Chatham Imports
Henry Preiss
President, Preiss Imports
Jimmy Russell
Master Distiller, Wild Turkey
LeNell Smothers
Proprietor, LeNell's Ltd
Julian Van Winkle
President, J.P. Van Winkle and Sons
John Hansell
Publisher, Malt Advocate
Lew Bryson
Managing Editor, Malt Advocate
LEW BRYSON: We're here because rye whiskey is a hot product, even though it's a very small niche in the overall whiskey market. When did you first see a renewed interest in rye whiskey? What did you see, and where was it happening?
JOE NARDOCI: For us, at Chatham, we actually, about three and a half, four years ago, started to see it growing. Here in the City, and typically from-well, you can't call them bartenders anymore, you have to call them mixologists. From being out in the market a lot, we noticed people using more rye in Manhattans. We started to see Manhattans grow. We got interested and started to ask questions.
JULIAN VAN WINKLE: I first had a request from a Japanese customer we were selling to for an old rye whiskey. This was in 1995, I think, or 1996. We sourced some out. At that time, there was bourbon and bulk rye whiskey available - back in the good old days - and we found a supply. I didn't know anything about rye whiskey back then. I was brought up on bourbon whiskey, and rye was a bad name in our house. To taste something that was that good absolutely blew me away. I had my friends try it, and my wife tried it. When she likes a whiskey, I know it's good, because she's not a big bourbon fan, but she likes really good whiskeys. So we just started selling overseas. Then Gary Regan and Paul Pacult found out about our label at the Bourbon Festival one year, and said, 'You've got to start selling this in the States,' and I did. That was about 1996. It was an aged rye whiskey, it was about 13 years at the time. I was just blown away by the flavor, it surprised me. A really good product. Wish I had more of it.
LARRY KASS: I'll take a big macro perspective on it. We've been producing rye whiskey for a long time, I guess there are a couple of us who have been making it for a long time, back when rye was hard to sell. I guess some credit where credit is due: back about 1996, Jim Murray came out with a book called Classic Bourbon, Tennessee & Rye Whiskey, and in it he had a chapter that he devoted to rye whiskey. He talked in there-I think with some prescience-about the fact that rye is a uniquely American type of whiskey, and that it's an undiscovered whiskey and it's very hard to find in most parts of the world, and it's a very flavorful type of whiskey. It compares to the most flavorful styles of Irish pot stilled whiskeys and Islay whiskies. At that point I know that Fritz had started to produce his Old Potrero, and he gave props to Fritz for doing so. He actually predicted at that point that rye was going to be the next wave.
Again, from a macro perspective, all of us that produce American whiskey can, with some pride and pleasure, look on the renaissance of rye whiskey as the next frontier of American whiskey. We've seen super-premium American bourbons, single barrels and small batch bourbons really get hot over the past ten or fifteen years. I think that we've done a good job of educating consumers and a lot of them are now saying, 'What else is out there
in terms of American whiskeys? Where can we go now?' Rye whiskeys have been around a long time, rye used to be the pre-eminent style of American whiskey. "What's new out there?" What's new out there is old, and that's rye whiskeys.
We saw all this coming a few years ago; maybe we didn't produce as much whiskey back then as we should have. But we saw it coming and now it's really hitting its stride. A lot of retailers-and LeNell can probably talk to this-are really seeing it hitting on the shelves right now. We're seeing people coming out and saying, "Wow, where can I get this?" even though it's been out there for a long time, and that's very exciting.
HENRY PREISS: Before we did national distribution, we were a wholesaler in California. I'd been introduced to Old Overholt rye, that was back in 1991, 1992. There wasn't much rye back then. We were handling Julian's products back then, [when] he didn't have a rye. We went to Heaven Hill and begged Max [Shapira], and we got Rittenhouse Rye; which, at that point, people looked at us kinda queer, and went. [shrugs] y'know. And it was.Dirt. Cheap.
LENELL SMOTHERS: [quietly] It still is. [laughter]
HP: It was retailing for $11 and $12.99. And everyone we tasted it on was impressed.
LK: $13.99 now. [more laughter]
HP: I worked with Julian and we also rolled out under our label some of the casks that Julian allowed us to have of the 13 year old rye. It was almost like a rocket ship at that time, it was unbelievable. It got to where Julian said, 'I'm not sure if I can sell you any more, because I can't get enough.' That was in the mid-90s. It's never really stopped, except for that there just isn't that much rye out there.
I was buying ryes in Canada, and two years ago I could have bought as much rye as I wanted. There was no limit to the rye that was available to me. Now with the changes in the international marketplace, with Allied [Domecq] broken up and sold off.there isn't any rye to buy in Canada. Very little, and very hard to get. Straight rye is almost impossible. I can definitely attest that rye has taken a turn. Once there's attention and demand, prices go up, then packaging modernizes.
Going back to what you said, Larry, what's old is new again. There is an enormous resurgence in bars of not only rye, but classic spirits. That is really healthy. Instead of constantly having to invent the next new thing, we're now dealing with premium products that have been here forever anyway, that people didn't even know existed, so it's totally new to them. Which is, for everyone in this room, a really healthy trend. It's probably the healthiest-I've been in the liquor business for close to 36 years, from my warehouse days up till now, and I've never seen it like it is today.
JIMMY RUSSELL: Well, I've been making a straight rye whiskey for, ever since I've been around. [pause] That's a long time. [laughter] We've always had these pockets of rye places in the east, up in the northeast areas, Chicago area, out on the west coast. Then Japan and Australia have always been a decent market for us, and some European countries. The funny thing is. When I started in the business, it was a lot like bourbon. Rye whiskey, if it wasn't made in Pennsylvania or Maryland, people didn't believe it was rye whiskey! Now, as far as I know, it's all made in Kentucky. In the beginning, [Pennsylvania] was the biggest state for rye whiskey. I guess the first whiskey made in America was rye whiskey,
wasn't it?
LK: Right. The Whiskey Rebellion was fought over rye whiskey.
I was tickled when I heard we were doing this rye roundtable, because we're giving a seminar on rye whiskey here tonight, [Heaven Hill master distiller] Parker Beam and I, so there's a nice convergence. We planned on doing it a long time ago, before we heard about this roundtable. [laughter].
One of the points that I have in seminar is "Why Rye?" Rye does have a little bit of a broader geographical appeal. Rye was made in broad parts of Pennsylvania, broad parts of Maryland and the mid-Atlantic states. If you go on the Web and if you enter "rye history," you come up with some pretty cool websites. There are some nutty people who spend their lives on the Web, building these sites that track these distillery sites in Pennsylvania. They were all over the Monongahela area. As Jimmy said, rye was, along with rum, America's first big spirit, it brings
all that baggage along with it as well,
the history.
And as Jimmy said, all these distilleries just closed because the bottom fell out of the rye market. And what happened was that the Kentucky distilleries just said, okay, we'll make it. That's really what happened, we decided to mash the rye.
Parker tells this great story about when Booker [Noe] mashed rye for the first time. Because apparently you have to cook the corn and the rye together, before you ferment it. Booker didn't know that, and he didn't cook them together. What happens when you put it in the fermenter, if you don't cook them together, is that it foams up. Parker said Booker filled the fermenter room with foam, it was like when you add too much suds to the washing machine. It started filling the fermenter room. He said you had to add lard, he told them to sprinkle lard into the fermenter to cut down the foam. It sounded like the funniest thing.
JR: I don't remind Booker said it that way.
[laughter]
LK: He kind of said it more colorful than I did!
JR: Well, rye is one of those things that will automatically foam. I don't care how you cook it, it'll foam on you.
LK: I'd have loved to seen it foaming up, and Booker running around with a paintbrush with lard on it, trying to cut the foam down.
JOHN HANSELL: Fritz, your rye's a little bit different from most everyone else's here. What's your take on the whole rye thing?
FRITZ MAYTAG: We started our rye whiskey project in 1993, but I'd had it in mind for 20 years, when I found out that rye was the original American whiskey. I could see that it was just totally out of fashion, and I was intrigued. I didn't do anything about it for a long time. Then one day I found out that there were no pot-distilled whiskeys being made in America, and I said, that's it! We're going to do it. We had no idea what it would taste like.
We thought a lot about it, and some of you will understand: I'm a brewer, and also a fan of single malts. So I thought, why wouldn't we make an all-malt rye whiskey? Partly because, as a brewer I know that once upon a time, probably all whiskeys were all-malt, or at least very high in malt, because the enzymatic power of barley is terrific. Or rye, or wheat, if it's malted.
Anyway, this I thought was, I confess, a point of difference, and not only that, I. we don't say 'copy' at our company, but I was inspired by the single malts in Scotland. [laughter] I'm sure some of you marketers will understand. I thought it would be fun to have the first all-malt, the first pot-distilled-the only pot-distilled whiskey, and have it be rye whiskey.
We released our first rye whiskey in January, 1996. The first WhiskyFest was in 1998, and we went to the WhiskyFests, and we gave seminars, and we bragged, and we waited for the world to beat a path to our door.
Nothing happened. I mean, nothing.
We made several mistakes. We released it as barrel-strength, and of course the bartenders had no idea what to do with it. We thought that the single malt whisky guys would just fall in love with it, or the single barrel bourbon lovers. But rye was so out of style, and the whole thing was so completely ungeared to the real market that basically nothing happened.
Which was good, because we didn't have very much whiskey. But it's just a classic example. When the world began to discover these other ryes-and, incidentally, I discovered the other ryes. I thought all there was, was Old Overholt, until I did my research right at the beginning. And I found five, Wild Turkey being one of them, that were available. You just couldn't find it.
JVW: They were on the top shelf! You were looking on the bottom.
LK: Or not on the shelf at all; Old Overholt was generally the only one available.
BERNIE LUBBERS: Well, no, you had Jim Beam's yellow label-
FM: Now that there are other ryes, and people are talking about ryes, and Jim Murray, and Michael Jackson, suddenly, like everyone else, we're all out of straight rye. We didn't see the excitement coming fast enough. Even though our whiskey isn't aged anywhere near as long as whiskeys are, we're just totally out. It caught us by surprise.
I think it's just beginning. You say rye whiskey, and the very simple definition you all know, but there are many possibilities within that.
One of the things that interests me, and I throw it out as a topic for discussion-maybe. is why did they make whiskey from rye. Seems clear to me that it was the cheapest source of starch, which means sugar, which means alcohol. In the American whiskey tradition, we ferment the mash. We don't need the husks of barley in a lauter tun to make beer. We don't make beer, in the American tradition. In fact, if you read the federal regs, you can't make whiskey from beer. It's a fermented mash of corn, rye, wheat, barley, whatever. So you don't need barley husks. Rye was perfectly suitable for making a mash.
Why rye? Cheapest. Why cheapest? The Little Ice Age. That's my theory. We hear about global warming, but we had a tremendous period of global cooling from the mid-1300s to the mid-1800s, when the world was so cold people thought it was all over. They left Greenland. But rye does well in cold temperatures. It apparently did well in east coast soils.
LB: It does do better in marginal soil.
FM: These were not gourmet whiskeys, I'm sure.
LK: Subsistence whiskeys.
FM: They were in the Scotch-Irish distilling tradition, taking over from rum, probably, for all kinds of reasons, and probably using the cheapest substance. Nothing wrong with that, there's certainly not a pejorative thing.
JR: Rye was probably the dominant grain in the Alleghenies. In Kentucky, corn was the dominant grain. But rye was dominant [in Pennsylvania], that's my understanding. People had a gristmill, farmers brought the grain to the gristmill, they ground them and got so much of the grain, too much, that they had to do something with it. And they started making whiskey with it.
LK: Exactly. They weren't growing the grains to make whiskeys and win medals with them. [laughter]
KRIS COMSTOCK: But those distilleries, they went out of business in Pennsylvania and Maryland, on account of the rye category slowdown. Then the Kentucky distilleries took it on themselves to make it, but the popularity and demand decreased. Then it took folks like you to have a bit of guts and some faith to make rye whiskey when it wasn't a popular category.
I still think it's only the tip of the iceberg. Bourbons are a little bit further ahead. But the world hasn't seen all of the great bourbon out there, and the ryes even less than that. So I think it's our torch to carry, to teach people. Because if no one's gonna teach anyone about rye whiskey, they're not going to learn, and I don't want this to be a six-month trend that comes and goes.
JH: That's why we're all in this room today.
HP: I believe we are at a disadvantage in America in one sense, because there are so few distilleries here. There are so few distilleries left today, it's a lot different from scotch. As hard as everyone's working in this room, it's still a pretty small slice of the shelf.
That's a disadvantage for the American whiskey business. You can talk small batch all you want, but if it's not available, or if it's only available from one or two distilleries, like Beam, which did an incredible job. Beam came out with the Small Batch [Bourbon Collection], and it changed American whiskey forever. We saw a tremendous pick-up. But the reality is that there are still very few distilleries in America.
Here's one over here that's going to open soon [points to Drew Kulsveen], but it takes a long time to get enough of a breadth of whiskeys out there, enough of a spread, that people in far away places see the section.
JH: It's hard to ask the rest of the world to appreciate what we're doing when I feel that our own country hasn't appreciated what we're doing.
HP: They actually appreciate it more in other parts of the world.
DREW KULSVEEN: It's been a very long time since they appreciated it. Y'know, rye whiskey was the whiskey to drink before Prohibition, hands down. It really put a damper on things when Prohibition occurred. The way I see it, after Repeal, nobody was able to supply people with whiskey, so scotch became very popular. I think rye does have similar characteristics and tastes, but I don't think that this is a trend because of that fact, and I don't think that people's tastes change that much.
LB: They're appreciating it for itself, not because it's like something else.
DK: Right. It's only limited by the supply.
JVW: This whiskey sells itself, as far as my experience with it. That's why I first bottled it. Fritz, I think that first year you did the show here, we came out with it, and yours was around. People were drinking scotch in the room, mostly. They'd come over from the Laphroaig table and you'd have to stand back-it was a little smoky-and they'd try the rye, and they'd be blown away by it. We had this little plain label: it had Van Winkle on it, where it was bottled, and what it was, straight rye whiskey. They weren't buying the package by any means, it was just the product.
JH: I often like to refer to rye whiskey as the Islay whiskies of America. It's got that same distinctiveness, assertiveness, an individuality of character like a Laphroaig or a Lagavulin. I think it's the same way with rye whiskey. There's a parallel there.
FM: One reason why rye whiskey as a category has taken off-granted, that it's distinctive; it has to be, or it just wouldn't have. But it might be that it was an east coast thing, originally. It existed here, it staggered along, barely alive, on the east coast primarily. And it's the east coast where the population density is, and where the media is. If this had been a California whiskey, it would still be dead.
It was once an east coast fashion, and the east coast is not opposed to it. They like it! They're in favor of it! You see what I mean? This is where all the population is, this is where the rye history was, the memory was, the remnant knowledge.
I wonder if that isn't part of why it's caught on.
LS: I think sales of bourbon being up has also helped rye. People start exploring the history of bourbon. I get this all the time. People come in the store and ask about the history of bourbon, which then leads them to rye.
LK: Right, that 'what's next' phenomenon I talked about earlier.
LS: And Drew touching on the whole Prohibition problem. From what I gathered, it was harder for rye to come out of the distilleries, because it was more expensive and messy, and it was quicker to get the corn whiskey out.
JR: Oh, it's more expensive to make rye whiskey. You see that, you all? Do you, Drew? It's a hard product to run.
LK: You get that gummy, sticky beer, your yield isn't as good.
LS: So it was quicker for distillers to get up and running and make their cash back with the bourbon than it was the rye, and rye never caught up again.
LK: Of course, you only mash it a couple days a year, so.
JR: Four!
[loud laughter]
LK: Now four! See, that's the point: it's a small category, a smaaaallll category. We do have to bear that in mind. We spill more bourbon in a day than we sell rye in a year!
DK: Fritz preaching it from the mountaintops and the success of Julian's whiskey definitely increased interest and awareness, whether it took a while for people know what the hell they were talking about.
JH: Credit to Julian. Julian came out with those older ryes. All the other ryes to that point in time were younger ryes, and that line extension really elevated the image of what rye is and can be. Part of it was what Fritz was doing, part of it was the cocktail people, but also to show that rye was not just something that was very young and aggressive. It could also be something that can be quite mature. I still remember how I thought that just changed how I saw rye, coming out with the older line extensions.
JVW: We were in the right place at the right time. Just had to find some older whiskey available. We always felt that the extra aging that happened past four and five years, which is what most rye was, really helped it out. People just took notice of that because it was so different from anything else that was out there. We do find that it's more universal than bourbon. It's by far the most popular whiskey we could sell, if we had enough of it. Pappy's probably rolling over in his grave right about now, hearing me say that.
LB: I remember interviewing you a couple years ago, and you said that if you had more rye, you could sell a lot more rye.
JVW: We would sell more rye than anything we have.
FM: I couldn't agree more that the category was given a big boost when Rip Van Winkle came out, and also when Hirsch came out with some older ryes. Because, broadly speaking, the whiskey world thinks that older whiskey's better. It's like the wine world used to think that older wine was better.
And I submit to you that older whiskey is different. Wonderfully different. And many older red wines are wonderfully different. They're not better, they're old. And that's wonderful. But I submit to you that, especially because we have a big shortage of rye whiskey, you are all going to discover the beauty of young rye whiskey.
[raucous laughter]
JN: And I'd say that he's right!
JVW: Whether we like it or not.
FM: You are going to find out how wonderful they are. And I believe they are. If I had a choice between a young zinfandel tonight, or a nice old one, with dinner.if you're buying, I might choose the older one, but I would prefer the younger. Because I know it will be rich, and fruity, and it'll be wonderful. Older wines are ethereal, and more complex, and all that sort of thing, and the same is true with whiskeys. Older whiskeys just have a wonderful quality.
But so do younger whiskeys, in my opinion, with the kind of barrels we're using. I have found that used bourbon barrels take forever to bring the whiskey around. Most of you are making bourbon, I assume, and using new, charred oak barrels. I tell you, those whiskeys are wonderful after two, three, four, five years. Maybe a blend of all of those. I would guess that many of you would agree, that a bourbon in a new, charred oak barrel can be wonderful after three or four years. I don't know whether you will, but I do.
JH: That's a nice segue into something else we wanted to bring up: the whole supply issue. There's a lot of really young ryes on the market, and a lot of really old ones, but are we missing something in the middle? Is there a gap there? What's going on?
[long pause]
JVW: Let's talk about something else. [laughter]
FM: Two, three year old straight rye whiskey can be wonderful. If it isn't, maybe we change the way we distill it. But we think our products are just lovely after two or three years. We faced a tremendous backlash from people who said, 'Oh, that's not old.' Well, no, it's not. We feel that the critics have been ignorant in not appreciating a young whiskey, because by and large, you don't celebrate young whiskeys, we all celebrate old whiskeys. Young whiskeys are wonderful, if they're made properly.
HP: I have to agree. We sell a broad range of spirits, things like eau de vies, which. I think I may be the last eau de vie importer in America, certainly one of the last. Not naming brands here, but the different distillers, and the quality of the distillation equipment, their enthusiasm for making the best product, have a product that when it leaves the still, without any age whatsoever, is phenomenal. They've captured the entire essence of what they're distilling, and it's a phenomenal product.
So I agree. We do like old things, but if there's anything to learn when you look at these fruit distillates that are finished products when they leave the still, or with only minimal aging to let the distillate calm down, and when I say minimal, it's a period from a few weeks to a few months, and then they're bottled. I've had that conversation with Evan Kulsveen.
LS: We need a rye white dog [unaged rye spirit]. I'd sell it! If I didn't drink it all!
HP: Today's younger consumers that are now enjoying spirits again are drinking unaged spirits every day of the week, every vodka that costs pennies to produce and paying premium dollars for it. We milk off some of that business and give them a high-quality product that's aged two or three years, and if it's high-quality, and it's good, and it's flavorful, I don't think the age is as much of an issue.
LK: But the conversation is about the stocks. We have a range. We have a 4 year old, we have a 6 year old bottled in bond, you guys have a range of whiskeys. If you look around the table, you've probably got a pretty good range of rye whiskey ages that are represented here. I think we're all getting calls from consumers saying, 'Where can I find.', so we're at the short end of the supply here.
JH: I don't know. I'm not seeing a lot between, let's say, 7 or 8 year old up to, it seems almost like up to 20. There seems to be a gap to me in there. Between 10 to 18, maybe 20, there's nothing there, is there?
DK: We used to have a couple of brands for other customers overseas, and we've been doing them for a long time. They were 8 and 10 year old rye whiskeys, sold them to Japan and several countries in Europe, like Germany and France, but it just doesn't exist any more. Can't get it.
KC: We first offered our Sazerac 18 year old, six years ago. We were sitting on stocks of rye whiskey we'd had there a long, long time, and we tasted it and realized how good we thought it was. And then this whole phenomenon started to happen, so we went back and started tasting some of our younger rye. That's when we realized that the stuff that we had that was 6 and 7 years old, albeit different than the 18 year old, was wonderful in a totally different way. That's why we came out with the younger version of the Sazerac straight rye, so that we can eventually help introduce more people to rye whiskey. We all know that after 18, 20, 21 years, there's not a whole lot [of whiskey] left in that barrel.
JR: We've always been a believer that rye's best between 6 and 8 years old.
DK: I don't think you're going to turn people on to a rye whiskey if the only thing they can get is very old. To us, being a small company, it isn't much of an issue. But for the bigger players in the whiskey industry, it's a lot more difficult.
You're not going to develop it into a category, because how are you going to turn people on when they have to pay $20 at the bar for a glass of rye whiskey? You have to start somewhere and introduce the product to consumers where it's seen as a value, and they're willing to take a chance on something they haven't had.
JN: I'm listening to what you guys are saying, and every point is valid and makes perfect sense to me. But you know, one of the things Fritz says. When you said about the world sooner or later is going to be introduced to 2 year old rye whiskey, I personally think it's a very, very good thing. Because one of the things I've noticed over the 30 or so years I've been doing this.when small retailers would start trying to find ways to compete against the chains, and become more specialized in wines.
I'm seeing that with you. [gestures to LeNell] You have taken retail to a different level, kind of specialized a little bit in something where the whole world wasn't involved with it.
The problem that we have is we have no rye to sell. But if they do what you say, I think we can convince many retailers, even if it's the large chains. If we can get 2 year old rye at some point, I think it will be great for the brand.
FM: You'll have to say 3 years old [on the label] if any of it's less than four. I think there are wonderful whiskeys on the market that are fairly young, that are probably not labeled as such, that are not ten years old.
HP: We fight that battle all the time with whiskeys. Do you put an age on, don't you put an age on? We've got a scotch that's moved down to 10 years old because supplies have been tight. There was a lot of resistance to 10 year old, because 12 year old was kind of considered the bottom floor. We have been successful over the years with whiskeys with no age statements, but it's a real battle.
A spread of whiskeys are important, and the consumer is different. We have to give them variety, we have to give them different ryes, at different ages, from different distilleries, with different styles and different woods. We see that. [But] we're not manufacturers. We are nothing but a conduit between producers and consumers.
LK: But this is an argument about how long a man's legs should be. You provide consumers with whiskeys of different ages, and essentially the consumer is the court of last resort.
FM: And some of them will love the young ones.
BL: But you have to maintain the quality, so if they do enter into the category at 2 years old, they don't leave forever. Maybe we'll find that, as in our company-because we don't have a long-aged rye whiskey, but our Basil Hayden's has more rye in it than any of our other bourbons-maybe we'll find more bourbon makers putting more rye in their mashbills, to get that taste of the rye into their bourbons.
LS: Bulleit's taste is, I think, due to its high rye content.
BL: Sure. Of course it is, and they've got no other place to go.
LK: Now we'll really confuse the consumers.
[babble as everyone talks at once]
DK: I think that's the key, you've got a totally different drinker than you had 20 or 30 years ago. They actually do critique what they're drinking. They're not brand loyal, they might have their go-to couple of brands, but they're not scared to try something new and something different. When you're brand loyal...you've got tunnel vision. These consumers don't have that, because we're out there educating them. This isn't free to do, and that's reflected in the price. When you go out and educate people, they're going to have to pay for it in the bottle, somehow, but it is going to expand the category.
LB: We were talking earlier about mixologists, bar chefs, whatever.
LS: 'Bartenders' is still okay. It's still a sexy word.
LB: They're a lot more educated today than they once were, too, and they're not as brand loyal. They want to get the best spirits in the glass because it makes their drinks better. I don't think you had that as much in the past.
LS: Definitely the resurgence of the classic cocktail has helped rye sales tremendously.
JN: Muddling is back.
LK: Old Fashioneds and Manhattans, people are saying, 'Wait a minute, those were made with rye!'
FM: One reason, I think, that people aren't brand loyal in your sense, sticking to one or two, is that they can't get what they want.
KC: Part of it's because there's such an array of quality American whiskeys.
JN: I remember when I turned 18 and had my first drink. I walked in with an uncle and ordered a Tom Collins. He immediately left, walked right out the door. I didn't see him till the next day. I said, "Why'd you leave?" He said, "Men don't drink that stuff. Rye." I had to have rye and water with him the next day. That kind of shaped my thinking.
BL: People who like American whiskey, how many choices of category do they have? You have bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, you have rye, and then all of a sudden you've got Kessler and blended.
LK: There's corn whiskey out there.
FM: You've got malt whisky.
LK: We've got the Bernheim wheat
whiskey.
[babble again, different microdistilleries, whiskies, hubbub]
LB: I remember reading a Robert Parker prediction from late 2005: great wines are going to continue to become more expensive, because we're being really good at teaching people about good wine. But there's only so much good wine to go around, more people are going to want it, and the price is going to go up. Are we ever going to get caught up with rye? If the demand keeps expanding, are we even going to get caught up with the curve?
FM: Once the world learns to love 3 or 4 year old rye, we'll catch up in about three or four years. [laughter]
HP: I disagree with Robert Parker. I think the liquor industry has got a better handle on it than the wine industry. But in our business, it's hard to forecast. If everyone in this room that's a producer jumps on that, yes, there will be a lot more whiskey. But you're forecasting; will the business be there then? We don't know.
It's one thing to find a good whiskey to bottle under my label as Hirsch, bottle up a thousand cases; that's a drop in the bucket, we can always get rid of that. It's different for a major distiller to make that decision, because you're not going to make 2,000 cases, you're going to make a lot of whiskey. There's got to be an economical factor in play there.
Limited supply is healthy. None of us in this room can survive if we've only got $15 to $20 bottles of whiskey. You can't educate the world, do WhiskyFest, do advertising, do all the things you need, if you no longer really have a product that's genuinely profitable. If the supply becomes like the wine supply, totally caught up, then we'll have the same consumer pressure that wines are under. I think it's kind of nice not to be under that pressure, it's kind of nice to have a product that consumers want, can't find enough of, so they appreciate it twice as much because it's not overabundant and they don't get jaded with the product. It's that fine magical line. I'd like you guys to produce it so I can buy some for my label. But keep the supply on the conservative side!
LK: Ehhhh. Good luck with that.
LS: But it can hurt the category, too. If a customer walks into my store. I have three ryes for under $20 on the shelf. That's not doing anything for the market, other than you sell 'em Rittenhouse, Old Overholt, or Jim Beam Rye, and.where do they go from there? An 18 year old?
HP: I'm not saying that, that's a luxury brand and there's in-between ground.
JH: But where is that in-between?
LS: That's what John's saying, and I'm not seeing that right now.
HP: If the business picks up, like Fritz says, you're going to have a four year old. But to get to that point is always hard in this business. Most consumers don't buy 6 or 7 year old whiskeys.
LS: I disagree with you.
DK: They're going to have to start to.
LS: I sell a ton of Very Old Barton 6 year, and it says 6 year on it.
LK: We all have increased production [of rye whiskey] significantly, you know that. And we're all in the process of catching up. You know the old saying in this business, you never produce the right amount of whiskey, you always produce too much or too little. We're trying to right-size as much as we can, and it's going to be better in three or four years, but Henry's right; you kinda want it to be a little on the lean side, a little bit. Particularly with a category like rye, where, let's face it, we're not talking about a category where anyone's balance sheet is going to collapse on rye. But we're all producing a hell of a lot more rye than we used to.
KC: But it's expensive and hard to make good whiskey. We need to maintain our integrity when there is a little bit more, and educate people, so that they will know why it's expensive, and appreciate the different taste profiles, and be willing to pay what it deserves for a good bottle of whiskey.
LB: We'll let that stand; we have to stop there. Thanks, everyone.
Other Interviews & Round Tables Classics:
Independent Bottler Roundtable |
Bourbon Roundtable Roundtable
|
