A Practical Guide To Selling
SUPERPREMIUM SPIRITS

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Irish Whiskey

While bourbon and Scotch get the most press, the Irish whiskey category, while small, is the fastest-growing in the U.S. These whiskies have exceptional character and are brimming with interesting nuances. Perhaps even better, superpremium Irish whiskies are reasonably priced, making them bona fide bargains.

 

Irish whiskey aficionados may be interested in trading up to single malt and vintage-dated expressions, like this Knappogue Castle Irish Single Malt 1994.

IRISH WHISKEY GAME PLAN: Serious enthusiasts of Irish whiskey know the brand they're going to buy before they walk through your front door. Knowing this, Irish distillers are expanding vertically in order to keep their loyal constituency in the fold. This way, brand-devoted clients can experiment with things like wood finishing or vintage delineated malts and remain true to the brand their parents drank. For that matter, any whiskey aficionado looking to go home with something new and indisputably luxurious should be escorted to the nearest Irish single malt. Each is a memorable experience.

Unlike Scotch, Irish whiskey is made from both malted and unmalted barley. Irish distillers triple-distill their whiskey and prefer to develop the character of the whiskey in the vat, rather than post-distillation blending.

Rum

Everything that you might have heard about rum being the next hot spirit is true. In the past five years, sales of rum have grown significantly. Rum sales last year continued soaring skyward, posting an increase of 6.6% to 20.8 million 9-liter cases, with flavored rums accounting for roughly a third of the sales.

Recently introduced 10 Cane Rum, made from the first pressing of Trinidadian sugar cane, is among the many high-end rums customers might be interested in trying.

RUM GAME PLAN: Marketing great rums has everything to do with eliciting the romance of where the rum is made. Think of any brand of rum as having originated in a tropical paradise and you'll be just about right. Whether selling to a novice or connoisseur, first find out if the person is more interested in a dark savory rum to enjoy in a snifter, or one to use in an exotic drink. Several major players in the category offer high-end versions of their basic brands. And many consumers have not yet tried rhum agricole, which is made from free running sugar cane juice and is a style preferred by the former French colonies, such as Martinique and Haiti. Suggest these for those enthusiasts who'd like a slightly different experience.

Understanding the phenomenon is easy. Rum is a dynamic and diverse spirit with a "fun in the sun" image. Its made in exotic places like Martinique and Barbados and graced with rich hues and utterly captivating flavors. Rum's approachable taste profile means that there's very little learning curve necessary, even with the handcrafted, aged rums. It adapts well to barrel aging and is produced in an intriguing array of styles and types.

Gin

It's far too easy to perceive gins as simple and straightforward propositions. Their crystal clarity, featherweight bodies, and ethereal bouquets are not often considered elegant or complex, which is an unfortunate misconception.

Americans are rediscovering the simple elegance and wonderful complexity of Britain's most famous export. More than any other clear spirit, high-end gins are highly individualistic, made from recipes that endow them with well-developed characters and highly defined personalities. They have breeding and lineage measured in centuries. It is a rarefied lot, with the fewest number of superpremium brands of all major spirits. Add to this that no two gins taste alike and each top gin becomes a singular commodity. So when gin aficionados say they fancy a particular gin more than the others, believe them.

Bombay Sapphire is the epitome of a superpremium gin, while Quintessential is one of a host of newer high-end gins trying to carve a niche in the market.

GIN GAME PLAN: A large part of gin's mystique is that each brand is distinctively individual. An exceptional gin etches itself on one's sensory memory like a lilting perfume. No two major labels of gin taste or smell the same, so it's easy to appreciate how once smitten, people can become such devotees of one brand over the rest of the field. One sales key is to determine if the customer prefers a dry gin -- such as Beefeater -- or one that is softer and slightly sweet like Tanqueray. An innovation being well received by enthusiasts is gins distilled using fresh rather than dried botanicals. Brands such as Tanqueray Ten and Wet by Beefeater are popular examples. They feature lush, succulent bouquets and marvelously flavorful palates.

The character distinctions between superpremium gins lie in how they're made. The most widely produced type is London Dry Gin, a term that now refers to a style rather than a geographical reference. First, a fermented mash of corn, barley malt, and other cereal grains are distilled in specially designed gin stills. The resulting distillate is a highly rectified, neutral spirit. It is then redistilled with the introduction of aromatics and botanicals into the still that imbue the spirit with its incomparable flavor and aroma. Juniper berries are the most prevalent botanical added. The exact composition of the aromatics and botanicals is a guarded trade secret, and essentially distinguishes one premium brand from another.

Liqueurs

The popularly held misconception about liqueurs is that they're thick, sweet and syrupy. It's likely born out of the days when liqueurs resembled flavored cough syrup and people sipped crème de menthe and drank apricot sours. Well, times have changed. Today, most of the liqueurs on the shelf are light and brimming with flavor, products in step with contemporary tastes.

Tradition and prestige are buzzwords for many of the superpremium proprietary liqueurs, like Drambuie, which make great holiday gifts for family and friends.

LIQUEUR GAME PLAN: The best piece of advice is to first find out how the customer wants to use the liqueur. Steer those who are planning to give it as a gift toward the higher-image, prestigious proprietary brands that carry superpremium pricing. Generally speaking, the packaging of these liqueurs exudes class and tradition. Those preferring to sip a liqueur after dinner will also gravitate to the classic proprietary brands. However, customers who are planning holiday parties are more likely to purchase liqueurs for drink-making purposes. Indeed, the cocktail renaissance has been built on the back of liqueurs, with mixologists using the vibrant flavors found in liqueurs to bring cocktails to life. Drinks like the Margarita, Cosmopolitan and Kamikaze owe their winning ways to a liqueur. The best advice for salespeople is to suggest that rookie home bartenders stock up on liqueurs and start having some holiday fun.

Originally, the process was no more complicated than steeping spirits in a mash of fruit. Honey was often used as a sweetener to negate the biting edge of the alcohol. Gradually as the art of distillation became more precise, so did the methods used to make liqueur.

The words "liqueur" and "cordial" are essentially synonymous. Liqueurs and cordials are made by blending or redistilling spirits with the extracted essence of fruits, flowers, plants, or some other typically organic item. A sweetener is added to the flavored spirit, an amount equaling not less than 2.5% by weight of the finished liqueur. Their alcohol content varies greatly. While most weigh in at 34-60 proof, some are marketed at 100 proof and above.

Tequila

The proliferation of tequila brands has left many consumers feeling overwhelmed and genuinely wondering about the differences between them. After all, if 100% agave tequilas are made from nothing but agave, then how can there be such a disparity between quality, taste and selling price?

The explanation is similar in depth and complexity to describing the quality variables in wine. But like the subject of wine, the answer lies in the quality of the raw product. The essential difference between brands of tequila is principally the difference in the character and quality of the agaves used to make the tequila.

Making great tequila begins with mature agaves grown under optimum conditions. It's expensive to keep the plants in the ground for the 8-12 years it takes them to reach maturity, but only mature agaves can produce genuinely flavorful, exuberant tequila. To a large extent, that's why the tequila category is more expensive than most of its counterparts.

The Jose Cuervo and Sauza lines of tequila offer products that run the gamut from mid-priced to high-priced (Sauza Hornitosand Cuervo Reserva de la Familia), offering opportunities for retailers tomove customers up within the tequila family.
TEQUILA GAME PLAN: Perhaps the best way to assess a tequila's attributes is to sample the silver or plata version. Ultra-premium silver tequilas are typically unfiltered and unaffected from aging in wood. They are vibrant, brimming with peppery flavors and best represent the compelling qualities of tequila. A reposado tequila is aged in oak between two months and one year. It strikes a true balance between the fresh, spirited character of a silver tequila and the mellow refinement of an añejo. Añejo tequilas must be aged in oak for more than a year. Aging in wood leaves some añejo tequilas smooth and luxurious, with a subtle amber hue. In others the character of the wood is dominant, with prominent tannin, a broad vanilla flavor and a deep golden color. From a sales perspective, it is important to ask the customer about how much wood character they like in tequila. Another is to inquire whether the tequila will be sipped neat or used primarily for mixing. The answers will dictate whether your recommend a silver, reposado or añejo tequila. While some may suggest that silver tequilas are most appropriate for use in mixed drinks and that añejos are best suited for sipping, that advice hardly holds true these days.

For the record, other quality factors include how the agaves are baked and the length of fermentation. Methods of distillation and depth of aging finish off the equation. Within each of these points there exists another subset of variables. Suffice it to say, crafting great tequila is a precise science and an art requiring just about a lifetime to master.

Production of tequila is closely scrutinized by the government to ensure exacting quality standards are maintained. As a result, much of what you need to know about a brand can be found on the bottle. All 100% agave tequila must state that fact on their label. If it doesn't, then the tequila is a blend, or mixto, which is allowed to contain up to 49% cane sugar, or caña.

There is a four-digit number on every bottle of tequila. These numbers are assigned to individual distilleries and signify that the tequila was made by that distiller alone and that it passed all standards of quality. NOM is an acronym for "Norma Oficial Mexicana," a set of laws governing the production of tequila. If you find two brands of tequila that have the same NOM number, they were produced at the same distillery. *