No Booze Left Behind

Following on the heels of Atomizer's post on unwanted whiskey, Eric Felten looks at orphan booze brands in today's Wall Street Journal (sub req):

Sheep Dip is a classic example of an "orphan brand." Originally made just for the Anchor Inn, a pub in Gloucestershire (where the local rustics' slang for whisky is "sheep dip"), the Scotch grew into a nationally distributed brand. Sheep Dip was successful enough to catch the attention of a major producer, Invergordon, which took over the brand in the early '90s. But soon Invergordon was swallowed by Whyte & Mackay, which was part of what is now called Fortune Brands -- home of Jim Beam, Courvoisier, Sauza tequila (and Titleist golf balls and Moen faucets for that matter). Sheep Dip wasn't even a rounding error for its corporate parent, which eventually let the whisky drift into oblivion.

A former marketing director for Glenmorangie single malt, Alex Nicol, spotted the opportunity in the defunct brand. For the big conglomerates, Sheep Dip "wasn't worth getting out of bed," he says. But for a small start-up like the Spencerfield Spirit Company he was setting up, the whisky came with a built-in base of customers -- a base perplexed at the brand's disappearance and eager for its return. Two years ago, Mr. Nicol made a deal for the rights to the brand and set about reviving it.

Sheep Dip always had two chief sources of appeal. The first was that it was very good whisky, a vatted-malt blend made exclusively from single malts, without any of the generic grain whisky that goes into most Scotch blends. But perhaps more important was the off-beat branding -- decidedly unslick and antipretentious. A brand like Sheep Dip short-circuits the one-upmanship of connoisseurism, declaring that whisky is something simply to be enjoyed. Or, as Mr. Nicol puts it, a dram should be about "having fun, not taking yourself so bloody serious." Mr. Nicol turned to well-regarded whisky blender Richard Paterson to re-create and upgrade the old Sheep Dip mix of single malt whiskies. Comparing my recently acquired vintage bottle with the new stuff, I found that Sheep Dip 2.0 is true to the original, but more polished, with admirable depth and complexity.

Mmmm...Sheep Dip. Seriously though, I've seen Sheep Dip in stores, but never had it pass my lips. Now, I must give it a go.

Orphan brands can be mined for their residual value, or they can be revived in earnest, which is what happened with Plymouth gin, a storied brand fallen on hard times. Some early Martini recipes specified Plymouth gin, and the classic 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book -- compiled from the recipes used at London's Savoy Hotel -- called for using Plymouth in several drinks. Among them is a terrific 1920s cocktail called the Charlie Lindbergh, made with Plymouth, Lillet, apricot-flavored brandy and orange bitters. And when it came to gin and bitters, Plymouth was the brand of preference for the British Navy's Pink Gins. In the years before World War II, Plymouth was selling a million cases a year, but by 1975, the brand was sadly diminished, producing only 5,000 cases. For two more decades the factory managed to limp along, tossed from conglomerate to conglomerate as the gin was cheapened and the brand degraded.

Come 1996, the lights were about to get turned off for good at the Plymouth distillery, when four investors bought the brand and the plant -- a 15th-century monastery outfitted with an 1855 pot still. They restored the distillery and the quality of the gin, which soon became a favorite with hard-core cocktail geeks looking for authentic products to put in classic drinks. Soon Plymouth was selling enough to attract the attention of the major players, and was bought a few years ago by Vin & Spirit, the Swedish government-owned distillers who make Absolut vodka. With their distribution muscle, Plymouth is now available in stores most everywhere, which comes in handy if you want to make a Martini according to the original specifications.

But be sure to try it soon, because you never know how long any brand will be with us. The Swedish parliament voted in June to sell Vin & Spirit, part of a free-market campaign to get out of the business of state-owned businesses. A bidding war for V&S is expected, with Absolut as the prize. Let's just hope that Plymouth isn't orphaned all over again.

There will always be a place for Plymouth in my home.