Fort Thomas family reintroduces its own brand
By Greg Paeth Post staff reporter
The prominent Pogue family of Fort Thomas looked back at the family history before deciding on a new venture to reintroduce a family-owned bourbon.
In the last few years, as the demand for bourbon whiskey accelerated, the family brought back its Old Pogue Master's Select, a small-batch bourbon that traces its roots to 1869, when Henry E. Pogue began working as a distiller in Maysville, where the family has its roots.
Today's Pogue bourbon - the first produced by the family in about 85 years - is made with an old family formula through a contract with a distiller in Bardstown, said Henry E. "Hank" Pogue V. He is a great-great grandson of the distiller and one of six Pogues who own the reborn brand.
Pogue said he and other members of the family began talking about bringing back Old Pogue in the mid-1990s, when they would get together for weddings or funerals.
"We were all getting older and we started to appreciate the family history more and there was a lot of discussion at family gatherings," recalled Pogue, whose family has worked in the real estate business for decades.
Pogue said he and his father, the late Henry E. "Bud" Pogue, Bud's brother John "Jack" Pogue and his four sons - Peter, Paul, Robert and Jack Jr. - contacted Sam Cecil, author of a book on the bourbon industry in Kentucky. The late Cecil introduced the family to the Bardstown distiller.
The period of time between the family discussions and the re-introduction of Old Pogue Master's Select is explained by the length of time that the bourbon is aged. Old Pogue - 91 proof - is aged for nine years before it's ready for distribution, said Pogue.
The brand is now available in 12 states and isn't difficult to find in Northern Kentucky liquor stores, bars or restaurants.
"Small batch" bourbon - in contrast to its mass-produced counterpart - can translate as "big price tag." Pogue said a fifth of Old Pogue typically sells for $38 to $39, considerably less than some high-end bourbons but twice the price of more mainstream competitors.
At this point, Pogue said the company is on its fifth run of production and will produce somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 cases (six bottles per case) this year.
"We're very pleased with the response, and people have been re-ordering," Pogue said. "That's the important thing."
Maker's market On ice or not, bourbon's hot
By Bob Driehaus Post contributor
BOSTON, Ky. -- Take away the fire suppression water sprinklers, and the dark, cool warehouse brimming with white oak barrels stacked high on wooden lofts here at the Booker Noe Distillery could be a glimpse into the 18th century, when Kentucky bourbon was born.
Bourbon is still made with the same handful of ingredients -corn, malt, rye and limestone-filtered spring water - and aged the same way it always has been here at the 77-year-old distillery. But the 450-acre facility, dotted with warehouses on rolling hills, is expanding by 50 percent and riding the bourbon boom that has translated into big sales growth for the old standards like Jim Beam and newer boutique brands like Knob Creek and Basil Hayden, which are both produced here.
"There's a lot of good news in the bourbon business," said Jim Letourneau, plant manager at Booker Noe, which produces Jim Beam, Basil Hayden and Old Grand Dad bourbons.
The numbers back that up. The inventory of aging barrels of bourbon grew from
3.7 million barrels in 1999 to 4.5 million in 2006, according to Ed O'Daniel, president of the Kentucky Distillers' Association in Springfield. More than 3,000 direct jobs are supported by the industry.Most of the growth is being fueled by exports, he said, including a 31 percent surge in sales between June 2005 and June 2006. Exports now account for 40 percent of all bourbon sold. In Australia, Jim Beam is the top-selling spirit of any kind, a remarkable feat considering Beam comes in at No. 8 among all spirits in the United States.
Emerging markets like China and India have virtually unlimited potential for growth. "There's such opportunity in various parts of the world where bourbon is a relatively new product," O'Daniel said.
Bourbon production has a $2.5 billion economic impact in Kentucky, according to the Kentucky Distillers' Association. Annually, distillers pay about $9 million in local property taxes, $30 million in retail sales taxes and $63 million in wholesale taxes a year, all to Kentucky. Another $1 billion is paid in federal excise taxes.
Jim Beam, the world's most popular bourbon, grew by 5 percent last year globally, and niche brands are growing much faster. Jim Beam Black, aged eight years, grew by 20 percent last year, and Knob Creek, the world's top-selling "ultra-premium" bourbon, has experienced double-digit sales growth for 13 years running.
To keep up with the growth, the Booker Noe distillery recently expanded to a six-day production week from five days. A four-year expansion will be completed in 2008, including four new warehouses added to the existing 24; a new dry house to process used grain for livestock feed; a second still and a third mash cooker.
Beam is also doubling the size of its Makers Mark facility in Loretto with a $37 million upgrade, expanding processing and bottling at its Clermont facility and adding 50 jobs at its Frankfort bottling and warehousing plant as part of a $10 million expansion.
Booker Noe, named in 2005 after the facility's long-time master distiller, supports 70 jobs but won't add new ones as part of the expansion due to the addition of state-of-the art equipment.
Its workers tend to stick around. Ray Hagin, 57, a mash cooker, has been at the distillery for 37 years and has seen four major upgrades. He started by manually checking every temperature and pressure gauge on the cookers and turning valves by hand. Now, 90 percent of his work is at a computer to control temperature and pressure. "But I still go by the sounds of the cookers. I can pretty much tell you the pressure by listening," he said.
Asked if the plant expansion will add to his workload, he said, "It might mean two extra mouse clicks."
Jimmy Reynolds, another mash cooker, is a 34-year employee who followed his dad, aunts and uncles into the business. "I've been around Beam since I was old enough to walk," he said.
Letourneau spent years in the brewing business with Anheuser-Busch before moving to Beam with one regret: "I wish I had come here 35 years ago."
Tucked in a small corner of the distillery is a lab where technician Sally Gibson constantly tests ingredients and the near-final product for safety and quality. Every day, she smells samples of batches that are six months from their due date. Jim Beam is aged four years. Premium brands are aged longer.
With a well-trained nose, she tries to identify the good and the bad smells in each batch, hoping to smell, among other things, wood notes, vanilla and a mature scent, hoping not to smell what a chart identifies as wet dog, band-aid and sweating.
The art and science of bourbon making accounts for all the variations by mixing barrels with slightly different flavors until getting just the right balance, she said. "We don't waste bourbon," Letourneau added.
The only bourbon lost is "the angels' share," about 4 percent that evaporates while the liquor ages.
Up Interstate 65, Heaven Hill, the family-owned distillery based in Louisville, is expanding its distillery's capacity by 40 percent.
"The category is very healthy right now. Whiskey is something that you put down for the future, and we're expanding now with an eye toward this growth," said Larry Kass, a Heaven Hill spokesman. The distiller projects 3 to 5 percent growth in the next few years.
Heaven Hill is cashing in on other spirits trends as well, Kass said: "Bourbon makes up lion's share of growth, but there is also growth in other styles of American style whiskey, including rye whiskey and straight wheat whiskey, which we introduced two years ago."
The bourbon industry, which is still dominated by Kentucky distilleries, is growing at 3 to 5 percent annually, with even higher sales for premium and super-premium niche brands that are catching on with young, affluent drinkers in major cities.
"Bourbon isn't necessarily just growing in the bourbon belt, in the Southeast and Midwest. We're seeing a lot of demand also in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York," said Keith Neumann, senior marketing director for Beam Global Spirits & Wine, which is headquartered in Deerfield, Ill.
He said one of the fastest-growing segments of the drinking population is 21 to
29 year olds who head straight for the top shelf. "A lot of the more expensive super-premium brands had relied on older demographic. Now, a lot of 25 year olds are drinking Knob Creek first," he said.Beam has recently expanded into Russia, China and India and already has strong sales in Spain, the United Kingdom and German, among others, Neumann said.
Domestically, sales have benefited from sponsorship of Robbie Gordon's NASCAR racing team and the three-year-old ad campaign featuring the slogan, "the stuff inside matters most."
"Substance over flash. It captures both the quality of the bourbon and the values of the user base. I think we've really managed to establish an emotional connection," Neumann said.