The Business of Creativity Can Be Tough

 

In this stock image, 'business' is represented by a guy in a white shirt and tie while 'creativity' is represented by a lightbulb bursting with color, which is some pretty lazy creative.

About ten years ago, I wrote about what happened when a very creative micro-distillery owner got into a conflict with his investors. The company survived and thrived, and so did he, separately, so there is no reason to rehash that incident, but back then it got me thinking about what sometimes happens to creative people in business. 

Creativity is a characteristic that is valuable in any pursuit, in business or just daily life. But for some people, being creative is the job. I spent most of my career in the world of advertising and marketing communication, where 'creative' is a job title, the name of a department, and the term used to describe the work product itself, as in, "have you finished the creative for the new campaign yet?"

The person in charge of all that stuff is called the creative director.

In organizations of all kinds, managers sometimes think of employees as mere cogs in a machine, each essentially the same, easily interchangeable and replaceable. That's always a mistake, because every person is unique. Managers who think that way often do so because they are convinced it is they who make all the difference, not the people who work for them. But mostly it's a problem that happens when managers who come from one discipline are charged with managing people from a different one.

I was raised to be sensitive to this. Dad was an engineer for an appliance manufacturer. He complained often about the 'bean counters' who cared too much about cost and not enough about product quality. 'Bean counters' to dad were pretty much everyone in the offices except the engineers, so that was management, accounting, sales, and marketing. 

For me as a freelance creative working in marketing, I had to be wary of prospective clients who shop for creatives like they're shopping for a new phone. Hiring the right creatives is more about the ability to connect and communicate with that person than it is about how much they cost or even whether or not you like their past work. When it was apparent that a prospective client had no real idea what I do, I backed away. You have to, because it's bound to become a problem eventually. A client, or boss, who fundamentally doesn't understand what you do can't direct you productively or evaluate you fairly.

Sometimes it's just an irritant but it can become a nightmare.

Creatives, therefore, have to develop the ability to spot bad bosses in advance and avoid them, but in a long career you inevitably miss a few. That can amount to a serious career setback or, at the least, a real solid period of unpleasantness, but you have to be true to yourself and pay the price to get back on track. You learn from it and move on. But, for God's sake, learn from it. Examine what blinded you to the warning signs. From my experience it's usually money, or fame, or prestige, or power, or something that looks like an easy score. Some or all of these seduce you and you don't recognize what you later realize was obvious from the beginning.

But if you learn from the experience, then it's worth it.

The “Best” Lie

 

Every year at this time, everyone publishes their “best of” lists for the year. Sure, nobody wants to work very hard over the holidays, that includes most writers and editors and many readers. We all know these lists are just lazy editorial filler for a slow news period. 

But they are also a lie.

An honest headline would be something more like, “Here are the (movies, whiskeys, songs, etc.) we liked the most this year,” but who would read that? Instead, list makers tell not one lie but two, (1) that it is possible to objectively determine “the best,” and (2) they have done the work and here is the result.

At law, "best" claims are considered "puffery," defined as "exaggeration reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."

Therefore, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has determined that puffery does not warrant enforcement action under "truth in advertising" laws. "The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that ordinary consumers do not take seriously."

Sadly, too many people do take them seriously.

So, don't. Listen to the FTC and stop falling for it. There is no “best,” only what you like best.

NOTE: I got even more worked up about this subject back in 2020.

FTC Sues Southern Glazer's for Illegal Price Discrimination

 

Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, LLC is the largest wine and spirits distributor in the United States with operations in 44 states and Washington, D.C. Its portfolio is 45% wine and 55% spirits. It was the 10th largest private company in the United States in 2022, with sales of approximately $26 billion.

(From NBC News) The Federal Trade Commission announced today a new lawsuit that accuses the largest U.S. distributor of wine and spirits of illegal price discrimination that gave large chains — among them Costco, Kroger and Total Wine & More — much better prices than those offered to neighborhood grocery stores, convenience shops and independent liquor stores.

(The following is a statement from Margie A.S. Lehrman, CEO of the American Craft Spirits Association.) 

The American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) welcomes FTC’s efforts to crackdown on anticompetitive pricing practices that hurt small independent retailers, who are invaluable partners for craft distillers.

Market access remains one of the biggest challenges facing America’s craft spirits industry. This action by the FTC is an important step to protect small businesses but also should serve as a clarion call to all legislators and regulators to enact policies that enable craft spirits manufacturers to compete in this complex and consolidated marketplace. 

Today, more than 3,000 craft distillers in the United States operate in all 50 states. Despite this number, craft spirits only account for less than 5% of all spirits volume.

At the same time the number of craft distillers continues to rise, the number of wholesalers and retailers continue to consolidate at an accelerated pace raising barriers to market access for small business manufacturers.

The current 3-tier regulatory structure of the beverage alcohol market is outdated and in need of reform. ACSA urges policymakers to develop additional routes-to-market including direct shipping to consumers and retailers. Enacting these measures would result in a rare win-win-win for distillers and consumers as well as our wholesale and retail partners.

Single Barrel, So What?

Everybody is getting into the single barrel act.

Blanton's was the first single barrel bourbon but it sure wasn't the last. These days, they're everywhere.

But so what? What's so great about "single barrel" whiskey?

You probably think single barrel is higher quality than something that is not single barrel, and that's usually true, but do you know why?

It has to do with how whiskey is made, not the front-end part of fermentation and distillation, but the back-end part, how most whiskey goes from barrel to bottle.

Major American whiskey distilleries each fill between 500 and 1,500 barrels a day. Those barrels go into aging warehouses where they will sit for the next several years. As they fill so shall they dump and the major American whiskey distilleries each empty between 500 and 1,500 barrels a day too.

Modern distilleries produce a very consistent product off the still. All of the whiskey going into the barrels is the same but immediately it starts to change and become different. No two barrels of whiskey age exactly the same way.

There are several reasons for this. First, no two trees are exactly the same. Whiskey barrels are very much a natural product and white oak is the wood of choice because of the favorable way it interacts with the aging spirit. Although most American-made whiskey is aged in Ozark Oak, some use wood from other parts of the country. Minnesota Oak is also popular.

To the extent there is terroir in whiskey, it's about growing conditions for the oak, not the grain.

Second, no two warehouse locations age exactly the same way. Aging conditions vary according to the location and orientation of the warehouse and the location of the barrel within the warehouse. A barrel near an outside wall, near the top and on the south side will be exposed to a lot more heat, for example, than one in the center on a low floor.

The differences between any two barrels can be great but more often they are small and subtle. Distillers used to mitigate those variations by moving barrels, a process called barrel rotation, but that takes a lot of labor and became too expensive. Still, producers want a consistent product, so they mix the contents of hundreds of barrels together in a big tank. This erases those subtle differences. The whiskey being prepared for bottling is then compared to previous batches and if it isn't exactly the same, it is corrected through the addition of whiskey selected for certain characteristics. This is how most whiskey is prepared for sale.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. People want consistency. They want the bottle of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 they buy today to taste exactly like the bottle they bought last week or last year.

But back to the whiskey still in the barrel and those subtle differences. Does the existence of those differences mean some barrels taste better than others?

Yes, it does.

Old timers called them "honey barrels." They are exemplars of their type, perfectly balanced. They're rare, but not that rare. Theoretically, a single barrel product isn't necessarily a honey barrel. If single barrels are selected at random you will get the whole range of variation, from worst to best, but they aren't chosen that way. That's the key to "so what?"

With non-single barrel whiskeys, small flaws are erased and the whole batch can be adjusted to better match the brand profile. With single barrels, once a barrel is selected there is nothing else you can do with it. There is no place to hide. Because of this, there is very little point in doing a single barrel product if you are not going to seek out the very best barrels of a particular brand.

With a single barrel whiskey, you get to taste exactly what the distillery's tasters tasted when they selected that barrel, but unlike them you never have to taste the ones they rejected. Although the producers will never put it this way, they essentially cherry-pick the best of the best for single barrel and put the rest into the product's regular expression.

Another way to look at it is that this is whiskey in its natural state, as close to tapping a barrel as you can get.

The selection process is subjective, of course. You may prefer a brand's standard expression to its single barrel and there's nothing wrong with that, and some producers may not be as selective as others. The point is that single barrel really does mean something, and it means this.

The Bourbon de Luxe Brand Is Back in the Hands of the Wathen Family

 

Bourbon de Luxe Batch 2024-01, by Rolling Fork Spirits.

I became aware of Bourbon de Luxe in the early 1990s. I was helping Jim Beam Brands absorb the National Distillers portfolio it acquired a few years earlier. Before National, Beam was essentially a one-brand company. National brought a massive portfolio with a surfeit of “cats and dogs,” the industry term for small, regional brands. 

National’s portfolio had products in most distilled spirits categories including about 60 American whiskeys; bourbons, ryes, and blends. The plan was to keep a few (Old Grand-Dad, Old Crow, Old Overholt), sell what they could, and discontinue the rest. Bourbon de Luxe was part of a small group Beam kept but didn’t support. It eventually died of natural causes.

I recall Bourbon de Luxe because the name and label design caught my eye. It was a “value” brand (i.e., cheap), so the “deluxe” part made me snicker, along with the affected, frenchified spelling and vaguely Spanish design, which makes sense now that I know the brand had roots in Texas.

I learned that because Bourbon de Luxe has been revived, as an 8-year-old super premium bourbon ($65). The liquid is sourced from an unnamed Kentucky distillery. It’s only available on Seelbach’s right now, but that could change.

Bourbon de Luxe found its way into National’s portfolio via the American Medicinal Spirits Company (AMS), the largest Prohibition-era consolidation warehouse and medicinal whiskey seller. National was a roll-up of many pre-Prohibition distilleries and brands, but its two biggest pieces were AMS and what was left of the notorious Whiskey Trust. Richard “Dick” Wathen was president of AMS and became a senior executive at National. He was the last “Whiskey Wathen” until Turner Wathen teamed with Jordan Morris to revive Bourbon de Luxe.

The Wathens were among the Catholic families who migrated to Kentucky from Maryland beginning in the late 18th century, populating what became known as the Kentucky Holy Lands, specifically the counties of Nelson, Marion, and Washington. 

The Wathen family patriarch was Henry. He came west in 1787 at age 21. A successful farmer in Marion County, he gained a reputation as a good distiller too. 

Henry’s grandson, John Bernard (J. B.) Wathen, turned the family’s distillery into a major commercial enterprise beginning in 1863. He closed the distillery in Lebanon, in Marion County, and moved his family and business to Louisville. His children attended America’s finest Catholic universities, Georgetown and Notre Dame. His younger brothers Richard Nicholas (Nick) and Martin Athanasius (Nace, Turner's great-great-grandfather) joined him in the business. 

Their principal distillery was at 26th Street and Broadway on the west side of Louisville. That plant was sold to the Whiskey Trust, but the family had other bourbon interests, including the Old Grand-Dad Distillery in Nelson County. Nace ran that. Although we can’t be sure, it’s likely the Texas whiskey merchant who created Bourbon de Luxe in about 1911 bought his whiskey from a Wathen family distillery.

J. B. had three sons. One, the aforementioned Dick Wathen, took over for Uncle Nace at Grand-Dad, then formed and ran AMS with his brothers. During Prohibition, AMS and similar consolidators absorbed many of the brands they had made for customers before 1920, hence Bourbon de Luxe probably was part of the AMS portfolio from the beginning.

Many brands have been revived in the 21st century, often by contemporary members of the founding family. Dixon Dedman did it with Kentucky Owl. The modern-day Pogue brothers made it a family project to relaunch their brand and start a small distillery in Maysville, their hometown. McBrayer descendants have revived the McBrayer and Ceder Brook brands and hope to restore the Cedar Brook Distillery. Though never discontinued, the Yellowstone brand was returned to Steve and Paul Beam, descendants of the Beams and Dants who founded it. The Medley family, connected to the Wathens by marriage, revived the Wathen and Medley Bros. brands.

The liquid in those brands today has no connection to their earlier iterations, which is probably just as well. Bourbon in the old days rarely was aged more than four years. Most of the revived brands were ordinary, “popular price” offerings back in the day, perfectly good whiskey but nothing special. The revived versions? That’s up to you and what you like, but most are in the super-premium price class.

It’s fun to see these old brands on the shelf again, in many cases as a tribute to their founding families, but the whiskey must be judged on its own merits. 

PBS Show About a Civil War Tragedy Has a Whiskey Connection

 

The E. J. Curley Distillery, later known as Kentucky River, was on the site of Camp Nelson, a Civil War Union Army base.

Last night, PBS broadcast an episode of its “Secrets of the Dead” series entitled “The Civil War’s Lost Massacre.” Although the documentary doesn't explore it, the story takes place in Kentucky so, naturally, there is a whiskey connection. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Here is the show synopsis from PBS: 

Originally a supply depot for Union forces in Kentucky, Camp Nelson became the site where 10,000 Black soldiers trained in the Civil War. But in the war’s last months, these soldiers were attacked by bitter Southerners. Their remains have never been found, and a team is dedicated to finding them to memorialize their service and heroism. "Secrets of the Dead: The Civil War’s Lost Massacre" is a production of Wide Awake Films for The WNET Group and Kentucky Educational Television.

Now for the whiskey part.

In addition to being a recruitment and training center for Black troops, Camp Nelson was a massive, 4,000-acre, fortified supply depot and troop encampment. The Union Army used it to stage an invasion of eastern Tennessee. It is on the Kentucky River, upstream from Frankfort, in Jessamine County near Nicholasville, about 15 miles south of Lexington.

This part of the river is flanked by steep limestone bluffs that make crossing difficult. The site for Camp Nelson was selected in part because of a natural ford there, at the mouth of Hickman Creek. That's where Edmund (E. J.) Curley built his distillery.

Curley was an Irish immigrant from Massachusetts. He may have spent time at Camp Nelson during the war as a civilian contractor. One of his partners in the distillery venture, Dwight Aiken, had been a captain in the Commissary Department.

Curley named his distillery after Boone’s Knoll, a well-known local landmark. Boone's Knoll is typical of the round-topped hills known as knolls or knobs. The early 20th century Kentucky watercolorist, Paul Sawyier, painted many landscapes there, including at least one showing the famous hill from the mouth of Hickman Creek. 

Because of the ford, Curley and Aiken were able to build parts of the distillery on both sides of the river. It was quite a place. Unlike most Kentucky distilleries, which were ramshackle affairs, Boone’s Knoll was beautifully constructed with limestone walls and hardwood timber beams. 

Curley’s main brands were Boone’s Knoll and Blue Grass. They made bourbon, rye, and other spirits. Successful at first, by the late 1880s the company was struggling. In January of 1888, the bookkeeper shot and killed the plant’s resident U.S. Treasury agent. A year later, the company’s assets were seized for non-payment of taxes and other debts. Curley was done. He sold everything to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., the Kentucky arm of the notorious Whiskey Trust.

The Trust’s purpose was to limit production throughout the industry to keep prices and profits high. It bought many distilleries only to close them, but not Boone’s Knoll. It continued to operate under the E. J. Curley name. It only closed at Prohibition. 

Because of the fine buildings and spectacular views of the Kentucky River palisades, the distillery was converted into a resort hotel during Prohibition, where whiskey might be obtained if you knew how to ask.

After Prohibition it became a distillery again, owned by members of the Hawkins family and others. They called it Kentucky River. The Hawkins were involved in several distilleries in nearby Anderson County on both sides of Prohibition, including the distillery now known as Four Roses. They eventually lost financial control of Kentucky River but stayed on as employees.

Founding families yielding control, with some family members remaining as employees, is a recurring pattern in the story of American whiskey. 

Following Prohibition and the shortages of World War II, most distilleries thrived during the post-war boom. Kentucky River did okay. It did well enough to build six new, modern maturation warehouses on high ground about a mile north of the distillery. In 1959, Kentucky River changed hands again, this time acquired by a huge conglomerate known as Norton Simon Incorporated, which gave it a famous if incongruous name: Canada Dry.

Somerset Importers, which in the structure of Norton Simon was Canada Dry’s parent, was started by Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy, to import scotch and gin from the United Kingdom immediately after Prohibition’s end. In the late 1950s, in anticipation of his son’s presidential run, Kennedy sold anything that might be considered disreputable, including Somerset and the Hialeah racetrack.

In the mid-1960s, the post-war boom began to slow. Many businesses didn’t adjust fast enough and overproduced, an especially critical error for whiskey makers because of the long aging cycle. Canada Dry overproduced. As if that weren’t bad enough, its brands were not especially popular, and its whiskey was not very good.

By the end of the decade, Norton Simon knew it had a problem. They weren’t alone. Another distillery with a problem was Louisville's Stitzel-Weller, unsettled following the death of its owner, Pappy Van Winkle. Norton Simon decided to buy Stitzel and blow out the excess Canada Dry inventory in Stitzel’s popular Cabin Still brand. In 1972, the combined company became Old Fitzgerald Kentucky River.

The Camp Nelson distillery never made whiskey again. There was a fire and as the warehouses emptied out, the six new ones on high ground by the highway were leased to Seagram’s. Everything else was abandoned. Those warehouses are now owned and used by Wild Turkey. Together they hold about 120,000 barrels. As you drive south on US-27, the Wild Turkey warehouses are on the right and the national cemetery is on the left.

The E. J. Curley brand was revived in 2021, and its owners hope to restore the Camp Nelson facility.

The area around Camp Nelson is scenic. The Kentucky River palisades are beautiful. Nearby attractions include the Camp Nelson National Monument and National Cemetery, the Curley distillery ruins, a state park, and the Jim Beam Nature Preserve. The preserve is a Nature Conservancy property created in 1995 to celebrate Beam’s bicentennial. Suntory continues to donate funds for maintenance and general care of the 115-acre preserve, which is open to the public.

Did a Bourbon Family Murder Inspire the Song “Careless Love”?

 

Bessie Smith had the first hit with "Careless Love" in 1925.

The tremendous success of Old Crow, the first modern bourbon, produced several fortunes in the decades before Prohibition. Few profited more than the Berry family. Hiram Berry joined the firm after the deaths of founders James Crow and Oscar Pepper. He was succeeded by his eldest son, George. 

Both men were prominent members of Kentucky’s bourbon aristocracy. George Berry may have been the wealthiest person in the state. He was married to Mary Bush, from a prominent Louisville family. As such, Mary’s younger sister, Cornelia, was George Berry’s sister-in-law. Her sensational murder in Louisville in 1895 is believed to have inspired the classic blues song, “Careless Love,” according to W. C. Handy, to whom it is attributed. 

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