As a Maker’s Mark Ambassador I get informative emails from the company from time to time. Usually they are a fun, seasonal/holiday message or some details about some upcoming Maker’s Mark events etc. But the most recent email we Ambassador’s received is, I feel, something particularly noteworthy. Most of you may have heard or seen the news already but I thought it was worth posting here.

Dear Maker’s Mark® Ambassador,

Lately we’ve been hearing from many of you that you’ve been having difficulty finding Maker’s Mark in your local stores. Fact is, demand for our bourbon is exceeding our ability to make it, which means we’re running very low on supply. We never imagined that the entire bourbon category would explode as it has over the past few years, nor that demand for Maker’s Mark would grow even faster.

We wanted you to be the first to know that, after looking at all possible solutions, we’ve worked carefully to reduce the alcohol by volume (ABV) by just 3%. This will enable us to maintain the same taste profile and increase our limited supply so there is enough Maker’s Mark to go around, while we continue to expand the distillery and increase our production capacity.

We have both tasted it extensively, and it’s completely consistent with the taste profile our founder/dad/grandfather, Bill Samuels, Sr., created nearly 60 years ago. We’ve also done extensive testing with Maker’s Mark drinkers, and they couldn’t tell a difference.

Nothing about how we handcraft Maker’s Mark has changed, from the use of locally sourced soft red winter wheat as the flavor grain, to aging the whisky to taste in air-dried American white oak barrels, to rotating our barrels during maturation, to hand-dipping every bottle in our signature red wax.

In other words, we’ve made sure we didn’t screw up your whisky.

Thanks for your support. And if you’ve got a little time on your hands, come down and see us at the distillery.

Sincerely,

Rob Samuels
Chief Operating Officer
Ambassador-in-Chief

Bill Samuels, Jr.
Chairman Emeritus
Ambassador-at-Large

So Maker’s Mark – A veritable staple of the Bourbon culture is going to take it’s 45% ABV signature bourbon and bottle it at 42% ABV to bridge this gap.

Items to note from the letter:

So discussion … is this the right move for Maker’s Mark? Are there other options?
Previously, on this blog I wrote about the Knob Creek bourbon shortage and their choice of ‘going dry’ until the next batches of Knob Creek were ready to bottle. I think it is a very interesting “problem” to have (being out of Bourbon due to demand) that can have different methods of rectifying the situation until things stabilize.

Additional Reading:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/10/news/makers-mark-bourbon/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/11/makers-mark-bourbon/1910773/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/11/171732213/less-potent-makers-mark-not-going-down-smooth-in-kentucky