The Business of Spirits

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 18, 2007

In this slim book, journalist Rothbaum explains how the liquor business has engineered a new golden age. As with so many industries, conglomerates have soaked up the small distilleries, improving global distribution, while increasing connoisseurship spurred partly by pop culture vehicles like Sex and the City has turned on consumers to super-premium vodkas and rum distilled from hand-harvested sugarcane. Among those he profiles is impresario Sidney Frank, who transformed Jagermeister from an obscure herbal elixir to frat-boy staple, and opened his Grey Goose vodka distillery not in Russia, Poland or Scandinavia but in France's Cognac region, gaining easy access to excellent water, local distilling expertise and a unique and luxurious-sounding provenance. He eventually sold the brand to Bacardi for more than $2 billion, but not before me-too brands popped up to lure imbibers, with ever more complex backstories and filtration processes, not to mention flashier bottles for the tasteless spirit. Rothbaum devotes a chapter to applauding the revival of the pre-prohibition craft of quality cocktails, a trend distillers celebrate as well. The text is sprinkled with informative sidebars perhaps too many, given its slender size like a guide to artisan cocktail bars in New York, London and Prague, and a thumbnail history of rye whiskey. An industry cheerleader, Rothbaum tells his story well, but it could have benefited from more social context regarding the roots of today's hard alcohol renaissance.