Maker’s Mark Bourbon, with its iconic red wax top watering down their product?
They made that announcement and uncorked the bung on a barrel of controversy.
When they announced plans to water down alcoholic content from 45% or 90 proof, down to 42% or 84 proof in order to deal with rising demand, it didn’t take long for its loyal base of consumers to ‘nose’ the idea, ferment about it and spew. . Maker’s Mark aficionados turned out to be pit bulls against any change. Let’s sit out on the back porch, pour a couple fingers of Kentucky’s finest sippin’ bourbon and figure out how this happened.
Due to increased demand, the brand had planned to curtail shipments to some overseas markets. OK with us. Did they think that we would care if someone in Scandinavia couldn’t get theirs? Scandinavians wouldn’t care if we didn’t get an adequate supply of kippered herring. For most of us an ‘adequate supply’ would be equal to no kippered herring at all.
By the way, I hope they weren’t using their allocation of Maker’s Mark to ‘kipper’ the herring. That would be a bigger waste than sharing the ingredients of your lunch on Facebook.
Americans don’t even know where Scandinavia is. It might be located in Minnesota as far as we know. That lack of knowledge could be due to a critical shortage of world maps on classroom walls due to the constantly changing borders. We can’t keep up with the Kardashians so try to pick out Liechtenstein?
Hell, we don’t even know where the Soviet Union disappeared to back in the 90’s and it was a huge country, so don’t tell us you’ll water down our favorite sippin’ whiskey. We can’t even get together on whether to spell it whisky or whiskey. Help!
If you want to water something down, try American beer. No one would notice after slogging down a few of those.
According to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon supply. There are 4.9 million bourbon barrels aging in Kentucky, which outnumbers the state’s population. Hopefully, population won’t catch up.
In conclusion, our thanks go out to the Samuels family; they can mix water, grains, and yeast better than anyone on the planet.
Maker’s Mark is a national treasure and as such should remain a timeless paean to the ‘bourbonic’ rapture it engenders and something with which one should never tinker.