Friday, June 12, 2015
New Whiskey Labels: Compass Box, Hirsch, Beam and More
This week's most interesting new labels from the federal TTB database:
Compass Box cleared a new label for a blend called This is Not Luxury.
A label cleared for Berry's 40, a 40 year old blend from Berry Bros. & Rudd.
Beam Suntory issued a label for Urban Stillhouse Select, an "extra aged," non-chill filtered bourbon with no age statement.
Over the last few years, Anchor has been marketing a Kentucky bourbon under the Hirsch Reserve label (Anchor has owned the Hirsch label since its 2008 purchase of Preiss Imports). This week, they cleared a new label designating Hirsch Reserve as "distilled in Indiana," and we know what that means.
Here's a competitor for our ongoing worst label competition. It's Crippled Crow Rye Whiskey from Mississippi River Distilling in Iowa. How bad is this label? Let us count the ways. First, it uses a term many consider distasteful and shows a crow with a cane. Second, the back label seems designed to pack in as many bad whiskey cliches as possible: "secret formula," "custom-designed," "distilling art." Yikes! At least it's not NAS; this stuff has been aged more than one year!
Note: The fact that a label appears on the TTB database does not necessarily mean it will be produced. In addition, some details on the label, such as proof, can change in the final product.
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6 comments:
terrible unreadable graphic design too. As far as the "more than one year"-- in legal terms theyre stating it's one year old, right?
Yes, what the label says (I was paraphrasing) is "aged over 1 year" so that is a one year age statement, and the regs do allow minimum age statements like that.
Regarding the Beam Urban Stillhouse Select, it would appear that Beam is following BF (i.e. the new Old Forester expressions) in bottling standard bourbon in new, more upmarket packaging at (I presume) a premium. It will be interesting to see the price point and how well it sells. Can't believe they will have too many takers if its price is more than a few dollars over what the JB BIB is going for.
What's "steel stamped" bourbon?
That's an interesting marketing direction by Compass Box with that title. Marketing 101 SOP is to always have the label contain positive wordage. Saying, "This is Not Luxury," along with the "Luxury?" on the small label appears to break those rules by sending a negative message with the word "Not" and the question mark. I believe if I were to quickly scan the bottle on the shelf, my subconscious would likely think, "So you're telling me you're not all that great." And then I'd move on.
I wonder how it will work for them.
Can't wait to learn more about the Compass Box offering. Curious if the "not a luxury" is meant to mean this is more of a "blue collar, working-man/woman's whiskey"? Limited to less than 5k bottles, so "limited" by most definitions. Definitely intrigued . . .
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