Craft beverage alcohol is an industry fueled by collaboration, with passion projects often arising out of partnerships—such as a distiller’s connection with a local brewer or meadmaker—that offer potential for each maker to reach the other’s audience.
Increasingly, distillers are also looking to make connections with other creative producers—such as chocolatiers, coffee roasters, chefs, hot-sauce makers, and more—finding opportunities that make sense for their brands, meanwhile allowing their spirits’ flavors to be explored in other forms.
Such team-ups have the potential to grow a distiller’s reputation for creativity while simultaneously attracting new customers. They also require time, money, and resources, but they’re valuable when it comes to authentic marketing that doesn’t require a separate advertising budget.
“We’re a smaller distillery, and we don’t have a lot of marketing dollars to spend,” says Rick Lockwood, owner of Motor City Gas Distillery in Royal Oak, Michigan. “We can get a lot of organic reach [through collaborations] without putting a big investment in. We focus some time and hours into it, learn from it, and [it] creates a lot of word-of-mouth marketing. ... And we tend to reach audiences we wouldn’t normally.”
These collaborations represent ways for a spirit’s brand to appear on restaurant tables or gift-shop shelves, grabbing new eyes. They can also create further collaboration opportunities—such as a barbecue sauce that features your spirit leading to a pairing dinner at a local restaurant.
From distilleries that have done it successfully, here are some insights on how to carry that passion project into a win for marketing.
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Photo: Courtesy Bouvery CV
Finding Compatibility and Synergy
These collaborations often start with something simple—friendship, perhaps, or mutual interest in each other’s products—but that’s a foundation that can lead to compelling products that feel authentic to customers.
That was the case when the Bouvery CV chocolate liqueur brand, produced at Westford Hill Distillers in Ashford, Connecticut, teamed up with House of Knipschildt, a Connecticut-based gourmet chocolate company.
“We were introduced by a mutual connection … and got a bottle or two of Bouvery CV,” says Mike Klein, director of operations at House of Knipschildt. He and founder Fritz Knipschildt “were blown away,” Klein says. “It’s not just sugar and booze; it’s this whole flavor experience.”
It was a natural fit. Both are small, dedicated Connecticut businesses. House of Knipschildt already was incorporating alcohol flavors into its chocolates, so espresso-martini bonbons with Bouvery CV’s chocolate liqueur made sense. For Bouvery CV, meanwhile, the bonbons became an additional item to sell without taking focus off the main product.
“We’ve only got one SKU: the chocolate liqueur,” says Danny Bouvery, the brand’s founder. “People ask, ‘Do you have chocolate mint? Do you have chocolate rum?’ But no, that’s not what we do. I knew if I were going to have one different SKU, actual chocolate would make the most sense.”
Photo: Courtesy Ritual Chocolate
Creative Possibilities
For Sara Sergent, co-owner and master distiller at Alpine Distilling in Park City, Utah, collaborations are always top-of-mind, driven by her own interest in food and beverage alongside connections to other purveyors and chefs.
“It’s just so exciting with spirits,” Sergent says. “There are so many things you can do beyond neat pours and cocktails.” Among Alpine’s cross-culinary collaborations over the years:
- The famous French chef Joël Robuchon was a fan of Alpine’s Preserve Liqueur—made with black tea, blood oranges, candied raspberries, ginger, and lemon balm—and would find creative ways to cook with it, Sergent says. Alpine has partnered with several chefs since then.
- Tandem Chocolates in Reno, Nevada, and (more recently) Park City’s own Ritual Chocolate have both made chocolate bars using Alpine’s gin; Ritual first aged the ingredients in an Alpine gin barrel to draw out more of the botanical flavors for its Gin Juniper Lavender bar with 70 percent dark chocolate.
- The local Park City Coffee Roaster has aged beans in Alpine’s whiskey barrels, while Alpine rested spirits on Park City’s coffee beans; the roastery promoted the collaboration via social media on World Whiskey Day, May 18.
- Alpine produces the Stein Eriksen Aquavit for chef Zane Holmquist of Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, and the distillery also has aged Worcestershire sauce for the lodge in its bourbon barrels.
“Nothing goes to waste,” Sergent says, “and we just see endless opportunities.”
When Lockwood at Motor City Gas decided to work with Detroit-based Beast Hot Sauce on a sauce with bourbon, it led to friendship among Lockwood, Beast founder Curtis Evey, and their wives. The project also provided a creative outlet. Lockwood says that while Motor City Gas focuses on bourbon and other whiskeys, they also like to get into a “wild variety” of styles to see what they can do with those iterations.
The collaboration led to Beast’s Belly Up Bourbon Barrel Aged Ember, a smoky chipotle sauce aged in Motor City Gas barrels. The foundation of friendship made the experimentation—and marketing its outcome—free-flowing and easily manageable.
“Collaborations work out best when we build relationships with other businesses first,” Lockwood says. “You find people who have similar approaches in the way they think about product development.”
Another coffee-and-bourbon collab came together in Charleston, South Carolina, where Firefly Distillery worked with King Bean Coffee Roasters on a barrel-aged coffee. The project started when King Bean head roaster Richie Young was working at Firefly’s concert venue, and he started chatting about coffee with Firefly head distiller Jay Macmurphy.
“I just thought, ‘Coffee is amazing, we love coffee. … Man, we should try to age some coffee in bourbon barrels,’” Macmurphy says. “He started telling me about his technique, and we just had to try it.”
He says it helped that the Firefly team already had an appreciation for coffee—you want to extend your brand’s reach with different products, but they should be things with which you have an affinity, or the collaboration is unlikely to make sense to your audience or your partner.
In all these products, there are shared business values as well as compatible flavor profiles.
“We wouldn’t go aging marijuana or something like that,” Macmurphy says. “What creates brand richness are things our family already likes.”
Photo: Courtesy Firefly Distillery
Applying Spirit Flavors to Nonalcoholic Products
Once distillers connect with collaborators, they should conceptualize a product that reflects both their companies, figuring out how to bring their flavors together successfully.
When it comes to fusing spirits with food or coffee, it often comes down to barrel-aging.
In Charleston, King Bean “filled our barrels with green coffee beans,” Macmurphy says. “Normally, they would dry out, but they actually gained moisture in the barrels. They roasted them after the bourbon flavors were already in the beans, so the caramel, the chocolate, the vanilla flavors … were solidified.”
King Bean brand manager Aaron Utterback describes the finished coffee’s flavors: “You get a lot of oak, black cherry … plus traditional bourbon flavors, and oak and vanilla from the barrels.”
In Utah, Alpine Distilling provides the American white-oak bourbon barrels for Park City Coffee Roaster’s Barrel-Aged Park City Blend. Park City Coffee Roaster co-owner Rob Hibl says they typically use three barrels at a time, placing 60 to 65 pounds of green coffee beans in each.
“They also provide us with several bottles of their bourbon,” Hibl says, “and we add about half a bottle up-front into the barrel and agitate it about three times a week for three to four weeks, then add the rest of the bottle and agitate for another three weeks.” They then remove, dry, and roast the beans, he says.
Alpine and Park City have worked together on several releases, allowing them to fine-tune the coffee’s flavor each year. Hibl says they’ve landed on an ideal medium roast, somewhat nutty, with overtures of bourbon up front and a smooth finish.
For the Ritual Chocolate collab, it was gin barrels instead of bourbon. Ritual cofounder Anna Seear already had aged cacao nibs in bourbon barrels for another chocolate bar. For her partnership with Alpine, she wanted gin-botanical character for a bar with lavender and juniper.
“We got one of those quarter-size barrels, put the nibs in, and soaked them for over six months,” Seear says. “It was amazing when we made the chocolate with it. … We still wanted to have the juniper and lavender, but pulled the lavender back to not overwhelm the gin, and it really came through with beautiful, subtle notes.”
Besides the barrel-aged hot sauce, the collab between Motor City Gas and Beast also led to resting whiskey in the barrels that held the sauce. To start, Motor City Gas washed a barrel for Beast, which Evey says left the whiskey flavor but removed some char. Evey says he would taste the sauce every three weeks—also bringing a sample to the distillery for the team there to try—trying to find the right time to remove the sauce and filter it.
The barrel, Evey says, “tightened up the sauce’s flavor, reduced its spiciness, and made it a little sweeter. There’s this initial whiskey on the nose as you open the bottle and put it on your food, so you get those aromatic notes before you taste it, and at the end again.”
The barrel then went back to Motor City Gas to receive some whiskey, which Lockwood proofed down to 90 before filling. He says he doesn’t have a set aging time in mind—that depends on regular tastings. The whiskey wasn’t quite ready as we prepared to publish this article online, but Evey and Lockwood say they’re excited about merging the flavors of chipotle and bourbon.
Photo: Courtesy Beast Hot Sauce
Benefits and Marketing Opportunities
Part of making these collaborations successful is word of mouth: Fans of either brand hear about these special, typically limited projects, and—if all goes well—they also end up developing an affinity for the other brand. There’s an intrinsic idea that the brands have similar values.
The scarcity principle is a factor in some of the more limited runs. King Bean’s coffee collab with Firefly’s Tom & Huck brand sold out on the roaster’s website within six hours, Utterback says. Both King Bean and Firefly promoted the coffee on social media, and King Bean sent out an email blast; they’d planned to run ads, but the beans sold out before they could. The rest of the coffee went to Firefly’s gift shop.
For Alpine’s collabs with Ritual Chocolate and Park City Coffee Roaster, not much beyond social media posts and word-of-mouth was necessary to drive sales; each collaborator brings a following to fuel interest. Sergent says she takes Ritual’s Gin Juniper Lavender bar to events; when people can’t sample Alpine’s actual gin, they can try the chocolate.
There are other ways to promote the projects. Motor City Gas adds Beast’s barrel-aged sauce to certain cocktails in the tasting room. Beast’s Evey spreads the word at farmer’s markets and retail demos, and they may plan events once the whiskey is bottled.
The Knipschildt and Bouvery CV partnership, meanwhile, is ongoing. Klein and Bouvery talk a few times a week, cooperating to find new avenues for the espresso-martini bonbons. They’ve sold them to galas and events, and they’re currently targeting higher-end hotels.
Successful collaborations can lead to longer-term partnerships. Even beyond looking for flavors and products that make sense with your spirits, there are opportunities to work and share ideas with local people you like. It’s valuable for neighboring businesses to lift each other up, and consumers appreciate those ties.
From there, you could revel in the fervor around a super-limited release, create an annual one—or settle into a more permanent groove, helping each other to find fresh marketing and sales opportunities.
