A longtime favorite liquor in Maine is trying to boost its sales with bottles shaped like local lighthouses

In each of the past 3 years, Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy has produced special editions of its signature product in porcelain bottles made to look like Maine lighthouses. Pictured from left to right are bottles representing West Quoddy Head, Petit Manan, and Portland Breakwater (or "Bug") Light.

Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy has decided to pull an ace out of its sleeve as it tries to retain its cultural dominance in Maine.

It is now selling its popular coffee-flavored liquor in limited-edition porcelain bottles that pay homage to the state's distinctive lighthouses. 

Not too long ago, Allen's had no need to try to offer something special (other than the brandy, of course) to its customer base, which for years consumed the coffee-flavored booze at rates that all liquor makers envied from a distance. Allen's had an unprecedented run as Maine's top-selling brand from the 1990s until recently, outpacing all others by millions of dollars in annual sales.

That changed in 2018, however, when Fireball Cinnamon Whisky eked past Allen's for a total of $10.1 million in sales to Allen's $9.6 million. Since then, Allen's sales have slipped even further and now ranking behind Fireball and Tito's Handmade Vodka. in 2021, Tito's sold the most with $15.7 million in revenue while Fireball had nearly $13 milllion. Allen's was a distant third at less than $8 million.

But the executives at M.S. Walker, the Massachusetts-based firm that created Allen's decades ago, know they still have an advantage in Maine that the national brands don't: it retains a deep identification with the state unmatched by other liquors, even if it is no longer the top seller.

During its long stretch of sales dominance in Maine, Allen's sales in other states paled in comparison and, outside New England, they didn't exist at all. The company has long embraced its "Champagne of Maine" nickname and on its website proudly promotes the product as "a Maine tradition."

The lighthouse series clearly aims to build upon that. By issuing a different Maine-specific, collector's-edition lighthouse bottle run each year (three more are planned, including one later in 2023), Allen's can charge more for a bottle of brandy and at the same time remind liquor lovers that Fireball (which actually is made in Maine) and Tito's and all others cannot provide their customers with a uniquely Maine experience the way that only Allen's can. In other words: It's a cunnin' move.

M.S. Walker has yet to say which lighthouse it will pay homage to this year, but there are a few candidates that come to mind: Bass Harbor Head Light? Portland Head Light? Boon Island? Owl's Head? Goose Rocks? Seguin? All would be good choices. 

But -- without any inside information -- I'm going to place my money on Pemaquid Point. It is definitely one of the more recognizable lights in the state, and it will add a midcoast beacon to the list of those honored by Allen's. And it will look great on the shelf in my kitchen.

Eastport, Maine is a Noir Paradise Waiting to Happen

Howard Cook 1928 lithograph print “Fog in Eastport” (part of the TIMA collection)

 Eastport is unlike any other place on the Maine coast, though I can think of a couple of towns (Lubec and Rockland) that aren’t too far off.

Much of it feels like a noir movie set, and the terrain is more dramatic than those other towns. The city is an island, accessbile by a causeway from the Passamaquoddy tribal communuty of Sipayik. It has an undulating landscape, a downtown grid of old brick buildings and mostly clapboard houses, a shipping cargo port, and a waterfront that stares straight at Canada just a few hundred yards away. It also has a creative/artistic/historical vibe, thanks in no small part to the Tides Institute and Musuem of Art, also known as TIMA.

PHOTO: a scene from the film ‘Sunrise at Campobello is shot in Eastport in 1960 (BDN photo by Velton Peabody)

Much of the time, it also feels relatively empty, which no city (yes, Eastport is a city) strives to be. But at least there are no rich people around, and the cutesy Maine tourism trappings that have ensnared many a Maine coastal town are largely absent (though Eastport has the best whale watching tours along the entire Maine coast).

The lack of crowds is part of its appeal. It has its iconic fisherman statue (left over from a one-off season of a reality TV show), and with Lubec hosts a ‘pirate’ festival every summer, but I find the waterfront infrastructure and many of the old buildings to be more intriguing.

Water Street, 2016 (photo by Linda Coan O’Kresik/Bangor Daily News)

There is a hulking, empty sardine cannery that protrudes from the waterfront into the bay, as does a breakwater pier that collapsed in 2014 but was rebuilt the following year. Around every corner are reminders of early 20th century history that includes herring weirs, liquor smuggling, Franklin Roosevelt, small-scale fishing and even tribal whaling. If there is any place in Maine that should still have a telegram office, Eastport is it.

There is a mix of business and vacant storefronts downtown, where the buildings seem to be in a constant state of limbo, teetering on disrepair and irrelevance. In the local village of Quoddy, several brick chimneys jut up into the air where a decrepit former Navy barracks burned down in 2017. Behind the large windows of an empty diner on Water Street, you can almost see the ghosts from Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ painting sitting on stools at the dusty counter.

In some of the neighboring storefronts, there are studios for visiting artists-in-residence at TIMA. They generally come from places far outside Maine for a few weeks to bring their visions to Eastport and to be influenced by the city and surrounding landscape. And they are not the plein air painters you often see along the state’s coastline in the summer. They are abstract, conceptual, sculptural -- what you would expect from a big city art scene but what has become accepted and expected in Eastport. The artists come and go, but they leave lasting impressions behind in this city, even if their art is temporary.

Alicia Eggert, a former artist-in-residence at TIMA, erected a temporary installation called ‘FOREVER’ on Dudley Island off Eastport in the summer of 2016.

Like the rest of Maine, the weather in Eastport can vary greatly and, being right on the water, at times it can be harsh. Winters can dump mounds of snow on the island city, creating plowed walls and canyons as state law prevents the plow trucks from pushing it into the ocean. But come summer, when fields of wildflowers spring forth from the empty lots and a gentle breeze drifts in on the ocean, there almost is no place on earth as serene or inviting.

Eastport has elementary and high schools, it has local politics, it has cemeteries, a microbrewery, a supermarket and a mustard museum. It has Trump flags, Pride flags, a small airport, small fishing boats and an immigrant-owned pharmacy. It has a local performing arts center and gets occasional visits from minor celebrities and cruise ships.

What Eastport doesn’t have is a lot of people (fewer than 1,300 residents at the most recent official count), or jobs, or -- like most of Maine these days -- much affordable housing. It could use more of all of these, but it doesn’t need a whole lot more. With the right mix, Eastport can keep its working-class feel and its creative zeal and become more than a remote, sleepy Maine town.

It has the potential to be a tiny, vibrant, year-round coastal Maine city that known not for beaches or sail boats or flip flops, but for its scenery, grit, art, architecture and cultural institutions. The right mix of people, year-round jobs and, yes, limited tourism in Eastport could help add needed cultural and economic diversity to Maine's eastern coast.

An early morning newspaper delivery in Eastport in 1949. Photo by Kosti Ruohomaa.

Chimneys stand where a former Navy barracks burned to the ground in the Eastport village of Quoddy.

Former Eastport resident John Pike Grady dresses in costume for an Independence Day parade

A man stands next to a sign on Route 1 in this 1957 photo.

'Grand Manan Cliff' by John Doyle, 1994. Part of the TIMA collection.

Farm-raised salmon are harvested off Eastport in October 2008 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty,