After Allen's Coffee Favored Brandy dominated liquor sales in Maine for more than a decade, and then Kentucky-based Fireball Cinnamon Whisky held the top spot for two years, the vodka brand in 2023 led the way with more than $19 million in bottles sold.
Allen's CFB best year was in 2009, when it had $12.9 million in sales. Fireball was the biggest seller in Maine in 2018 and 2019 but had its best year in 2020, when it sold $13.3 million worth of its cinnamon-flavored whisky here.
Tito's has been the top seller in Maine for 4 years in a row now, and its numbers keep going up. In 2020 it totaled $13.4 millon, then topped $15.7 million the year after that and in 2022 rang up more than $17.7 million in sales. Over those four years, while it held the top spot each year, its sales in the state have increased a whopping 43 percent. At the rate it's going, Tito's seems certain to exceed $20 million in sales in Maine in 2024.
What makes the steep climb more impressive is that liquor sales overall in Maine are not rising at the same rate, which is probably good for our collective health. Since 2019, the volume of cases of liquor sold in Maine has increased 10 percent, while the gross revenue generated from those sales has increased 24.5 percent. Even as the volume of booze sales increases in Maine, Tito's is getting a bigger market share.
Of course, Fireball sells more bottles than anyone else because of the ridiculous undying popularity of its nips -- the 50 milliliter bottles that make for quick hits and sells well at gas stations and convenience stores, and which frequently can be found discarded along Maine's roadsides. Fireball sold more than 1 million of those bottles in Maine last year, bringing in $2.2 million in sales.
But the unit the dominates sales value in Maine is Tito's "handle," the 1.75 liter bottle that has (as that same size does for other brands) a glass handle that makes it easier to carry. Tito's sold 450,000 handles last year for more than $10 million -- which is more than either Tito's or Allen's earned for all their bottles sizes in 2018, when Fireball displaced Allen's, and nearly as much as Fireball's all-sizes total that year. Allen's handle placed second last year with just under $4 million in sales.
So, yes, Tito's is currently the dominant brand of booze in Maine, but how long any brand might hold that spot seems less assured than it used to be in the 2000s and 2010s, when Allen's ruled the Maine bartender's well. Some other brand easily could come along in a few years, throw millions of dollars into a hip social media campaign, and get swept into the top spot.
Which, quite frankly, makes following Maine's annual liquor sales totals little less interesting. When Allen's was #1, part of what made it fun was that Allen's was relatively unheard outside of Maine, even in Massachusetts, where it is made. Travel a state or two outside New England, and many bartenders likely won't even know what a "coffee brandy" is. Ask, and you might well be served a mug of coffee and a snifter of Hennessy.
Whether or not Allen's is among the best (it's not bad, but not great either) is beside the point. It still is a favorite among many 40+ year-old drinkers who remember going out and having only a wall-mounted TV or other bar patrons to occupy their attention (i.e., before people stared at their phones). Allen's is trying to feed that Maine-centric nostalgia now by selling its product in Maine lighthouse-shaped bottles that it promotes as collector's items.
I don't see the nationwide brands bottling their products in Maine-specific containers anytime soon. Tito's may be the popular booze of the moment, but I'd be surprised if it still leads the charts in another few years. It may never happen again, but it would be fun if Maine once more defied national trends when another brand of booze rises to the top of the state's bottle heap.
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