By Staci Lewis
Buffalo Trace Bourbon and sweet cream — a match made in heaven. I am privileged to know and love Candy Charters, a creative genius behind Buffalo Trace Bourbon Cream. I wanted to know the origin story of how this delicious liqueur came to be. One day I asked, and she was happy to share the story with me.
“In the spring of 2008, I and several other people were in a brand meeting at Buffalo Trace, and our president and CEO, Mark Brown, was sitting at the far end of the table on his computer. He piped up in the middle of this brand meeting, which had nothing to do with what he was about to say, we got approval for a cream liqueur formula. And I, at the other end of the table, piped up and said, ‘Does this mean we’re going to make a bourbon cream?’ My boss, looked at me over the top of his glasses and said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Because we’re not going after Baileys.’ I said, ‘Who said anything about going after Baileys? We make the best bourbon in the world. Why won’t we make the best bourbon cream?’ He and I went back and forth, you know, not heatedly, but, you know, me challenging him a little bit. At the other end of the table, Mark said, ‘Wait a minute. What if we do this, and our test market is the gift shop at Buffalo Trace. If it doesn’t sell well in the gift shop, we’ll know it’s a plunker.’ (Or words to that effect.) So I said, ‘Yeah, what about that?’ My poor beleaguered boss looked over at me, and he said, ‘All right, fine. You need to work with Chris Comstock (who was our senior brand director at the time) to build the brand from the ground up.’
“So Chris and I got to work on that, and there were a lot of hoops to jump through. Production and bottling being the most difficult since we knew that we couldn’t bottle it at Buffalo Trace without really screwing up a bottling line. So it took about a year, to actually bring it to the market. We had lots of setbacks along the way, but we finally made it happen. Our target to get it into the gift shop there was Valentine’s Day, but we couldn’t quite do it. It came into the market the Monday after Valentine’s Day and took off like a French rocket. I mean, people were crazy for it! We added it to our tastings, and people would taste it and they say, ‘Wow. What an original idea!’ Chris and I had to come up with a reason why we were doing this. What made this unique? We came up with ‘Bourbon for Women.’ What we discovered, was that women were coming to the distillery. They loved the smell of the warehouse, but when it got to the tasting, they were like, ‘Ooh, that’s too strong for me.’ So we wanted to make something that would be palatable for the delicate feminine palate. I think that’s why so many women find bourbon to be overpowering, is because our palates are more sensitive.”
So, it’s an advantage to drinking bourbon, but a disadvantage when being introduced to it.
“Right, and now it’s even a little harder, because there’s so much emphasis on high proof bourbons. Unless you’re an experienced bourbon drinker, those high proof bourbons are not a good place to start.”
They really aren’t! A woman, who isn’t knowledgeable about bourbon, was telling me recently that she went to a dinner with a bourbon tasting experience. She said that she knew the bourbon was supposed to be high-quality, but it just burned so bad. She asked me, ‘Were they just passing off bad bourbon to me? It shouldn’t burn like that, right?’ I told her that what you most likely tasted was very high proof, and as a novice, you need to start with 80 or 90 proof and definitely nothing over 100. So whenever you do a tasting, look at the proof, and if it’s high proof, maybe just don’t try it yet.
“The thing that was funny, though, about that ‘bourbon for women’ thing, was that Bourbon Cream was crazy delicious and mild at only 15% alcohol but it still tastes like bourbon. Our premise that we’re making this for women could not have been more off target, because women liked it, sure, but everybody liked it. Men loved it. They were putting it in coffee. They were putting it over ice cream. Our friend, Charlie Jones, adds more bourbon to it.
“Everybody was just crazy about it. It was the number one selling item in the gift shop for years. So not long after we came out with it, we realized that we had a success on our hands. We then decided to expand it beyond the gift shop to other retailers, who put it on the shelves with the bourbon not the liqueurs. Even after some packaging changes, sales have gone through the roof.”
While watching Candy and listening to her tell the story, I could see from the smile on her face and the sparkle in her eyes that, of her 25 years at Sazerac, bringing Bourbon Cream from just an idea to a highly successful product was one of her proudest accomplishments.
As they say, the rest is history! Bourbon Cream is here to stay. So, the next time you pour Bourbon Cream into your coffee, enjoy it in a cocktail, or simply sip it on its own, you’ll know a little more about the story behind this beloved Kentucky staple.
Staci Lewis is in her mid 30s navigating life — dating, friendships, work and play — in the city she calls home, Frankfort. Follow her on Instagram @ staci_and_the_city.
