Maker's Mark reducing ABV by 3% to meet demand

Dear Maker’s Mark® Ambassador,

Lately we’ve been hearing from many of you that you’ve been having difficulty finding Maker’s Mark in your local stores. Fact is, demand for our bourbon is exceeding our ability to make it, which means we’re running very low on supply. We never imagined that the entire bourbon category would explode as it has over the past few years, nor that demand for Maker’s Mark would grow even faster.

We wanted you to be the first to know that, after looking at all possible solutions, we’ve worked carefully to reduce the alcohol by volume (ABV) by just 3%. This will enable us to maintain the same taste profile and increase our limited supply so there is enough Maker’s Mark to go around, while we continue to expand the distillery and increase our production capacity.

We have both tasted it extensively, and it’s completely consistent with the taste profile our founder/dad/grandfather, Bill Samuels, Sr., created nearly 60 years ago. We’ve also done extensive testing with Maker’s Mark drinkers, and they couldn’t tell a difference.

Nothing about how we handcraft Maker’s Mark has changed, from the use of locally sourced soft red winter wheat as the flavor grain, to aging the whisky to taste in air-dried American white oak barrels, to rotating our barrels during maturation, to hand-dipping every bottle in our signature red wax.

In other words, we’ve made sure we didn’t screw up your whisky.

By the way, if you have any comments or questions, as always, we invite you to drop us a line at rob@makersmark.com or bill@makersmark.com. Thanks for your support. And if you’ve got a little time on your hands, come down and see us at the distillery.

Sincerely,

Rob Samuels
Chief Operating Officer
Ambassador-in-Chief

Silly Maker's Mark, the bartender already waters down your whiskey too much for my taste as it is. No need to help them out!

I'm betting the price doesn't go down correspondingly! They are also going to save money on taxes because of a lower alcohol percentage. This will put them in the same percent alcohol range as Jim Beam, which of course is their parent now.

Once again total bullshit from MM. These guys are true hacks.

Once again total bullshit from MM. These guys are true hacks.

That's mean. It's gonna raise my hackels. They are some of the finest people I have ever known- and they make fine bourbon.

Who they? The Samuels family? Or the guys at Beam brands in Chicago who actually run the company now?

This is from my Facebook page...Let me tell you how worse and despicable this really is,....Makers Mark has already well anticipated the public outcry among its loyal American consumers, especially considering those amongst loyal Kentuckians,...however, the rising market share of sales happening overseas is more than enough to keep Makers corporate moving in this deplorable direction. Bottom line, they don't really care that you care about messing around with the recipe because Asia, Australia, Japan, Russia, and other European countries will buy more than enough to offset public perception here. Sadly, it is truly all about the dollar, or in this case, Yen, Kronos, Euro, and any other form of non-American currency. You may see this as a change to the recipe for a few years until facilities are grown to meet demand, but that still does not change the fact that this great company is saying to all of you who drink Makers Bourbon that "you can stand a little less quality so that we can sell more to foreign countries". Industry professionals will explain to you tirelessly that you can't tell the difference and that "extensive testing" has been done to "ensure quality". We all can deduce this rhetoric. My point is, this seems to be a real shame, and I have to believe that someone's daddy and great grand daddy would be rolling over in their graves to even consider such shameless lowering of standards just to satisfy non-Americans.

What are the chances that once they can meet the demand they will revert to old 3% higher recipe? If people will pay the same for less, why would you ever go back? (Unless, of course, quality was more important to you than profit)

Sidebar: I can't wait until J.Gumbo's takes off overseas, then we can put 3% less chicken in the Drunken Chicken!

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Eh, another international conglomerate watering down a brand. What else is new? I'm sure they don't care, but there's a nascent micro distillery revolution afoot.

Besides I actually like Good Ol' Old Forester better than Maker's Mark, with the added bonus of being produced by our locally based global conglomerate.

This is from my Facebook page...Let me tell you how worse and despicable this really is,....Makers Mark has already well anticipated the public outcry among its loyal American consumers, especially considering those amongst loyal Kentuckians,...however, the rising market share of sales happening overseas is more than enough to keep Makers corporate moving in this deplorable direction. Bottom line, they don't really care that you care about messing around with the recipe because Asia, Australia, Japan, Russia, and other European countries will buy more than enough to offset public perception here. Sadly, it is truly all about the dollar, or in this case, Yen, Kronos, Euro, and any other form of non-American currency. You may see this as a change to the recipe for a few years until facilities are grown to meet demand, but that still does not change the fact that this great company is saying to all of you who drink Makers Bourbon that "you can stand a little less quality so that we can sell more to foreign countries". Industry professionals will explain to you tirelessly that you can't tell the difference and that "extensive testing" has been done to "ensure quality". We all can deduce this rhetoric. My point is, this seems to be a real shame, and I have to believe that someone's daddy and great grand daddy would be rolling over in their graves to even consider such shameless lowering of standards just to satisfy non-Americans.

Very Well Said! Certainly shows what happens when a major corporation (Beam) takes over a company that truly believed in the product they were making! I'm quite sure the Samuels would even considered doing something like this.

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I'll have to hold my opinion about this idea until I taste the new product and see what they do with pricing!

It's 3%- nobody would even know if it passed thier lips.

They just need more stackhouses. And time.

Yep, Beam owns MMark now, but Robert is a VP- it was a power deal that the Samuels came out right on.

All that doesn't really matter. What matters is that bourbon whiskies and our iconic brands spread the love around the world.

And the money comes here.

Stephen, I really don't understand your defense of this move. It is obviously just based on corporate greed on the part of Jim Beam. There's obviously no benefit for the consumers, since locally there was not a shortage of MM and obviously the prices are not going to go down. Whether consumers can or cannot taste the difference is yet to be seen, only time will tell, but obviously this move was not made to benefit consumers in any way.

Always truly done is take an iconic brand name and diminish its standing in the marketplace!

Eh, another international conglomerate watering down a brand. What else is new? I'm sure they don't care, but there's a nascent micro distillery revolution afoot.

Besides I actually like Good Ol' Old Forester better than Maker's Mark, with the added bonus of being produced by our locally based global conglomerate.

I like Maker's... but Old Forrester is great and significantly less expensive.

Signature is 100 proof, as well.

I think it's interesting that they chose to water down the recipe to make more instead of simply raising prices... I guess they are already at a high enough price point.

http://qz.com/52478/makers-mark-waters-down-its-bourbon-to-meet-rising-demand/

This article claims that the ABV is actually being reduced by 3 percentage points versus 3%. That would take the ABV from 45% to 42%. If this is true, it seems disingenuous to claim a 3% reduction when the reduction is, in fact, more than double that.

/nitpicking