When did selling booze get so nasty?
Hillary Clinton was only buffing her blue-collar cred by downing a shot of Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey before the Indiana primary. But family-owned distiller Heaven Hill of Bardstown, KY, thought the presidential hopefuls should drink American liquor, and promptly sent off bottles of its Evan Williams bourbon brand to the contenders.
Enter Jeremiah Weed Bourbon Liqueur, manufactured by Diageo. Its very fictional founder was suddenly bestowed with a Web site, Mr. Jeremiah Weed Speaks. In “his” first blog posting, Weed blasted the folks at Evan Williams for pandering to the candidates. Readers were sent to www.JeremiahWeedBourbon.com to vote for the bourbon of choice for the Kentucky primary on May 20.
In response, Heaven Hill mobilized its master distiller Craig Beam — seventh generation in the business and resolutely real — to reality-check Weed’s claims. Those blur the difference between Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey (“America’s native spirit by a 1964 act of Congress”) and “bourbon liqueur” with sugar and flavorings added.
Beam noted that Weed doesn’t exist.
Diageo/Weed’s blog “reply”: Those bottles sent to Clinton and Obama were just “gestures of appreciation,” and Williams should cease “the politics of product destruction.”
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