A letter from The Backbone Bourbon Company to our customers
Welcome to Backbone Bourbon Company.
We are kicking off a small but hopefully relevant email campaign dedicated to keeping the our distributor partners up-to-date with current product and company developments. As we grow, we hope this information will help everyone involved in selling our brands. I want to give a little company background on what kind of company we are, how we got started and how we developed our philosophy.
Backbone Bourbon Company was formed in 2014 (although 2 of the brands have been sold in Indiana since 2011). Our approach is to buy barrels from distilleries and brand the whiskey under our own labels according to our specifications and standards. We believe in bold flavors and high proof whiskies and want our brands to stand out across a crowded room. They must always show consistent quality and exceed expectations for their price.
Our original brand, Backbone Uncut, was started out of frustration. We had an Indiana bourbon supplier “flake” out on us citing a need for bigger and better representation. We wished our supplier had more “backbone”.
Within a few months, our frustration turned to excitement as we begun to find a way to get a brand developed. Fortunately, it was in 2011 when the American Whiskey industry was about to take off. We developed a brand in Indiana and begun investing in aged bourbon and rye barrels. Our brands were exclusively sold in Indiana until mid-way through 2014. At this point, we were able to launch them in a few states outside of Indiana.
For us, the word “Backbone” means strength of character. The first samples we tasted were straight from the barrel. The distillery had the proof labelled on the small sample bottle they sent – it read a healthy 114.9 proof. We never gave it a second thought, always thinking that all proper bourbon brands had to be around 90 proof. We kept tasting the barrel sample and kept really enjoying it. We started to develop a “tension” on how much we should “cut” the alcohol. We went back and forth, considering things like yield, consumer preferences and industry standards.
To help us decide, we got an “expert” in to taste our barrel sample. This expert is larger than life and knows the bourbon consumer world like few others. I will never forget the night we gave our “expert” a taste of our barrel sample. To begin with, we had very little left from our small sample bottle. We poured the remains (still a healthy pour) in a glass thinking that we would all get to taste the last drops of our sample in the presence of our expert (and perhaps give our opinion). Well, our expert turned his back, looked to the stars, looked at the color, took one breath, and drained the precious remains of our barrel sample. He turned around a simply said: “DON’T CUT IT”…….
Well, we didn’t!!!
That started our identity as a whiskey company. That moment really crystallized our vision for well made, high proof products. Thank you for your time and dedication to selling our brands.
Bill Kennedy & Nolan Smith (co-founders)