Surprise! Southern Comfort has no whiskey, but soon will

• From The New York Times

When the Sazerac Company bought Southern Comfort from the liquor conglomerate Brown-Forman last year, the business motivation was clear. “If you and I ended on a desert island and there was a bottle of liquor, there’s an even-money chance it would be Southern Comfort,” Mark Brown, the chief executive of Sazerac, said... .

Southern Comfort has long borne a double-edged reputation as being both famous and infamous. The blend of spirits and fruit and spice flavorings is a storied brand, with roots that are believed to go back to the 19th Century, and it can be found in nearly every bar in America. Yet it is widely regarded as the drink of unwise youths and undiscriminating palates. ...

Kevin Richards, the new senior marketing director for Southern Comfort, admitted as much, saying that when Sazerac bought it, the brand was “in danger of losing a lot of relevance in the mind of consumers.”

Sazerac hopes to reverse that. A new-and-improved Southern Comfort will hit the shelves in July, with a redesigned label and bottle. Flavored versions like Lime Comfort and Caramel Comfort will be phased out. But, most important, Southern Comfort will get back the one ingredient that many people have long assumed it contained: whiskey.

Go here for the full story.

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