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And while tour purchases represent only a minority of Celebration’s sales, this personal connection is key when it comes to generating product awareness and loyalty to the Old New Orleans Rum label. In peak season, the microdistillery conducts 20 tours a week with as many as 1,000 visitors to its repurposed dairy-tank pot stills and bottle shop. Indeed, Celebration already does a robust tour trade, despite its off-the-radar coordinates outside the French Quarter. Inspired by Kentucky’s model of distillation tourism, she and other Louisiana producers are currently at work with the governor’s office in developing a rum trail. Though Darling notes that there have also been a few closures and that craft spirits is “a very competitive industry,” she still sees opportunities for more microdistilleries, given the city’s robust tourist trade - especially when it comes to rum. “Is there enough shelf space for more? Absolutely.”ĭarling says she’d like to see a reversal of the current market model favoring corporate brands: “Instead of seven corporate options and one craft label, we’re looking to see the opposite.” By Darling’s count, the Crescent City is now home to 11 distilleries. New Orleans is seeing a lot of activity, with new distilleries opening every year,” says Katie Darling, president of the Louisiana Distiller’s Guild and CEO of Celebration Distillation, the country’s oldest continually operated rum distillery. But then again, this is New Orleans, where one learns to live with a certain latitude when it comes to logic.įortunately social, economic and legislative changes have all combined to put New Orleans at the center of a vibrant and growing distilling movement, one eager to work all the angles and perched to position the Crescent City as one of the nation’s foremost destinations for craft spirits. With so many advantages, the city’s longtime dearth of distilleries seemed an economic conundrum - indeed, even madness. Louisiana is also the nation’s third-highest rice producer, a boon for those looking to produce alternative vodkas and gins. Celebration Distillation’s molasses, for example, comes from a plant only a one-hour drive from its New Orleans distillery. After all, how could it be that the home of the Sazerac, the Ramos Gin Fizz, the Vieux Carré and the Hurricane, the go-cup and ground zero for the spirits industry’s largest event, Tales of the Cocktail, a city with a driving tourist trade and arguably the highest density of bars per American - how could New Orleans not supply its own demand for spirits?Īdd to this that when it comes to raw ingredients, Louisiana is a distiller’s paradise, home to eleven raw sugar factories and second only to Florida in sugarcane production. To the outsider, the fact that New Orleans wasn’t already chock-full of established distilleries by 2016 seems counterintuitive. There was a nervy excitement of something big about to unfold - a bit like witnessing expectant fathers pacing outside the delivery room. In them, a spate of soon-to-be owners bit their nails as they waited for custom, break-the-bank stills to arrive at port. In several cases, spaces had been bought or leased, though were not yet operational. To be honest, it may have been a stretch then to have called it a scene.Īt that point, there were few operational players in the game, and aside from Celebration Distillation, makers of Old New Orleans Rum, none older than a few years. In fact, I did write a piece about New Orleans’ fledgling distillery scene the summer of 2016.
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If you were reading this article, say five years ago, it would be an entirely different story.