Texas Distillery Launches New Whiskey During Pandemic

德克萨斯酒厂在疫情蔓延期间推出新威士忌

Stephan Godevais, Gary Kotshott and Tom Buchsbaum were riding high. Their new spirit, Austin 101 Light Whiskey, had just captured the second-place People’s Choice award at the Texas Whiskey Festival in Austin.

斯蒂芬·戈德维斯，加里·科特肖特和汤姆·布赫斯鲍姆一路高歌猛进。 他们的新酒--奥斯汀101轻威士忌，刚刚在奥斯汀举行的德克萨斯威士忌节上夺得了第二名的人民选择奖。

“That was on March 7,” recounts Godevais. “There were about 1,000 people at the festival, and we got second place out of 62 known products and 25 brands.”

“那是在3月7日，”戈德瓦斯回忆道。“参加音乐节大约有1000人，我们在62种知名产品和25个品牌中排名第二。

But then, two weeks later, COVID-19 hit, and bars and restaurants were shut down during stay-at-home orders. “It was a really interesting timing for things,” Godevais says. “We always try to have a positive view of things. Though it was unlucky that we had launched a product within two weeks of the stay-at-home orders, we were somewhat luck that the Texas Whiskey Festival went through.”

但随后，两周后，新冠疫情袭来，酒吧和餐馆在居家令期间被关闭。“这是一个非常有趣的时机，”Godevais说。“我们总是试图对事物有积极的看法。虽然我们在居家订单后两周内推出了一款产品很不幸，但我们在德克萨斯威士忌节上经历了一些运气。

Right after the festival, Austin Craft Spirits received their first order from their distributor. “Because of that second-place award, they ordered five times more than their original order,” Godevais says. “If (the pandemic) had happened before the Texas Whiskey Festival, we’d be in a different place.”

音乐节结束后，Austin Craft Spirits从分销商那里收到了他们的第一个订单。“由于第二名的奖项，他们的订单是原来的订单的五倍，”Godevais说。“如果（大流行）发生在德克萨斯州威士忌节之前，我们将处于一个不同的地方。

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Promoting a new spirit during a pandemic has been challenging.“Not being able to do on-premise tastings has hurt the craft industry,” Godevais says. “People have continued to buy spirits, but they maybe only buy things that they already know.”

在大流行期间推广新精神一直具有挑战性。无法进行本地品尝已经伤害了手工业，“Godevais说。“人们继续购买烈酒，但他们可能只购买他们已经知道的东西”。

For Austin Craft Spirits, it’s not just introducing the whiskey, but it’s also educating consumers what a light whiskey is. “It’s a very broad category,” Godevais says. “Bourbon has very stringent rules that make a bourbon a bourbon, and you cannot deviate from those rules. Light whiskey has only one rule: the distillate has to be pulled from the still above 160 proof and below 190 proof.”

对于Austin Craft Spirits来说，它不仅仅是介绍威士忌，而且还教育消费者什么是清淡的威士忌。“这是一个非常广泛的类别，”Godevais说。“波旁威士忌有非常严格的规则，使波旁威士忌成为波旁威士忌，你不能偏离这些规则。轻威士忌只有一条规则：馏出物必须从160度以上和190度以下的蒸馏器中提取”。

Austin Light Whiskey is 50.5 percent alcohol by volume. “What’s interesting in our case is that we did not set out to make a light whiskey, we set out to create a very specific flavor profile, and it just happened that it fit into that legal classification,” Godevais says. “There are many different light whiskeys, and probably none of them taste like Austin 101.”

奥斯汀轻威士忌的酒精含量为50.5%。“在我们的案例中，有趣的是，我们并没有打算酿造一种清淡的威士忌，我们着手创造一种非常具体的口味特征，而且恰好它符合这种法律分类，”Godevais说。“有许多不同的清淡威士忌，可能没有一种味道像奥斯汀101。

Austin 101 is made from purely Texas-grown ingredients, and the water is hill country water. Its smooth flavor appeals pretty equally across the gender lines, and it is aged in a mix of bourbon and whiskey barrels. “The aging process is different in Texas than in Kentucky, and we have 30 degree temperature swings that crates a flavor extraction in a completely different way than other whiskey regions in the United States,” he says.

Austin 101由德克萨斯州种植的纯成分制成，水是山地乡村水。它的顺滑味道在性别界限上同样吸引人，它是在波旁威士忌和威士忌桶的混合物中陈酿的。“德克萨斯州的陈酿过程与肯塔基州不同，我们有30度的温度波动，以与美国其他威士忌产区完全不同的方式提取风味，”他说。

To keep reaching out to establish a customer base, Austin Craft Spirits recently redesigned their merchandizing, and they’ve been quite active on social media. “We are partnering with other organizations that have tasted and liked our product,” he says. “It’s a little thing, but we also just added a medallion to put around our whiskey bottles to give it more shelf appeal and to show the people’s choice award.”

为了继续保持联系以建立客户群，Austin Craft Spirits最近重新设计了他们的商品，他们在社交媒体上非常活跃。“我们正在与其他品尝并喜欢我们产品的组织合作，”他说。“这是一件小事，但我们也只是增加了一枚奖章，放在我们的威士忌酒瓶周围，以使其更具货架吸引力，并展示人民的选择奖。

One of the main reasons the company has been succeeding is because of the founders’ initial business plan.As all three of them initially worked in the tech industry, they are driven by innovation and also by running their business in a non-traditional way. “We kept our capital investment fairly low,” Godevais says.

公司成功的主要原因之一是因为创始人最初的商业计划。由于他们三人最初都在科技行业工作，因此他们受到创新的驱动，也以非传统的方式经营业务。“我们将资本投资保持在相当低的水平，”Godevais说。

Instead of investing in equipment, they rent equipment from other craft distillers who are not running at capacity, but they do have their own aging facility so they can properly age their whiskey and then bottle it as soon as it reaches the flavor profile they desire. “We have a very nimble business model so we’re able to weather longer periods of time when sales are not going as well as we’d hoped,” Godevais says.

他们没有投资设备，而是从其他没有满负荷运行的精酿酒厂租用设备，但他们确实有自己的老化设施，因此他们可以适当地陈酿威士忌，然后在达到他们想要的风味时立即装瓶。“我们有一个非常灵活的商业模式，所以我们能够在销售不如我们希望的那样好的时候度过更长的时间，”Godevais说。

Right now, though, the focus is on figuring out how to do tastings in a safe manner, and the company is working with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to determine a new way to do in-person tastings. “We’re also partnering with charitable organizations to do virtual tastings,” he says. “What we’ve learned is the number one thing we can do to help retailers move our product is for people to taste it, and then the tasting experience converts to sales.”

不过，现在的重点是弄清楚如何以安全的方式进行品尝，该公司正在与德克萨斯州酒精饮料委员会合作，以确定一种亲自品尝的新方法。“我们还与慈善组织合作进行虚拟品尝，”他说。“我们学到的是，为了帮助零售商移动我们的产品，我们可以做的第一件事就是让人们品尝它，然后品尝体验转化为销售。