Products Spirits Headquarters Louisiana, United States Founded 1850 | Industry Alcoholic beverages Website www.sazerac.com Founder Thomas H. Handy | |
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Key people William Goldring, Chairman of its Board of Directors Subsidiaries Bowman Distillery Incorporated, A. Smith | ||
The Sazerac Company is a privately held alcoholic beverages company with headquarters in Metairie, Louisiana (in the New Orleans metropolitan area). Its distilleries include the Barton Brands distillery (in Bardstown, Kentucky), the Buffalo Trace Distillery (in Frankfort, Kentucky), the former Glenmore Distillery (now a bottling plant in Owensboro, Kentucky), and the A. Smith Bowman Distillery (a microdistillery in Fredericksburg, Virginia). The products of the company and its subsidiaries include various types of whiskey, vodka, gin, tequila, rum, brandy, cognac, cocktails, cordials, liqueurs, "shooters", and wine.
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History
The company was founded after the purchase of a bar known as the Sazerac Coffee House in 1869 by Thomas H. Handy. After this purchase, Handy's company began to acquire and market brands of liquor. According to the company, the Sazerac Coffee House itself was named after a cocktail called the Sazerac that was created in the mid-1800s by the Creole immigrant Antoine Amédée Peychaud, who operated a pharmacy on the French Quarter's Royal Street in 1838. The company publishes a Sazerac recipe and produces a Peychaud's Bitters named after Peychaud, which is an ingredient in the traditional Sazerac cocktail.
In 1991, Sazerac purchased the George T. Stagg Distillery (now known as Buffalo Trace Distillery) in Frankfort, Kentucky, at which time the company’s primary focus became the production of bourbon whiskey (a product that is primarily distilled, aged, and bottled in Kentucky), and in 2009 the principal office was moved to Louisville, Ky. Sazerac Company maintains an active presence in the city of New Orleans, and also has operations in Carson, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Bardstown and Owensboro, Kentucky; Montreal, Canada; Lewiston, Maine; and Londonderry, New Hampshire.
In 2016 Sazerac completed the purchase of the historic Southern Comfort brand of bourbon liqueur from Brown-Forman, Inc., best known as the maker of Jack Daniel's.
In January of 2017, Sazerac Company broke ground for Sazerac House, a 48,000-square-foot building dating to the 1860s, in downtown New Orleans. Located a few blocks away from Exchange Alley, where the original Sazerac Coffee House was located, the five-story building will include corporate offices and a three-story museum on the history of cocktails. The museum, which is scheduled to open in October 2018, will be free to the public. The company said it expects 100,000 people to visit in its first year.
Brands
The company sells 33 different brands of alcoholic beverages, as of January 2017. For a complete list, see Category:Sazerac Company brands
Awards and honors
The International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC) named the Sazerac Company "Distiller of the Year", in London in November 2014, and a year later, awarded it the Americas & Caribbean Spirits Producer of the Year Trophy.