As mentioned previously, Brown-Forman is selling Southern Comfort to the Sazerac Company for $543.5 million. This ought to free up the Louisville, Kentucky-based liquor giant to focus on its flagship brands, namely, Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel’s. Indeed, last October Brown-Forman unveiled the limited release of Jack Daniel’s: Sinatra Century, perhaps the most lavish bottle ever produced by the distillery. Timed for the 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birthday (December 12), the 100-proof whiskey retailed for the ring-a-ding price of $379.
Sounds a bit excessive, right? Except the whiskey has received raves. David Lehman, author of Sinatra’s Century, sampled the bottle for the Wall Street Journal:
Meanwhile, Jack Daniel’s global PR manager Svend Jansen tells me via email that Sinatra Century “sold out around the world before the end of the new year. Being extremely limited, there were only 100 barrels of the product bottled so it made it a definite collector’s item for both fans of Jack Daniel’s and Frank Sinatra.” Sold out? There goes my shameless bid for a bottle.
But what’s the connection between the two? According to Lehman, “Frank Sinatra discovered Jack Daniel’s one sleepless night in the early 1940s.” He was hooked. In James Kaplan’s massive biography, Sinatra: The Chairman, there are numerous references to Jack.
According to a valet quoted by Kaplan, following the death of President Kennedy, Sinatra “holed up in his bedroom, watching the assassination circus, freaking out along with the rest of the world when Ruby shot Oswald, eating nothing but occasional fried-egg sandwiches, and drinking vast amounts of Jack Daniel’s.”
In another instance, “Sinatra rented a $2,000-per-month beachfront house on Wailua Bay, redecorated in orange by the owner for Frank’s benefit. In front of the house, a little too symbolically, a Jack Daniel’s flag fluttered at the top of a tall pole.”
The chairman of the board is also quoted as saying, “I’m not unmindful of man’s seeming need for faith; I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
Sinatra could apparently down a fifth of Jack before a performance and a waiter, notes Kaplan, once saw him consume six double Jack Daniel’s with his steak dinner prior to a show—and what a show that must have been.
And lastly, when Sinatra died, he was buried with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It’s the kind of publicity you just can’t buy.
