He liked the cognacs that Thibault had created, and persuaded him to use his skills to produce the best vodka possible. He thought there would be a market for a premium vodka in the USA, but it really would have to be the best vodka in the world if you were going to ask people to pay twice the price. Frank made a fortune by persuading college students to make an obscure German drink called Jägermeister their drink of choice.įrank was a businessman who went by his instincts. He was an importer of foreign drinks into the USA, including some of the impressive cognacs that Thibault had produced for Mounier. So while Thibault created the recipe for Grey Goose, Sidney Frank was the marketing man who sold it. You would need to be a fool or a visionary to quit such a job and start to make vodka in Cognac, and many people in the Cognac business thought he was crazy. It’s a distinguished position in a town that is home to illustrious names like Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin, and Baron Otard. Thibault was born in Cognac and worked at the Mounier distillery, where he became the maître de chai, or cellar master. In fact there are two other ingredients to Grey Goose vodka: François Thibault himself, and the man who came up with the name and the idea for Grey Goose, Sidney Frank. More remarkably still, it was born in the unlikeliest of places – in the heart of the Cognac region of France. And sell it did, especially when, one year later, it was declared the ‘World’s Best Tasting Vodka’ by the Beverage Testing Institute in Chicago. In 1997, Thibault took two simple ingredients – wheat and water – and from them produced a new vodka that was not merely a premium vodka, it sold for twice the price of Absolut, the most expensive vodka then on the US market. ‘Get the best out of the very best ingredients,’ believes François Thibault, ‘and let the quality speak for itself.’
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