American artist and icon Andy Warhol (1928-1987) whose ‘rediscovered’ 1985 artwork could give Absolut Vodka a new lease of life.

Absolut Vodka—once fêted for its creative limited-edition bottles, often tying up art with social messaging—is at it again. This time it has rekindled an old partnership through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The Swedish vodka brand, owned by French drinks giant Pernod Ricard, says the new, watery blue bottle will “reignite conversations around culture and inclusivity” and bring Absolut’s legacy in the art world to new audiences.

Back in 1985, Andy Warhol became the first artist to produce artwork based on the silhouette of Absolut’s (then) distinctive apothecary-inspired bottle. Absolut Warhol became the brand’s first art advert and marked the beginning of its involvement in the arts.

Warhol subsequently recommended Keith Haring to interpret the Absolut bottle, and between 1985 and 2004 more than 550 artists subsequently created more than 850 works. The early pieces were part of a brand communication strategy associated with the glamour of New York’s Studio 54, as well as the victims of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the birth of IT.

Pernod Ricard bought into Absolut’s cultural legacy in 2008, when it fought off rivals to acquire the brand.

The original Absolut Warhol was painted with vibrant colors on a black background and is considered iconic by some. On the MyArtBroker website, a signed print is listed for £27,000 to £40,000 ($34,250 to $50,700).

A second Absolut Warhol painting, also from 1985, had been rumored to exist for decades before his ‘blue’ artwork was uncovered at an auction in 2020. In proving its provenance the original contract was unearthed, confirming both paintings had been commissioned. Pernod Ricard saw an opportunity to revitalize the original partnership—and the Absolut brand.

From a retail perspective, the limited-edition Absolut Warhol line launched on Monday exclusively in global travel retail (GTR) stores. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is opening an interactive, gallery-style pop-up store for the product, with other major travel hubs lined up.

The bottle brings Warhol’s rediscovered Absolut ‘blue’ painting from 1985 to life by extracting shades of blue from the work and includes an image of Warhol himself alongside his original signature.

The latest Absolut Warhol is exclusive to travel retail for two months.

Pernod Ricard—whose portfolio includes Chivas Regal, Jameson, and Royal Salute whiskies, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, and Mumm and Perrier-Jouët champagnes—has put a big budget behind a 3D out-of-home (OOH) ad campaign in the channel and multiple retail activations at airport like London Heathrow in the U.K., Dubai, Singapore Changi, São Paulo, and others.

Only after two months of exclusivity in duty-free will the new Absolut Warhol limited-edition bottle roll out across more than 50 additional global markets (from September) in both one-liter and 700ml bottles.

In travel retail, the one-liter bottle is available, priced at a recommended selling price of $24 or €22. This is cheaper than the current online price of a standard Absolut bottle: €23.90 at Amsterdam Schiphol (checked today). In a channel where premiumization is commonplace, even the norm, Pernod Ricard may score with this accessible-pricing strategy, especially with younger legal drinking age (LDA) travelers.

According to drinks market analyst IWSR, there was flattened consumer demand for alcoholic beverages in the first half of 2023 due to belt-tightening, though spirits (excluding national spirits) were up by 1%, based on the firm’s latest Bevtrac data.

Referencing 2024, IWSR’s senior consumer insights manager, Anastasia Timofeeva, said in December: “The key will be whether real wages can grow sustainably in the next two quarters in Europe and North America, particularly for younger LDA+ and middle-income consumers—and whether the ‘natural’ positivity in China and India translates into actual consumption behavior.”

The creative positioning and competitive pricing of Absolut Warhol should give it an advantage in this economic environment. Liya Zhang, vice president of global marketing at Pernod Ricard GTR commented: “This launch will be of huge significance to the evolution of Absolut in travel retail. Through this partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation, we can democratize art and bring it to all nationalities (and) also recruit new generations of consumers.”

Andy Warhol, John Sex (right), and masked friend at Absolut Vodka’s Party for Keith Haring at the Whitney Museum on October 2, 1986. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Getty Images)

The foundation will also be receiving some proceeds which its director of licensing, marketing and sales, Michael Dayton Hermann, said would support its philanthropic work. He added that he was “thrilled” to see the Absolut campaign come to life and engage younger people with Warhol’s legacy “in a fresh and dynamic way.”

A short promo from Mexican director and photographer Santiago Sierra Soler is inspired by Warhol’s brush strokes and accompanied by a remixed version of 20th Century Boy by T. Rex. Meanwhile, the rediscovered painting will be showcased at Stockholm’s Sprit Museum, the home of the Absolut Art Collection, on October 17, 2024. It will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition called Andy Warhol, Money On The Wall, curated by art historian and Warhol biographer, Dr. Blake Gopnik.

The stills at Holyrood Distillery, the first Scotch distillery in Edinburgh in over 100 years.

At its core, whiskey is distilled beer. Whiskey is spirit made by distilling an alcohol, called wash, that is itself made from grains — beer.

And yet, other than selecting grains and their proportions — barley, corn and wheat are the most common — few distilleries think of themselves as brewers or approach washmaking in the same way brewers think about beermaking.

Holyrood Distillery is changing that.

Holyrood is the first new whiskey distillery in Edinburgh in over 100 years. Located in the literal capital of Scotland and the figurative heartland of malt whiskey, Holyrood is honoring the long history of the national drink while taking an innovative approach to whiskeymaking.

“Test, learn, improve, repeat.” said Calum Rae, distillery manager, in a video interview.

What that means is experimenting with beermaking techniques in making wash, including using heritage barley varieties and specialty malts, and using different yeast strains. These are things that brewers use to make beer styles, from amber lager to saison, different from each other and Holyrood is unique in seeking to understand how this will translate into aged whiskey.

“Holyrood is the home of a fresh, creative approach to Scotch,” says Rae. And the distillery is uniquely situated for this.

While Scotland is famous for making whiskey prized around the world, Edinburgh has a rich brewing history due to underground wells supplying water perfect for beer making. Holyrood is located within Edinburgh’s “Charmed Circle” which was once home to over forty breweries. So, Holyrood is perfectly placed to marry the beermaking and the whiskeymaking arts. Rae himself has a background in brewing and works with a team of distillers, many of whom were trained at the nearby famed Heriot-Watt University.

At craft breweries, a spirit of experimentation is welcomed and Rae has brought that ethos to Holyrood. “We just have a bigger feedback loop,” says Rae, talking about how the results of experiments in distilling take years to materialize, rather than the weeks it takes to see the outcome of new beer recipes.

By regulation, distilled spirit must be aged a minimum of three years before it can be called “Scotch.” To date, Holyrood has only released two expressions — Arrival and Embra — so consumers have only been teased with the fruits of Holyrood’s vast database of flavor experiments. “We are only on the very, very baby steps of the journey,” says Rae.

But eventually, Holyrood’s tasting room will also take a page from the craft beer world. Similar to brewery tasting rooms, Rae envisions a tasting room with 20 or so limited-release drams so that people can taste the cornucopia of flavors they have created. And once the whiskey is gone, it gets replaced with another flavor offering.

Rae insists that, like other whiskey distilleries, Holyrood will have a house character running through all of their drams. “We just have a lot more colors to paint with,” he says of their ability to blend from the seemingly limitless supply of spirits made from different beer recipes, fermented by different yeast strains and aged in different casks. Says Rae, “There’s room for both new and old in the world of whiskey. That’s what’s exciting.”

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American artist and icon Andy Warhol (1928-1987) whose ‘rediscovered’ 1985 artwork could give Absolut Vodka a new lease of life.

Absolut Vodka—once fêted for its creative limited-edition bottles, often tying up art with social messaging—is at it again. This time it has rekindled an old partnership through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The Swedish vodka brand, owned by French drinks giant Pernod Ricard, says the new, watery blue bottle will “reignite conversations around culture and inclusivity” and bring Absolut’s legacy in the art world to new audiences.

Back in 1985, Andy Warhol became the first artist to produce artwork based on the silhouette of Absolut’s (then) distinctive apothecary-inspired bottle. Absolut Warhol became the brand’s first art advert and marked the beginning of its involvement in the arts.

Warhol subsequently recommended Keith Haring to interpret the Absolut bottle, and between 1985 and 2004 more than 550 artists subsequently created more than 850 works. The early pieces were part of a brand communication strategy associated with the glamour of New York’s Studio 54, as well as the victims of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the birth of IT.

Pernod Ricard bought into Absolut’s cultural legacy in 2008, when it fought off rivals to acquire the brand.

The original Absolut Warhol was painted with vibrant colors on a black background and is considered iconic by some. On the MyArtBroker website, a signed print is listed for £27,000 to £40,000 ($34,250 to $50,700).

A second Absolut Warhol painting, also from 1985, had been rumored to exist for decades before his ‘blue’ artwork was uncovered at an auction in 2020. In proving its provenance the original contract was unearthed, confirming both paintings had been commissioned. Pernod Ricard saw an opportunity to revitalize the original partnership—and the Absolut brand.

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From a retail perspective, the limited-edition Absolut Warhol line launched on Monday exclusively in global travel retail (GTR) stores. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is opening an interactive, gallery-style pop-up store for the product, with other major travel hubs lined up.

The bottle brings Warhol’s rediscovered Absolut ‘blue’ painting from 1985 to life by extracting shades of blue from the work and includes an image of Warhol himself alongside his original signature.

The latest Absolut Warhol is exclusive to travel retail for two months.

Pernod Ricard—whose portfolio includes Chivas Regal, Jameson, and Royal Salute whiskies, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, and Mumm and Perrier-Jouët champagnes—has put a big budget behind a 3D out-of-home (OOH) ad campaign in the channel and multiple retail activations at airport like London Heathrow in the U.K., Dubai, Singapore Changi, São Paulo, and others.

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Only after two months of exclusivity in duty-free will the new Absolut Warhol limited-edition bottle roll out across more than 50 additional global markets (from September) in both one-liter and 700ml bottles.

In travel retail, the one-liter bottle is available, priced at a recommended selling price of $24 or €22. This is cheaper than the current online price of a standard Absolut bottle: €23.90 at Amsterdam Schiphol (checked today). In a channel where premiumization is commonplace, even the norm, Pernod Ricard may score with this accessible-pricing strategy, especially with younger legal drinking age (LDA) travelers.

According to drinks market analyst IWSR, there was flattened consumer demand for alcoholic beverages in the first half of 2023 due to belt-tightening, though spirits (excluding national spirits) were up by 1%, based on the firm’s latest Bevtrac data.

Referencing 2024, IWSR’s senior consumer insights manager, Anastasia Timofeeva, said in December: “The key will be whether real wages can grow sustainably in the next two quarters in Europe and North America, particularly for younger LDA+ and middle-income consumers—and whether the ‘natural’ positivity in China and India translates into actual consumption behavior.”

The creative positioning and competitive pricing of Absolut Warhol should give it an advantage in this economic environment. Liya Zhang, vice president of global marketing at Pernod Ricard GTR commented: “This launch will be of huge significance to the evolution of Absolut in travel retail. Through this partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation, we can democratize art and bring it to all nationalities (and) also recruit new generations of consumers.”

Andy Warhol, John Sex, and masked friend at Absolut Vodka’s Party for Keith Haring at the Whitney Museum on October 2, 1986. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Getty Images)

The foundation will also be receiving some proceeds which its director of licensing, marketing and sales, Michael Dayton Hermann, said would support its philanthropic work. He added that he was “thrilled” to see the Absolut campaign come to life and engage younger people with Warhol’s legacy “in a fresh and dynamic way.”

A short promo from Mexican director and photographer Santiago Sierra Soler is inspired by Warhol’s brush strokes and accompanied by a remixed version of 20th Century Boy by T. Rex. Meanwhile, the rediscovered painting will be showcased at Stockholm’s Sprit Museum, the home of the Absolut Art Collection, on October 17, 2024. It will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition called Andy Warhol, Money On The Wall, curated by art historian and Warhol biographer, Dr. Blake Gopnik.

Beneath the strawberry moon in late June, we listened to green frogs belting out their banjo-like twang from a pond at Wright Woods near Vernon Hills. It was 10 p.m., and though the forest preserves district closes the gates at night, we had permission to document frog-calling after hours.

Visiting the same woods in early spring, mid-spring and summer offers a glimpse into nature’s ever-changing cycles. In mid-April, as the sun set, we heard an American woodcock, an unusual shorebird that nests in the woods, giving its courtship call. Then we saw it fly into the air in a spiral, then descend twittering its wings, all for the love of a female who was hopefully nearby.

After dark descended, we walked the trail with small, ephemeral ponds that would dry up later in summer. There we heard chorus frogs, which sounded like someone rubbing her fingers across a comb. These were most prominent, but we also heard spring peepers give their little sleigh-bell calls. Both of these frogs are no larger than a thumb, and they are much more often heard than seen. Chorus frogs can be heard in spring even during the daytime, but the spring peepers are nocturnal.

Frogs pass air from their lungs over their vocal cords, which vibrate to produce a sound. Vocal sacs located near the frog’s throat amplify the sound. When a frog inflates its vocal sac, it looks as if it had just produced a giant bubble from chewing gum.

Chorus frogs and spring peepers choose fishless ponds in which to call, mate and breed. Otherwise, fish would devour these tiny frogs and their eggs like mini-sacks.

By mid-May, the peepers have stopped calling, and their songs are replaced by those from American toads, as well as bullfrogs and green frogs just getting started for the summer.

On our next foray, as we waited for dark to come, we heard and observed a state-threatened cerulean warbler give its last song of the day. That bird would not have been singing in the woods in mid-April. At night, we no longer heard peepers and chorus frogs, but rather the whirring din of American toads, which belong to the frog family.

The green frogs and bullfrogs were calling from the large pond where folks fish in the daytime. These frogs are much larger than the peepers. The bullfrog can grow to at least eight inches long, and the green frog up to about 3 inches or so in length.

On that night, as we ventured toward the Des Plaines River in the dark, we heard a young great-horned owl giving its begging calls in the distance. By mid-May, great horned owls have already fledged young and are now teaching them how to find food on their own.

In late June, we entered the preserve just after the periodical cicadas had ended their daytime mating songs. We saw some here and there on leaves or on the ground, but the grand spectacle folks have been seeing this year of these insects that come out every 17 years from the ground was nearly over.

We walked our survey trail and heard a barred owl give its “who cooks for you, who cooks for you all” call.

That evening, we hoped to hear gray tree frogs calling. This was their time to call. We didn’t hear those, but we did hear more green frogs and bullfrogs. There seemed to be more of them and they were calling more frequently than at our last survey.

Since at least 2013, amphibian populations, including those of frogs, have been declining worldwide by nearly 4%. In northern Illinois, we’ve lost the once common cricket frog, which gives an interesting sound as if someone were tapping two stones together. They still call in central Illinois, but no longer up here, and scientists aren’t quite sure why, although in general climate change, loss of habitat and disease are contributing to amphibian populations worldwide.

At the end of our final survey, we walked to the pond and stood quietly beneath the full moon listening to the “jug-a-rum” calls of the bullfrogs and the banjo twang of the green frogs. Being outdoors at night listening to frogs and owls makes you feel as if you were out in the wilderness even when busy streets are nearby.

It is an otherworldly experience every child and adult should have.

Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com.

The exterior of the new Whiskey House in Elizabethtown, Kentucky

For many, the allure of visiting a legacy whiskey distillery is its history. Distillers can be borderline superstitious, arguing that if they change anything about production — from changing the size of the still to altering the fermenters — it will impact flavor.

The founders of Whiskey House, a new, state-of-the-art facility from the founders of Bardstown Bourbon Company, would not argue that those old distilleries have a certain kind of magic. But their goal is to keep experimenting and advancing to stay at the forefront of spirits innovation.

“It will be the most advanced distillery in the country, hands down,” said Whiskey House’s cofounder and CEO David Mandell during a recent hardhat tour of the 176-acre campus in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, that is projected to cost $350 million over the next decade to fully build out and complete.

Whiskey House began producing whiskey on July 1, crafting their liquid for friends, family, and employees.

The initial team at Whiskey House

By the most advanced distillery, Mandell refers to advancements on multiple fronts. The team has attracted talent from various renowned producers, amassing a total of 347 years of combined experience.

There is no master distiller at the facility. This distillery is the first of its kind, designed specifically to produce highly-customizable contract whiskey orders without establishing its own brand or handling investment barrels. Production on contract orders is scheduled to start next week.

“We are taking processes, technology and procedures from an advanced manufacturing standpoint,” Mandell said, citing Industry 4.0 — the kind of integrated tech and AI you see from companies like Amazon and Tesla. “The idea that there is one person saying this is how everything is made doesn’t work for us, because we have 30 to 40 different customers doing custom mash bills and highly customized production. So we have to have a huge system with tremendous flexibility.”

John Hargrove, Whiskey House co-founder, president and COO, was in food manufacturing before working at Sazerac and Bardstown. He has taken lessons from that field. Whiskey House’s production building is 110,000 square feet, and is laid out where raw goods come in one side, and the semi-finished product comes out the other, ready to head to on-site warehouses.

The Whiskey House lab

Every piece of equipment has monitors on it, explained Roger Henley, the vice president of engineering and technology, who had a background in the oil and gas sector as well as automative industry before moving to work in distilling at Barton’s and Bardstown Bourbon Company.

Customers will be able to log into a custom dashboard and see in real time all the details about how their whiskey was made, from the source of grains in their custom mash bill to where in the warehouse their whiskey is aging and what current conditions are.

Other distilleries do use a lot of this technology, but data collected ends up staying in that department, siloed. Think of QR codes on the bottles of some whiskeys now — it’s likely that data, such as where the grain was sourced or where the barrel was stored in the warehouse, was collected and then entered by hand before the information reaches the consumer. This system is seamless. Henley said what sets it apart is the ability to centralize that data and have AI models use it all to create efficiencies and save on usage of natural resources.

One easy-to-understand example is how to optimize alcohol production in fermentation.

“When you think about fermentation you have multiple different variables: corn grown in different seasons with different nutrient contents, yeast that performs in a certain parameter of [temperature] degrees, and the same thing for enzymes. You can collect all that data using AI,” Mandell explained. “We could actually figure out the exact conditions to increase your alcohol yield and proof gallons, and that will be a game changer.”

The facility is also designed to capture and reuse latent energy throughout the production process, resulting in a 50% decrease of energy consumption as compared to the EPA’s Energy Star Certified Distilleries. It’s got a slew of certifications to assure domestic and global clients everything is up to international code — and is even Kosher certified.

A rickhouse on the Whiskey House campus

The experimentation will continue throughout the aging process. During my recent visit, JT Thomas, the senior warehouse manager, and Phil Mays, the assistant warehouse manager, showed how they were testing a new type of food-grade sealant to help fix barrel leaks, as well as how the windows in the warehouse were designed to open at specific angles to experiment with airflow and its impact on aging.

And speaking of those warehouses, they also have airflow ducts at the base and are built longer and thinner than typical warehouses, so no client ends up in a less-desirable position in the rickhouse.

If a client has a specific request on where they’d like to be placed in the rickhouse, Whiskey House will do their best to accommodate it. It speaks to a larger business model of a contract facility that is built to service clients that have a clear pathway to using the whiskey in a brand. Whiskey House won’t be creating their own brands (or nabbing those most desirable warehouse spots themselves) and it won’t be making or holding investor barrels, something Mandell has seen drive up price and tie up capacity for brands that need production.

“It creates a bubble in the market and it’s really not healthy for the industry,” he said last fall.

In the intervening months, there is now more capacity in the industry as some legacy whiskey brands have slowed down their own production and other contract whiskey makers have expanded, lowering prices that had made it difficult for craft whiskey brands to survive. Mandell said the change in the market has not changed their business outlook.

“They [other producers] watched what we did at Bardstown and they thought it was going to be easy. But they don’t have the knowledge in many cases or the experience to do this type of production. It’s easier said than done,” Mandell said. “So what we’re seeing is that while there’s excess capacity, the best business is coming to us. And it’s what we predicted.”

Monica Wolf, a founder of The Spirits Group, a consulting firm that advises clients on business, production, and distillery design, has a holistic view of the industry because she also brokers barrels.

“The frothy nature of the barrel market the last few years, born from financial interest by groups outside of the whiskey industry, was never going to be sustainable,” Wolf said. “The inflated pricing has now corrected and we’re seeing aged barrel pricing at or below where it’s been historically.”

Wolf said the market is nuanced and complicated and “with all times of feast and famine there are winners and losers.”

“From a brand perspective and something that will never change: having the patient capital to invest in new fill barrels at their lowest cost basis, in order to control costs, will always be a winning proposition,” she said.

Wolf said they are scheduled to begin distilling at Whiskey House for both Lucky Seven and EJ Curley this fall. Ashley Barnes, the group’s Master Blender, selected and submitted the custom mash bills, yeast strains and level of char, toast and seasoning for the barrels.

“Having Whiskey House of Kentucky for quality distillate, made to spec, is an incredibly important part of our process. Choosing a quality barrel cooperage along with the toast, char and seasoning level of the staves that properly compliments the kind of products we’re intending to make is another important part,” Wolf said.

In the case of Lucky Seven and EJ Curley, they will then take the barrels to their own facility, The Blending House in Shelbyville, Kentucky, where Barnes will monitor aging and blending.

Whiskey House has sold 90 percent of their production capacity for the next five years and is also working with clients including Milam & Greene, Chicken Cock, Western Spirits and Whiskey JYPSI, as well as overseas production for large legacy spirits companies and ready-to-drink beverages.

If all goes to plan, production will soon double. The company started operations with greater than seven million proof gallons of annual capacity and will expand to more than 14 million proof gallons in 2027.

The space will soon include areas for clients to design their products with the Whiskey House team as well as space for them to host events. Eventually the campus will house 33 rickhouses, a palletized warehouse, a spent grain processing facility, a bottling facility, a rail system, as well as access to one of the highest yielding hydro stratigraphic limestone aquifers in the region, which sits 120 feet below the property.

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