INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

Old New Orleans Rum General Manager Ben Gersh and CEO Heidi Redmon Raines sample their product.
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
SILVER AWARD
Old New Orleans Rum
Key innovation: handcrafted, American rum
Biggest client: Republic Beverage Co. is the distributor
Where they’re based: Lower 9th Ward
Top executive: James Michalopoulos, owner and
president
Year introduced: 1995
2007 sales: 2008 year-to-date sales show an increase of
66.7 percent over 2007 year-to-date sales, which were
30 percent more than 2006 sales
OLD NEW ORLEANS Rum, like the city it is named for,
is rich in complexity and flavor. The handcrafted rum
recently took several awards at the 2008 International
Rum festival, capturing worldwide attention.
Owner and President James Michalopoulos, a local
artist, became enamored with the idea of making his own
rum after he sampled a friend’s homemade spirits. After
two years of perfecting the engineering of his still, ingredients
and the distillation process, Michalopoulos put
his product on the market in 1995. Every part of the
process reflects the attention to detail of an artist, which
from the beginning has distinguished Old New Orleans
Rum from mass-produced spirits, said Ben Gersh, managing
director.
“We have engineered a perfume still into a double distillation
pot and column that gives us a purer alcohol with
a more complex flavor profile,” Gersh said. “Most people
either use one or the other. Many distillers add the rum
flavors at the end, but my secret is through the process.
Everything is done by hand, the traditional way.”
And Old New Orleans Rum uses only the freshest,
Louisiana-made ingredients.
Using molasses, instead of refined sugar, and fresh
herbs and spices in the distillation process rather than
adding them at the end contribute to Old New Orleans
Rum’s unique flavor.
“Rum is the hardest to make of all the spirits,” Gersh
said, and not something that is typically embraced by
American distilleries. As young as it is, Old New Orleans
Rum boasts being the oldest rum distillery in the United
States in continuous operation.
Old New Orleans Rum has proved itself on the international
scene, too, winning the gold medal for its
Crystal rum, the silver for Cajun Spice and Amber rums
and the bronze for its 10 Year limited release at the
2008 International Rum festival held in January in
Tampa, Fla.
The company’s Cajun Spice also has received the
highest market rating by the Beverage Tasting Institute the
past two years.
Old New Orleans Rum is now distributed in 11 states
and has grown from selling a couple hundred cases a year
to more than 9,000 cases from August 2007 to August
2008, Gersh said.
“We have sold almost 600 cases in Kentucky since
December. To be able to say you are selling rum in
Kentucky, you must be doing something right.”•
— Angelle Bergeron
8A 2008 Innovator of the Year