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