The Cocktail Creationist - Story about the man behind Grey Goose | Hacker News Reader

The Cocktail Creationist - Story about the man behind Grey Goose

nymag.com

30 pointssr3d14 comments

The article (published in 2005) says that Sidney Frank's company "can’t launch a new brand of vodka or gin for the next four years." According to Wikipedia, he sold the manufacturing rights to Bacardi in 2004. His noncompete has expired - I wonder what he's working on now?

Edit: Guess he's not up to anything. Wikipedia: "Before his death on January 10, 2006 at the age of 86 ..."

Convincing people to pay exorbitant amounts of money for an odorless, tasteless liquid is surely one of the most brilliant marketing ideas of all time.

From http://www.ttb.gov/rulings/97-1.htm: The standard of identity for vodka was promulgated in 1949, in T.D. 5707, 1949-2 C.B. 252. The standard for vodka provided that it was neutral spirits distilled from any material at or above 190 proof, reduced to not more than 110 proof and not less than 80 proof and, after such reduction in proof, so treated as to be without distinctive character, aroma, or taste. Although no explicit definition of the term "distinctive" could be found in the hearing record, the testimony indicates that vodka is to be as tasteless and odorless as possible.

I don't know that folks need much convincing to buy alcohol, especially stuff that is like a blank palette for mixing drinks.

People also don't need much convincing to buy luxury products to signal to other folks it seems.

Different vodkas do taste different, notwithstanding the official standard, and typically the premium ones tend to be better. I have tried blind taste tests. Neutral or not, there are still trace amounts of all sorts of compounds after distillation. Cheap vodkas seem harsh and may have an aftertaste. Premium vodkas are generally smoother in character. I find potato vodkas in particular to have more of a sweet and creamy flavor profile.

best quote: "If you meet any important people,” he said, “keep in touch with them . . . And marry a rich girl. It’s easier to marry a million than to make a million.”

I came across an interesting article "Can malt whisky be discriminated from blended whisky? The proof. A modification of Sir Ronald Fisher's hypothetical tea tasting experiment." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550199/ via a blog post over at http://keepyourspiritsup-faune.blogspot.com/2008/12/grey-goo...

Basically, its all about creating a perception of value.

I'd never even heard of Grey Goose (shows how in touch with 'hip' society I must be) but the "Stop Acting Rich" book by Stanley seemed to obsess over it. I had the audio book and it felt like he'd gone on for two hours about how dumb it was to buy Grey Goose if you couldn't afford it, and that 'real millionaires' don't buy it. I guess I'm not surprised to learn it is a very recent invention, seemingly created specifically to target the late internet-boom 'new rich' generation's desire to signal wealth.

Really though, you can get Grey Goose for thirty bucks a bottle, compared to twenty bucks for something like Absolut or maybe a few dollars less for Smirnoff. If the extra ten dollars a bottle you pay to drink the better vodka is a significant part of your budget, you'd have to be drinking way too much vodka.

Now, if you're paying $300 for the same bottle of Grey Goose in order to get "VIP" table service at some nightclub, then that falls into the dumbass-desire-to-signal-wealth category.

It is not just about $10 once, it is a mindset. You can use the same excuse to markup everything you buy, and you end up spending a lot more in a week/month/year than you would have.

Hey, if that is worth it to you, then no problem, but I know that it is not worth it to me. When you have drunk that $30 bottle of vodka, I would be happier with the $10 extra I have, and being just as sated.

Of course you can also use the same reasoning to buy the cheapest-available option regardless of quality in everything you do. Live in a tiny studio apartment. Wear ten-dollar Walmart jeans and whatever t-shirts you can obtain for free. But if you're earning a decent income the only result of this is that you wind up dead with millions of dollars in cash in the bank. What's the point?

Unless you're at the poverty line, it's rational to pay a bit more to get stuff that's more enjoyable. (And if you are at the poverty line, you shouldn't be buying vodka at all). Whether it's worth paying 50% more for Grey Goose rather than Smirnoff is an entirely personal decision and depends whether you actually like it better... personally I don't like vodka much anyway.

My point: there's a lot of stupid overconsumption going on out there, but Grey Goose Vodka, being a probably-better product at a modestly higher price, isn't really a good symbol of it.

If someone had asked me how long Grey Goose had been around I would of said forever - I guess that is a testament to their great marketing and pricing. Now I know the rest of the story.

The only premium Vodka I would ever consider buying is Crystal Head Vodka, because you get a badass Crystal Skull after you're done drinking the Vodka!

The story, at the height of LSU’s Jager boomlet, quotes kids calling the herb- infused drink “liquid Valium,” and theorizing that Jager was an aphrodisiac. When Sidney Frank saw this, he flew into action, assembling a team of hot chicks, dubbed Jagerettes, and dispatching them to New Orleans bars to hand out photocopies of the story.

:\ Marketing genius? Cool. Getting rich selling date rape? Less cool.

Although I guess that goes for everyone in the alcohol industry...

Edit: Turns out date rape is one of the things you can't criticize on HN. Who knew.

Edit 2: Wow, really? I'm disgusted. You five guys are dicks. I know, I know, no greater sin than complaining about downvoting, but this is disgraceful.

For the benefit of future generations of hackers reading this, I'm not opposed to alcohol or the producers of alcohol at all. I'm in college myself, and drink to excess as often as I can get away with.

Furthermore, I love casual sex (although I can't get away with that at all these days), and I absolutely do not believe that having sex while drunk makes it "date rape".

However, I feel that modern alcohol marketing which emphasizes that getting women drunk is the only way you are ever going to get laid is despicable, and does bear at least some very real responsibility for the uncounted thousands of very real rapes of intoxicated women that take place every year.

And if you disagree with me about that, but can't bring yourself to use your words to say it in public, yes, that makes you a dick.

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