Welcome to my new series fusing beer with distilleries
throughout the world!
Welcome to Ale's house!
Besides craft beer continuing to grow at a record-setting
pace throughout the U.S., so are the craft distilleries making delicious
spirits such as the vodka from Mississippi’s first legal still, Cathead Distillery. Besides their award-winning products including the Original vodka and the more adventurous
Honeysuckle, Pecan, and Pumpkin Spice,
they are revered for their support of their home state’s live music, culinary
scene, folk art, and especially blues legends who made the South so historic.
To
spread the love past Mississippi’s borders, Cathead also sponsors art events in
Atlanta such as Eric Nine and Shawn Knight’s Unadulterated exhibit in East Atlanta here, so their combined
efforts score big with me; so much so, that I want to make them the first
spirit maker in my new series, Cocktails
With Ale.
To set things off, this will be a two-part series
where I interview the co-founder of Cathead, Richard Patrick, and follow up by creating a craft beer cocktail using
Cathead’s Honeysuckle with a partner of one of my favorite
beer bars in Atlanta, Argosy.
This should be fun!
Here is Richard discussing how he started Cathead with his friend and biz partner Austin Evans in 2010, their
love for music, what separates their vodka from others, what is b.s. in the industry, and the fad of making beer
cocktails. Read on!
Thanks for kicking
it with me, Richard. Let’s get right to it. How did Cathead get started in
Mississippi and please break down the name?
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| Austin Evans and Richard chillin'. |
Richard Patrick: Austin and I are good friends and have always enjoyed
live music, drinking and blues festivals. The more you study music, you’ll
realize the impact blues music has had on the world and it very humble roots
along the Mississippi Delta. Austin is originally from Mississippi and I
followed the music, culture and fascination of a great southern state that didn't have a distillery.
Blues music started in Mississippi and one particular
festival in Clarksdale—the Sunflower Festival—is pretty pure and real. A while
back now—one late night in the Mississippi Delta after a few juke joints we
were posted up on the outskirts of Clarksdale—we were a few whiskeys deep but it
was there where we decided to start a distillery with brands that would make an
impact on the preservation and heritage of the blues culture. From a folk
artist's point of view, ‘Cat’ means a reference of respect when associating
their appreciation towards one another. It was a simple term Delta artists used
which many musicians in all different genres of music use now, such as ‘That’s
a cool cat,’ or ‘That cat can play.’ Son
Thomas was the first musician that we know of who made the term art and
painted and sculpted literally cat heads out of clay.
I am digging that!
So what made you choose vodka and what separates Cathead from the others?
Vodka has never been the end goal for us, but has
certainly been an excellent platform to build and grow our distillery. We
respect vodka. We certainly acknowledge that it’s not the ‘cool’ category of
spirits in your neighborhood craft cocktail bar because most craft cocktail
bars are very gin, whiskey, liqueur and bitters focused. We chose vodka because
there are no aging requirements and that helps a small distillery like
ourselves because we don’t have deep pockets.
Cathead, I suppose, is separated from the pack due to our
regional locality, great ingredients, our sales team who builds relationships,
and certainly our distiller Phillip
Ladner. Phillip has a skill set unmatched by our competitors both large and
small, and is constantly improving our products. Our vodka is truly made in
small batches unlike some brands that boast ‘small batch’ but deplete over a
million cases. Our process inevitably will have to grow and expand, but I don’t
believe we’ll ever lose sight of who we are. I may be thinking alone here, but
you’d have to be crazy to name your product Cathead
and expect to sell over a million cases a year.
Now that’s keepin’
it real!
Yes! One day, I would like Cathead to be more understood,
but that takes time, or at least the approach we are taking. A close industry
friend put it best when he said that he certainly respects our own humility,
beliefs and place while interpreting a region.
What is the
difference between premium vodka, being triple-distilled, etc., or are these
all just gimmicks to sell product?
Marketing. Gimmicks. You can have a great product being
triple distilled, twice distilled, twenty times distilled; ours is six times
distilled. I don’t feel that a statement of how many times a product is
distilled reflects the quality of the product. I feel these terms are more for
people who don’t know or don’t care to learn what it means. It’s more like a
false quality statement. There’s more to vodka than just how many times it’s
distilled.
Is there anything
else that irks you in the industry?
What I dislike more in this spirits category are ratings.
Generally, these are false quality statements that are marketed hard. As far as
big agency, brand owners and managers are concerned with you pay to play, you know,
like pay for good ratings and reviews. It all boils down to marketing spending,
not whether a product is truly worthy of a 90-point review or higher. In the
last five years or so, there have been so many new rating companies too, all
trying to make a buck. You can’t blame them or can you? I suppose pay to play
for ratings is not new or just limited to just vodka or spirits, but to all consumer markets. Marketing.
I am learning a
sh*tload here, Rich. Discuss your flavors and what you have coming out next.
We are not trying to bastardize the market with flavors.
We use real natural ingredients. Our Honeysuckle has been a crowd pleaser and
is true to Cathead. Pecan has been my favorite to work on; this, like all our
products, takes time. Pecan has been a learning curve to the everyday home
bartender, but for those who are more cocktail savvy, we've seen some pretty wild creations. I simply like my Pecan on the rocks.
What about coming
out with other flavors?
Our objective at Cathead is to be unique. If we choose to
put a flavor out, it's never to just put something out. Timing is pretty key
when bringing products to market. We’ve certainly lost out on market share in
the past, but we always want to make sure we are putting out our best work.
You see, a lot of large agency brands bang out artificial
flavors that are over-perfumed and undrinkable like flavors of the day. The
problem with these large flavor portfolio brands is that they muscle this stuff
out into the market with no intention of a reorder or the product ever making
it to the consumer. You see a lot of retailers get stuck with shelves of bad
products they cannot sell because it’s part of a sales deal or incentive. Flavor
extensions are simply approached to beef up their balance sheets with no care
of the negative impact that will have to their brand’s reputation over time.
We hope that we are building Cathead the right way by not
trying to make a quick buck. I’m happy
with the way things are going and we have great people who work for us and fantastic
distribution partners. For example, Savannah
Distributing is a family owned distributorship in Georgia who are proven
brand builders. They have taken the time to build and align their portfolio
with quality brands. The folks at Savannah truly believe in the products they
sell, our philosophies are alike, and at the end of the day, these are the kind
of fellas you also enjoy and look forward to having a drink with.
That’s a nice Savannah
shout out. Okay, let’s talk brew. Have you considered beer-infused cocktails?
Most beers are magical concoctions in their own right. I
feel beer cocktails have their place. I proceed with caution in this category
of beer cocktails because I don’t like fads and trends; for the sake of
argument, they will probably become forgotten again.
I hear you and
trust me, I am a beer purist, but every once in a while, I will come across a
cocktail that will make me admit they mixologist knows how to pimp out a beer’s
flavors.
True. In fact, I think shandies are fun. Most people who
have never had a beer cocktail before are surprised when I tell them there’s
beer in their drink. In my opinion, a good beer cocktail recipe to is our Lazy Cat recipe on the website. It’s a
batch cocktail for spring and summer parties. It’s just a good all-around beer
cocktail to knock back.
Well I might have
to add to that Cathead cocktail list when I get my homey Armando Celetano from the
Argosy to mess around and create one with local brewery Three Taverns in Part 2
of ‘Cocktails with Ale.’ What do you think of that?
Bring it!
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| Argosy's Armando Celetano is about to hook it up! |
To find out more
about Cathead and all of the cool things they do, check out their website at catheadvodka.com. Stay tuned for Part 2 where we make an actual beer-infused cocktail with Cathead's Honeysuckle Vodka!
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