CPJ to lift local spirits with ‘Crown Jewel’ Fireball
Published:Thursday | June 22, 2023 | 12:31 AMJanet Silvera/Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
For years, Jamaica has been giving the world the best it has to offer through fashion, food, music, and it’s only fair for the global village to have access to the best the island has to offer.
These are words of conviction from Kemmar Lewis, regional category manager at Caribbean Producers Jamaica (CPJ), as they release a new whisky under their portfolio called Fireball.
In fact, Fireball is so highly regarded by the spirits giants, chairman and co-founder Tom Tyler has tagged it the “crown jewel”, promising that the whisky, which is already a global force, pushing 10 million cases in sales annually for its international partner Sazerac, will be unrivalled in the Jamaican market.
The island has always been known as rum country – and the people, rum people – but with bitters added to the taste profile, CPJ says what it’s adding to the Jamaican palate is an appreciation of something more than sweet. “Therefore, Jamaica now will evolve in its profile when it comes to taste to now sweet and bitter, which opens up a vast amount of possibilities when it comes to cocktails,” said Lewis.
He sees Fireball moving the Jamaican market from being a mixed-drink culture to more intermediate and complex cocktails, things that were never normally acceptable here. And he justifies this, giving a picture that as the largest importer of spirits to the island, CPJ is about more than product. “We are about enhancing the industry, and we are leaders in that regard.”
There is hardly anyone who could argue that point, owing to the company’s track record with Red Bull, when it first came to Jamaica, doing 800,000 cases annually, becoming the rage in the energy drink market.
Now on the path of a new phenomenon, with the drink best consumed ice-cold, Tyler is predicting Fireball will be a sure-fire favourite for not only Jamaican whisky lovers, but casual drinkers as well.
“Sazerac are the second-largest producers of spirits in the United States and the third-largest producers in the world of 40 per cent alcohol. The company’s number one product, the jewel in the crown, is Fireball,” he told The Gleaner.
Fireball has just moved to the number two spot in spirits consumption in the United States as well. CPJ carries four of the top five alcohol brands in the United States and all categories of its business have been growing exponentially. “We have been representing the Bacardi brand for 22 years, Brown Foreman (Jack Daniel’s) for 20 years, Remy brands, Tito’s and Smirnoff. Out of the top five spirits in the US we represent four,” revealed Tyler.
Sazerac portfolio
The CPJ chairman said that when estimating the current “business” of the Sazerac portfolio, which was about US$4 million in sales worldwide, prior to CPJ assuming responsibility, it is the company’s view that not only will it grow exponentially, but could conceivably reach US$12 million a year eventually.
The company’s senior brand manager, Jermaine Brown, concurred, adding that Fireball, which is a cinnamon-flavoured whisky, just so happens to marry the best of two worlds in the form of ‘a candy-type of big red flavour’.
“Now this candy would have been known with the baby boomers [and] Generation X. So it’s the mature drinker, [but] 25 and older are now gravitating to this type of concoction. It’s easy drinking as well, which can be had like a RTD (ready to drink).”
The good thing though, he says, is that this drink is a party starter, so it doesn’t matter what the drinker’s preferred category of alcohol is. “If you are a gin drinker, vodka or cognac drinker, it is the perfect way for you to start your evening.”
Heavily catering to the hospitality market over the years, Tyler observed that when CPJ started out in 1994, people drank rum and fortified wine in Jamaica.
“The palate of the general Jamaicans have changed.”
Under the brands they carry, Fireball would be the most widely distributed whisky. CPJ carries over 4,000 products under its portfolio and will be the exclusive distributors of the drink, which is extremely popular as a miniature 50ml shot, but also offers 200 ml, 750ml and one-litre bottles.