National expansion for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire

Brown-Forman is to roll out Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire across the US in early 2015 following successful trials of the cinnamon-flavoured whiskey.

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire is being released across the US and in travel retail from 2015

Introduced to just three test states in March this year, Brown-Forman now feels confident that Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire will be a success on a wider scale.

As sales of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey grew 39% in the first six months of the group’s fiscal year, the company is hoping to mirror some of the success with Fire.

“After a favourable consumer and trade response to Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire in its limited test, the company is announcing the nation-wide roll-out of the brand in the United States during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015,” the group said in its H1 2015 financial results.

The national roll-out will follow testing in four key US airports in December, as the group tests the expression’s popularity with international consumers.

It’s thought JD Tennessee Fire will become the first cinnamon-flavoured whiskey in travel retail.

However, Brown-Forman is taking a more considered approach to the expansion of Tennessee Fire to reserve whiskey stocks.

Earlier this year master distiller Jeff Arnett told The Spirits Business: “We are being mindful of how much whiskey we have in the warehouses and not wanting to oversell ourselves. There’s a much bigger opportunity out there for Fire that we’re taking advantage of right now. As we see that we’ve got whiskey to support new markets, we’re opening those up. The future looks very bright for us.”

Flavoured whiskey accounted for 45% of total whiskey category growth in 2013, according to DISCUS, with cinnamon flavours one of the growth drivers of the category.