Sweetens Cove pins 2027 for whiskey brand home
American tennis star Andy Roddick and CEO Chris Parsons talk about ambitions for their Tennessee-based Bourbon brand, Sweetens Cove.
Sweetens Cove, a Bourbon brand co-founded by a lineup of celebrity friends and athletes, including former tennis world number one Andy Roddick, changed courses after initially debuting a US$200 Bourbon in May 2020.
“That’s where we started, it was very well reviewed and people loved it,” Roddick tells The Spirits Business of the brand’s initial positioning. “And also we might have created a lane that was a little too precious.”
The limited inaugural batch of Sweetens Cove sold out, as did following batches, but the team then released Kennesse in 2022, a blend of aged Kentucky and Tennessee Bourbons priced at more accessible US$49.99 to bring in fans who may have been priced out by the original offering.
“We wanted to have that same quality, but also to be guilt-free about throwing it in a drink, or sharing it more liberally,” he says.
The brand is described as ‘a liquid extension’ of the course of the same name in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, which Roddick also acquired with NFL legend Peyton Manning, Mark Rivers, Tom Nolan, Rob Collins (owner and designer of the Sweetens Cove golf course) Skip Bronson and singer Drew Holcomb. The group are all passionate golfers, no less.
“When we started there was a contrast between the approachability of the golf course where you rock up (it’s not a private course) and the Bourbon,” Roddick says. “It was an amazing product, but culturally, it didn’t really fit the vibe of the golf course, so we wanted to mirror that with these newest releases.”
The brand’s latest drop in September was a pair of Bourbons – a five-year-old Tennessee straight Bourbon and a six-year-old aged wheated Tennessee Bourbon – priced at US$45 and US$60, respectively.
“That’s where we wanted to be,” Roddick says of finding a sweet spot for pricing.
The Sweetens Cove golf course has a ritual where players take a ceremonial Bourbon on the first tee of their rounds.
“It was a passion project where we fell in love with this golf course at Sweetens Cove, and the more we got to know its fabric and the character, we saw traditions in place and how to celebrate fellowship,” he adds.
“Bourbon was a nice representation, or parallel, for the motivation behind the golf course in the first place, and so we were naive enough to think that we could build a quality product.”
One of the brand’s original investors, and now CEO and a managing partner is Chris Parsons, who spent years at Diageo in marketing roles, including as vice-president of marketing for the drinks giant in the US, where he ran the group that launched Bulleit, Cîroc and Don Julio.
Roddick quips that it’s taken having someone like Parsons and his background in the industry “to save us from our own arrogance with starting a brand”.
“The quality of the product is evidenced by the way that it’s been reviewed, that has always been there, and thankfully now we’re a little smarter on how to get it out to people who can enjoy it for a bit of a lower price point than where we started,” says Roddick.
Despite the luxury pricing conundrum, Parsons believes the brand’s initial offering gave it credibility in the US.
“They were incredibly good whiskeys and allowed us to really put a name on the map from a producer stand point,” Parsons says. But while showing they were serious about whiskey, they also didn’t want to be taking themselves too seriously – a tricky balancing act.
“Navigating from there was making sure that we’ve got the right products that fit the quality and the packaging works for the audience that we’re targeting, and, most importantly, the integration with what Andy was talking about with golf,” Parsons explains.
“This is where we’re doubling down now. That probably wasn’t as obvious in the more recent past, but with this relaunch of the two Bourbons and the refocused efforts in the way that we’re doing it, it’s really about bringing all the magic ingredients together – which was the initial intent, and starting to deliver on that as we move forward.”
Building around golf
According to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), 47.2 million Americans over the age of six played golf in 2024, accounting for both on-course and off-course settings. In addition there were 3.3 million beginners.
Whiskey has attached itself to the sport over the years as big brands like Elijah Craig (sponsor of the PGA Tour and Ryder Cup) and Dewar’s (with US Open) have tapped into its audience.
The difference for Sweetens Cove, Roddick notes, is that the brand was “grown out of golf and witnessing people sharing those moments. We should have a product that they can share at our golf course,” he says.
Parsons calls it an interesting balance: “You’ve got a spirits industry that’s under pressure, even if Bourbon is more resilient than other categories, but overall it’s tough right now. But then you’ve got this golf explosion where there’s millions of people playing golf and it’s growing every year.
“Sweden’s Cove suddenly opens up this world of possibilities for us to talk about golf and talk about whiskey. Other brands might see the connection value, albeit, I don’t think anyone can be as credible and as authentic to golf as us, just given our heritage.”
Building the ‘home of the whiskey’
While the product portfolio will expand, the brand will also be leveraging the golf experience.
The course and the grounds are going through a major facelift with Parsons highlighting the creation of a brand home for Sweetens Cove. “We’re going to be building out an incredible experience at the golf course, adding a lighted par-three course, building some cabins that people can stay in, and creating what is super exciting for us: the home of the whiskey,” Parsons notes.
“We’ll be doing blending and bottling on site and that whole concept is currently in development,” he adds. “Probably 2027 is where we’re pegging it, but we announced that last October and these things take a bit of time. That is going to be another key catalyst for us as we start to accelerate our presence in the country.”
Parsons doesn’t reveal the names of distilleries where Sweetens Cove currently sources its liquid, though they are “only ever high-quality distillery outputs from Kentucky or Tennessee”, but hopes one day that the brand will distil its own spirits on its own site.
“Obviously we don’t have our own distillery, a lot of brands don’t, but in future maybe we’ll have the opportunity to do a little bit of distillation,” he says. “If we’ve got the on-site experience.”
When Sweetens Cove first launched, the brand enlisted Marianne Eaves to develop its blends.
Parsons confirms that Eaves, the first female master distiller in Kentucky since Prohibition, is now focusing on her own projects. “She added a huge amount to Sweetens Cove, great friend of the brand and always will be, but at the moment, we’re navigating our own pathway,” he says.
That said, Parsons notes the brand worked on the new releases with “very experienced people in the industry that know Bourbon very well”.
The brand’s five-year-old Bourbon was designed to be an approachable product. It has a slightly higher corn mash bill, Parsons says, that brings out a flavour profile including butterscotch and caramel.
The Sweetens Cove 6 Years Aged Tennessee Wheated Bourbon was named after the Dunwoody tree that overlooks the course. It has a wheated texture and a different flavour profile to its five-year-old stablemate.
Parsons says they get a 50-50 divide on the pair, but this was the intention: “Some people like one, some people like the other – we know not everyone’s palates are the same.”
Regarding more releases, Parsons and Roddick maintain it’s early days for the September launches and they want to build presence with these first.
Parsons, however, says the next wave of products will be “innovative and around the thought process of golf”.
He adds: “Ideas we’ve already got are golf course-specific and limited editions leveraging times of the year when golf is popular, like Father’s Day [which coincides with the US Open next year].”
Market presence
In terms of distribution, the brand ships to 45 states online with a select nationwide retail presence. The new Bourbons, meanwhile, were launched at select restaurants, bars and golf courses in six states, alongside online availability.
“We wanted to really zero-in on states where we’d either had a bit of success in the past, or where golf is a major factor,” Parsons says of the strategy. “So South and North Carolina, which are obviously big golf areas, and then Tennessee, Colorado and Georgia, which were really great states for us originally – partly due to where the course is, partly due to some of the people involved.
“Those are the places where, in my experience, you want to be able to prove yourself and go deep in. For our growth trajectory, we’ll accelerate when we expand, but we’ll learn a few things in the first year and then roll that out to the wider US going forward.”
Parsons also sees opportunity in direct-to-consumer business for building a nationwide footprint, where the brand is performing well.
“It is not the biggest area of spirits consumption in the US – about 4% of the market – but we see an opportunity there, particularly with our social presence and the type of consumers that we’re connecting with,” he says.
Additionally, there is also a focus on golf experiences and being part of occasions like simulator golf, which Parsons claims is the number-one, fasting-growing on-trade concept across every state.
“We’ve expanded into those pretty quickly and they’re popping up everywhere,” he says. “Sweetens Cove was one of the very first courses to end up in that broadly used TrackMan programme, so you can play the course in all these places. It gives that extra added ingredient to integrate it.”
Considering the brand’s many founding investors, it may be hard to pinpoint who is calling the shots.
“They tell me what to do and I do it,” Parsons jokes.
Roddick says everyone’s on the same page and asserts this no quick celebrity buck-making exercise.
“The easiest lane for us would have been not to be precious about our product and maybe put Peyton’s face all over it – we didn’t choose that route,” he says.
“We were on our board call recently with Drew Holcomb, and Peyton is in the know on everything as well. Drew is literally just calling distributors, trying to get buy-in. So this is a project that we’re all passionate about. We don’t put our signatures on it, we don’t put our faces in front of it, but we’d like to think that we’re some of the shoulders behind it.
“But there’s not a world where I’m going to say, because I played tennis somewhere, sometime, that I know this industry as well as Chris. That’s not a realistic take – or a smart take.”
Roddick doesn’t pretend to be a connoisseur. “I’m kind of trial by fire,” he observes. “Most of our group, Drew especially, and obviously Chris know a tonne about it. I find myself asking questions all the time from learning what the Kentucky hug is to the different proof points and so on.
“I’m the person calling and trying to learn in real time. Someone who wants to know a little bit more about it, but doesn’t want to be intimidated by it. The more I learn about it, the more I also realise the less I know. But it has been really fun learning the intricacies of how something gets made and how this world works.
“I might even be our target consumer…”
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