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By Richard Thomas
(Credit score: Richard Thomas)
The Thanksgiving weekend was marred for bourbon followers by the announcement on Thursday that Kentucky Owl’s guardian firm was in chapter court docket. Stoli Group, finest generally known as the homeowners of Stoli Vodka but additionally homeowners of Kentucky Owl and different manufacturers, filed for Chapter 11 chapter in a Texas court docket on Wednesday. They listed over $100 million in belongings, however between $50 and $100 million in liabilities.
Chapter 11 is the kind of chapter the place an organization or particular person seeks safety from collectors from the courts, granting them respiration room to reorganize, dump belongings or search new traces of financing/funding. Entities getting into Chapter 11 ultimately intend to emerge from chapter in a position to meet some or all of their obligations.
That is the third chapter from a whiskey firm within the latter half of this yr. In August, the longest operating whisky distillery in Sweden, Mackmyra, went into receivership. They had been later rescued from chapter in October. Earlier this week, phrase got here from Eire that Waterford Distillery was apparently in default, having been put into receivership on the behest of its bankers.
The Stoli announcement is totally different, nevertheless, in that Stoli’s portfolio is far bigger than Mackmyra and Waterford, each of which had been impartial whisky-makers. Kentucky Owl is a sourced model owned by a bigger liquor firm, and Stoli itself blames its monetary predicament not on Kentucky Owl, however on a hunch of their wine gross sales.
The model was based in 1879 by Charles Dedman, who constructed a distillery and launched The Wiseman Bourbon. The Kentucky Owl and its related manufacturers went defunct throughout Prohibition, to be revived in 2014 by Charles Dedman’s descendant, Dixon Dedman. The sourced bourbon model was bought by Stoli in 2017; Dedman stayed on as a model ambassador, however his accomplice left the corporate after the acquisition. Dedman adopted a number of years later, taking part within the basis of the two XO bourbon model. Stoli employed on Maureen Robertson, lately retired from Diageo, as Grasp Blender in 2023, and introduced plans to develop a Nelson County, Kentucky quarry website into a brand new distillery advanced in 2022. Regardless of repeated bulletins that the $150 million undertaking is on monitor, it’s properly behind it’s schedule as acknowledged first in 2020 after which once more in 2022.
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