Peyton Manning, partners connect latest Sweetens Cove bourbon launch with helping small golf courses

A year after his team’s Sweetens Cove bourbon debuted in Colorado, Peyton Manning still gets the same feeling when he sees the product on display.

“I’ll go to Tavernetta and see it behind the bar and I think that’s pretty cool,” he said in a phone interview with The Denver Post.

Also pretty cool for Manning and the 37 other partners that make up the Sweetens Cove team is the launch this week of the Kennessee product, a bourbon blending Kentucky and Tennessee bourbons by master blender Marianne Eaves.

The cost of each bottle is $60, and to emphasize how this idea was created by visiting the nine-hole Sweetens Cove golf course in Tennessee, the company is unveiling the “Give-A-Little Project.” Five dollars from the first 1,000 bottles sold will be donated to small golf courses for improvements. Courses can be nominated by direct messaging @sweetenscovespirits on Twitter.

“There are a lot of golf courses out there that could use a little help,” said Manning, citing range mats, new benches, fixing ice machines or even re-paving a parking lot as examples.

Said Mark Rivers, a Sweetens Cove partner: “We’re really proud of our direct lineage to golf — if it wasn’t for the course, there wouldn’t be this bourbon.”

The Sweetens Cove brand was created after Manning, Rivers and others heard about the tradition at the golf course of taking a shot of bourbon on the first tee and leaving the bottle behind for the next group (or groups) of players.

Last year, Sweetens Cove bourbon debuted in Colorado at $200 per bottle.

“Colorado was one of our better markets,” Rivers said. “It’s always been a great whiskey state and there are so many local producers that have carved out their market share and their loyalty. To come into the state new and have (the product) embraced has been really special for us. We were really flattered by the response.

“We came into the market (last year in the spring/summer) and a lot of the mountain towns said, ‘Wait until the winter,’ so we did.”

The Sweetens Cove group has grown to 38 partners, led by Rivers, Manning, former tennis player Andy Roddick, Los Angeles real estate developer Skip Bronson, musician Drew Holcomb, golf course designer Rob Collins and Texas businessman Tom Nolan. Rivers said they have hired a sales representative based in Colorado.

“We’ve been profitable every minute we’ve operated, literally from Day One, which makes us a unique animal in our space,” Rivers said. “We have the benefit of marketing premium products that tend to operate at a higher (profit) margin and we run a lean, mean, operating machine. We literally don’t have an office.”

The lower-priced bottles are aimed at a wider consumer base in addition to being placed in more liquor stores and restaurants.

“That was really the biggest thing in this launch, to make it more accessible to all types of consumers and all types of bourbon fans,” Manning said. “At the beginning, to try and get on the map, we thought it made more sense to launch a premium bottle that was limited and harder to find and a little bit of a treasure hunt to find because it’s so competitive and there are a lot of producers out there. We think that worked.”

Manning has put work into promoting the product, which is available in 12 states, including all with his roots (he grew up in Louisiana, played college football in Tennessee and played pro football in Indiana and Colorado).

“He’s been great,” Rivers said. “We went into Indiana and he was just a force moving about that state and there are stories of him cold-calling liquor stores trying to get placement and he had to call 2-3 times to convince them it wasn’t a prank call.”

Manning went 4-0 against Kentucky as the Volunteers’ quarterback and said the rivalry was and remains “intense.”

“When I got to Tennessee, just meeting the fans, their grandparents had been going to Tennessee games and beating Kentucky was important,” he said. “It’s a serious rivalry, there’s no doubt about it, but nobody has tried to bring them together in this way.”

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