People in and around Savannah take their liquor seriously. Everyone has an opinion on the best vodka, whiskey, or gin.
One brand you may have seen at restaurants in the Lowcountry and Coastal Georgia is Bulrush Gin. Jesse Blanco caught up with the owner, Tony Bagnulo, to find out what it takes to make a standout gin.
Your story I find fascinating, and we’ve known each other for a few years now, but you kind of came into this… and there was a reason why I called you the Jesse Blanco of Bulrush Gin… because you were doing something completely different. It overlapped with gin, and you thought I’ll do that. It sounds like fun, and it took off, right?
That’s it. The story I’ve been telling is basically, you know I had to take…. I had a marketing firm for 20 years. I’ve worked on big brands: Johnny Walker, Ketel One, Jagermeister, Bacardi. I worked on a bunch of big brands.
I was doing consulting for a bunch of craft distillers going on about five years ago. One of my first clients was a distillery right outside of Greenville, South Carolina. Hanging out in their distillery one day, kind of talking, shooting the breeze, and I asked if they wanted to launch a gin brand.
They were like, eh. We don’t really want to get into gin. We’re going to stick with whiskey. We’re going to stick with our thing.
And I basically said, hey, can you help me launch a gin brand. They said sure. No problem. That was the censored version of what they said.
Then, of course, I realized I’ve worked on several big gin brands. I’ve worked on Sapphire. I worked on Tanqueray. I helped launch Monkey 47 in the U.S.
I didn’t know how to make gin, so I basically taught myself how to make gin. Tinkered around with the botanicals in my kitchen here in Hilton Head, SC. And voila!
I made a lot of bad gin before we finally made Bulrush Gin. A really, really good gin. That was about five years ago, and the rest is history.
How much? I mean, it took you ten seconds to say, “I tinkered with some botanicals in my kitchen.” But how much effort went into your first attempt.
A lot. A lot of it was the actual process of making gin, right? And going up there and trying different batches, testing, and all those things. But it was really just the research and trying to figure out that base of what the jumping-off point was.
I’ve worked on gins off and on for 20 years. I have a general understanding of the process, but when you really start talking about how many pounds of juniper berries to a proof gallon of spirit and how many pounds of coriander to juniper and how many pounds of angelica to coriander to juniper, trying to get those ratios and do that research, trying to find a base recipe. That was honestly, the toughest part.
A lot of research. A lot of talking to people. A lot of searching online trying to find old distilling manuscripts. I finally found an old distilling manuscript from the mid 1800s, which is basically like a technical manual. It was basically the recipe for gin in the mid 1800s. That was like the Holy Grail for me, but that kind of became the jumping off point.
From there, I saw that recipe. I tweaked the amount of juniper that I wanted to have. I added some local ingredients like ginger and lavender and fresh citrus. I dropped the licorice root. I added a bit more coriander, and that was kind of the jumping off point. Then we made some batches.
How many batches did you go through before you thought, okay, we’re right about there?
A lot. The funny story about the first full-scale batch I made I really messed up badly. I let my wife try it, and she’s a very beautiful but very candid woman. She was like, yeah, that’s not it. Try again.
How long a time of trial and error?
From the time of I Want to Launch a Brand to launch, it was a full year of trial and error.
That’s not too bad.
Yeah, it wasn’t too bad.
Once we kind of had that formula right. Keep in mind that testing the original formula was all literally done on my kitchen counter in vases like this. Mastering botanicals, going to the farmers market, ordering botanicals online. There’s a lot of scale up, scale down. Trying to figure out how different botanicals interact with each other.
So you end up with a product you’re comfortable with. How hard was it? The business is brutal. I’ve talked to plenty of guys who have attempted to make something big. You had connections already clearly. Did you spin the local angle to try to breakthrough?
I can tell you that if I look at my original business plan, and I look at what’s happening now, we’re happy with the business. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, but we’ve tweaked it a couple of times.
I can tell you I’ve been in the industry for 20 years. I’ve got contacts with distributors, contacts with retailers. I’ve worked on some of the biggest brands in the world. Going from big brands, massive brands, thinking I know this industry to going with no distribution, no exposure, no awareness, bootstrap finances, it was humbling.
We had our first distributor in South Carolina and we’re all excited when we got our first order from them. I was like, okay.
How big was it? Can you tell us?
I’d rather not. I can tell you their first order is probably what we’re selling once a day on Hilton Head now.
I don’t know if you know this, but I grew up in Georgia. We’re with Savannah Distributing throughout the state. I’ve known those guys almost as long as I’ve been in this industry. Great friends, great partners. Guys I’ve known since they were a small distributer in Atlanta. Known them for 20 years, but still, it is a grind.
We go out and we sell one account, one person, one bartender, one chef at a time. You’ve seen what we’ve done at Savannah Food and Wine, Hilton Head Seafood Fest. That’s what we do.
Here you are five years later. You’ve broken into Florida. You’re in, obviously, South Carolina. You were telling me earlier Kentucky.
We’re in eight states now. We are in South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio (our second biggest market), we’re in Kentucky, we’re in New York and New Jersey, we just launched Florida. We’re in Connecticut through an online retailer. We’ve got a couple of retailers in Connecticut. So what is that? Eight? Nine?
It’s been intentional slow growth. Just opening one market at a time.
I have to ask. New York must be so ridiculously competitive to get into. How hard is that?
Yeah, that’s another humbling experience because I spent about 12 years living in New York. I spent most of my industry living in New York City. My first two kids were born in New York. Of course, I worked on the big brands in New York.
Same thing. New York. Got it. Cracked. No problem. Same thing. But really anytime you launch a new state, you’re starting from zero.
The way that the distribution network works, you go in, you launch a sales force, then your retailers, your bartenders, you get new chefs behind you, you get new restaurateurs behind it. You’re just starting over, starting over, starting over.
That’s awesome, though. It’s great. It’s the stuff that I love.
Well, for those who are listening or watching this, what makes your gin different?
The thing that we say about Bulrush is if you’re a gin drinker, you’re going to love us. But also if you’re not a gin drinker, you’re going to love us.
Were you a gin drinker before you started this?
I’m a gin drinker. I drink craft beer, whiskey, and gin. That’s it.
The Holy Trinity.
I love gin. I’m a gin purest. I like traditional styles of gin, but a lot of people who are coming into the gin category, a lot of people have a preconceived notion of what gin should be, or they had a bad experience with it, or they smell it and it’s like ooh, it’s piney, juniper. I don’t like that.
So we’ve been able to bring people into the gin category because we have we’re all those things. We’re heavy pine and juniper and we have a lot of flavor, but because of the other things we have going on like ginger, lavender, and fresh citrus, we’re a little more approachable.
Also, if you are a gin purest and you like traditional styles of gin, you’re going to like us because we have juniper and coriander, angelica.
You make 500 bottles at a time, and that’s kind of how we’ve done it.
It’s all being made in Greenville at the original spot with your friends, right?
That’s right. It’s a great partnership, friendship, collaboration. I’m still very close to the production process. It’s a little different than your typical contract distilling arrangement. We’re the only brand they make that’s not their own. I still score the botanicals. I still stay very close to the process. I try to test pretty much every batch I can.
Testing batches. That’s like me telling my wife I’m going to eat.
That’s right. Aw, honey, I’m on a Zoom meeting it’s work. Exactly.
Yeah. It’s work. Leave me alone.
I’ve seen your stuff around Savannah, but I would think you have a pretty significant saturation on Hilton Head.
Yeah, I mean, we’re in every retailer in Hilton Head, Bluffton, most of Beaufort. We’re in a lot of retailers in Savannah as well. Got a smaller restaurant footprint in Savannah, but between Hilton Head and Bluffton, at last check, we’re in about 56 restaurants.
Nice! Quick plug to Hilton Head Wine and Spirits in Shelter Cove. Big supporter of Eat It and Like It. You can also find it there. I’ve seen it on the shelf myself.
They have been tremendous partners of ours since day one. We have had people, retailers, restaurants, bars who have really gotten behind the brand. They push it. They sell it. When someone comes in from Ohio or Pennsylvania, if they’re looking for a local product, they push our product. Love those folks, man.
We’ll wrap it up by asking you… you’re a gin drinker so what is your favorite way to consume it?
Let’s see. Like a Collins. Something simple. If I can get another plug in, we have these Collins glasses. It’s simple, easy. Obviously, we’re getting into some cooler months by South Carolina standards, Collins is pretty simple. An ounce and a half of Bulrush Gin, squeeze half a fresh lemon, about half an ounce of simple syrup, pour it over ice, add some club soda, drink it.
More recipes are available online at BulrushGin.com. You can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
