Tony Bagnulo is an old friend of the program and a friend of mine. Honored to call him that. He’s also a producer of gin. The only locally produced gin in this region happens on Hilton Head Island. If you, you probably heard of Bulrush gin. Yes, it is produced here and Tony is going to join us now to talk about, there it is, to talk about a brand new venture that he has that I think most of you will enjoy.

First of all, welcome sir, how are you?

I did not know a bunch of years ago, you just mentioned to me 10 years ago, you launched Bulrush Gin. Originally it was produced up in Greenville, if I recall correctly. Couple of years ago, you moved production here to Hilton Head Island. How has that process gone the last couple of years since you moved it closer to home?

TB: Well sir, how are you? It’s good to see you. Correct, that’s correct. it’s been great. You know, we have an amazing partnership with Hilton Head Distillery. They’ve been friends really since they they had a distillery up in Greenville, Quince Stanley. They were friends. You know, we had a great partnership up in Greenville with another distillery. kind of outgrew their capacity and Hilton Head distillery basically said like, hey, look, you’re you’re already kind of considered a Hilton Head brand because you live here and because you’re prominent here and obviously in Savannah as well. Just bring it down here. And it’s been great. It’s it’s it’s awesome for me because it’s not a typical like contract distilling arrangement. You know, I’m in there, I’m helping with the process. I’m testing every batch. I still source the botanicals. It’s my formula. You know, I pop in help whenever I can. You know, I’m not there for every single batch. I do taste every batch, but I’m not producing every batch because you know, we got it. We got it, you know, pretty tight with what we’re looking, but good friends, good partnership, good people work on there. They make some good stuff too. So it’s been pretty awesome for sure.

JESSE: That’s great. I’m curious though, know, locally owned once upon a time, locally produced, as we just said, the last couple of years, does that really make a difference in sales when you could say that?

Tony: Yeah, yeah for sure. mean such a big part of our brand. I guess you know sales I would assume you know it’s tough to obviously draw that line between you all those things in direct sales. But to me, when we’re talking to bars and restaurants, when we’re talking to tourists, when we’re talking to retailers, and we say we are the only gin brand distilled on Hilton Head, and we’re distilled, I’m doing a tasting, if I’m doing a tasting at Wine and Spirit Shop and I say, distilled a mile and a half up the road, that means a lot. And people like that, particularly with where we are.

You know, and the fact that we have so many visitors and so many people that are so passionate about, you know, Hilton Head and the low country and all that, it could mean something for sure.

JESSE: I get it. You know, I travel as you know, quite a bit and I’m always interested in the beers wherever I go. And if there’s spirits wherever I go, like, hey, you know, I spent a lot of time down in the 30A area of Florida. There’s a couple of distilleries that have popped up there. And as soon as I found out about them, I wanted to go and see what they were doing. I have that natural curiosity. So what you said is obviously accurate. A lot of people come down this way and like, really a gin made here. I want to try that.

Tony: Yeah.

JESSE: Do you get inquiries, you know, off the grid, not just a tasting from people, Hey, where can I find you?

Tony: All the time, all the time. Where can I find you when I’m back home? Where can I buy you? All these things just from a brand perspective, not to get too deep into a marketing conversation, but when we go to places like New York, we’re available in New York and New Jersey. We’re obviously available in Atlanta. When we go to the northern suburbs of Atlanta and we say Hilton Head brand, that means something to people, right?

Even if they haven’t been here for a couple years, they’re like, you know, I grew up going there. I love it. I know what it’s all about. I watched the Heritage on TV. It does mean something for sure.

JESSE: That’s cool. Well, you, the reason why we we’ve invited you to chat here is because you have a brand new, like incredibly brand new venture. You’ve gotten into the, the RTD market as it’s known in the inner circles, which means ready to drink. You have created Calibougie Cooler. It is a gin and tonic cocktail. Yes?

Tony: That’s it.

JESSE: How long you been working on that?

Tony: You know, so we’ve been kicking around, you know, I say we, it’s me and my wife really, and our friends at the distillery, you know how that goes. But we’ve been kind of kicking around the idea really for a couple years. You know, obviously it’s where we live, people want a canned cocktail. They want to take it on the golf course. They want to take it by the pool, all those types of things. So we’ve been kicking around the idea for a couple of years, we’ve had accounts ask us for it for a couple of years. And was really last August we met an awesome, high quality canning partner that just opened a facility in North Charleston that really kind of allowed us to do it at our spec. It allowed us to actually use actual Bull Rush gin in the product. Allow us to once again stay really, really close to the process.

JESSE: I have found since chatting with you, you know, around the island here or there and chatting with other friends who are involved in that end of the industry, I have found that, you can approach someone who produces it, but there’s a lot of people out there who will tell you, tell us what you want it to taste like, and we’re going to make it with the cheapest stuff we can find. And some people will go for that, but people like you who are interested in using your own product, you have to draw a line. Did you have to go through a few different people to get to these guys in Charleston?

Tony: Yeah, for sure. mean, part of the reason why we didn’t do it was because, we would talk to typical… So first off, you’re not really going to invest in your own canning line at a distillery, right? You’re talking about carbonation and canning and a whole lot of equipment, right? Unless you have a whole bunch of cash. You know, so we were talking to lot of folks over the years of, hey, let’s do a canned Bull Russian cocktail, whatever we’re going to call it. And you hear a couple of things. So first off, like the minimums are insane. Like, yeah, we’ll do it, but you have to do an entire container’s worth. there’s a $30,000…$1,000 upfront brand development fee. Or, yeah, you know we already have a gin and tonic so you just slap your label on it call it Bulrush Gin and tonic and a can and blah blah blah blah.

I was like, no, I’m not going to do that. If it doesn’t actually include Bulrush Gin, I’m not going to do it. If I can’t do a gin and tonic to my specs the way I make a gin and tonic, I’m not going to do it. So we met Chris and he had an awesome spot up there and decided to do it. So that was kind of what we discovered over the years of thinking about it. Yeah.

Jesse Blanco (07:13)
That’s very cool. Now you have the gin and tonic cocktail now available at most liquor stores including Hilton Head Wine and Spirits on Hilton Head Island. Our friend Bob over there is carrying it. But you have another one coming out in a few weeks?

Tony: Yep. We have a blood orange spritz. Unfortunately, I think all I really have, I have some empty cans of it here, but they’re not labeled just yet. Yeah, we have a blood orange spritz coming, but we’ve got a blood orange spritz, know, made with our blood orange Bull Rush gin.

Yeah, that one’s gonna be Blood Orange Gin, a little bit of bitters, a little bit of Prosecco and some club soda. So basically like a spritz, basically, which we’ve actually had that cocktail at a few places around the island and it does really, really well for us. The original plan was actually to launch them together, but dialing in the Blood Orange spritz was a little bit more complicated.

Tony: And I told myself, you know, obviously we wanted to be, we wanted to launch before Heritage. We were pushing pretty hard to do that, but I wasn’t going to launch anything that wasn’t, you 100% what I, what I liked, what I love. So that one’s still a couple of weeks out. So yeah.

JESSE: Totally get it. And as we record this, we are approaching master’s weekend, which means we’re roughly five to six days out from the bulk of Heritage Week. You were telling me it can be found in and around Sea Pines, Quarterdeck might have it, Crazy Crab you said might have it, hit and miss as it ramps up, right?

Tony: We’re gonna let this breathe for a little bit.

We’ll see, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see if other people are asking for other flavors. I mean, you know me, we’ve had Bulrush for 10 years now. We’ve got a regular, we’ve got a barrel aged, and we’ve got the blood orange, and it took us 10 years to get to a canned cocktail. But we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. see what other people are interested in, what people are asking for, what we can come up with. But for now, it’ll be that, and really just kind of focusing on, you

Hilton Head, really going deep on Hilton Head, will be in Savannah available in probably about a month or so. And we’ll probably launch both at the same time there, because both will be ready. So we’ll be with Savannah, Savannah distributing our partners there in about a month. And then Atlanta a little bit after that. And then that’ll probably be it for a while. Just focus on those markets and own those and see where it goes. Yeah.

JESSE: Very good. Very good. Boating season is right. Boating season actually started. We got a little whiff of winter again here this week, but boating season is here. I’ve seen a number of boats out on the water, but the bulk of it, you know, Mother’s Day, it hits the ground running. And so hopefully your product will be in demand. It’s called Calaboguie Cooler. Show us one more time. You can find it.

Tony: Most liquor stores on the island for now coming to Savannah sometime in the month of May. 5.5 % yep so a little bit of a pop but still easy to treat.

JESSE: Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. More than a Pilsner, less than some of my dramatically punch in the face IPAs. Right?

Tony: Exactly. If you could come sell for me, that’s basically what I’d say.

JESSE: I can neither confirm nor deny that I’ve consumed quite a few of all of the whole spectrum, so.

Tony B (11:08)
You’re a professional though, that’s what you do, you gotta do that.

Jesse: Very good. Well, Tony Bagnullo with Bullrush Gin, locally made, locally owned. Find yourself a cooler and throw a bunch of Calabogui sound in there, Calabogui coolers. That was a tongue twister. Find yourself a cooler and throw a bunch of Calabogui coolers in there and enjoy them this summer. Thank you, sir. will see you proudly Heritage. I’ll be running around. Very good. Take care.

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