How Fords Gin Became a Bartender Favorite

Around 2008, Milk & Honey’s Sasha Petraske proposed making a gin. I pushed back: We don’t need more gins! But he convinced me. My collaborator was Thames Distillers’ Charles Maxwell. His family has been making gin in London since 1681. We get input from 149 bartenders. Hendrick’s was so successful that the London Dry–style was relegated to old brands like Tanqueray. Bartenders wanted a gin that tastes of juniper. They want extra ABV and viscosity.

We develop a recipe for bartenders. Bittersweet Seville orange; grapefruit and lemon peel for acidity; coriander, which is also citrusy; angelica and orris roots for spice; cassia to pair with mint in cocktails; jasmine to go with honey; and plenty of wild juniper. At 45% alcohol, it’s robust but balanced—a modern take on a classic style, at a price that helps bartenders hit their pour cost.

Lynnette Marrero, cofounder of Speed Rack, wanted a bottle that fit her grasp. We contoured and elongated the neck and tapered the base to provide plenty of ways to grab it. We added measures on the side, listed the botanicals and their origins on the label. We wanted to be transparent.

I launched The 86 Company to make spirits with bartenders. We worked with Employees Only on a rum, Pravda on a vodka, Mayahuel on tequila. Fords Gin won Best New Spirit at Tales. But the accolades are only as good as the amount of product I have to sell. No one extended me credit, and when I did get an investment, it took months to get liquid into bottles. Behind the curtain, I’m sleeping on couches.

There are good investors and bad investors. Occasionally one just wants the biggest slice of pie, and when I’m desperate, I say yes. Not knowing how to write an investment deal proved costly. In 2019, we were acquired by Brown-Forman.

I have taken three calls recently with entrepreneurs that want to start spirits brands. My advice is don’t do it for the money. Do it because you love it. It sounds flaky, but the reason Fords still exists is love. I put it out to the universe, making phone calls, producing decks, taking meetings.

There’s freedom in entrepreneurship. In corporate culture, you’re not in control. Your ideas get diluted. But you leave work at 5 p.m., which is healthy. You get resources for your brand. Fords just launched an industry-only bar attached to Thames Distillery. No way I could have dreamed of that as an independent. We host bartenders there and also show them how London is flexing its creative juices—how Lyaness, Tayēr + Elementary, and A Bar With Shapes for a Name push the boundaries; how Satan’s Whiskers and Three Sheets perfect the classics; how gin culture flourishes at our hotels. You don’t go to London and not drink a martini at The Connaught and one at The Savoy. You’re having both.

I had to be close to corporate headquarters, so now I live in Nashville. I go to Tiger Bar for martinis, the tropical Pearl Diver, our branch of New York’s Attaboy, the fancy Four Walls Bar, the fantastic bar above Sean Brock’s Audrey, where they’re always making something different. It isn’t London or New York, but the scene is growing.

And gin itself is slowly growing. We have a volatile global spirits market. No one knows what’s going to happen. Luckily, gin hasn’t gone crazy. It will never be the biggest spirit, but it will always do its thing. Spain is great for gin, and Australia and Brazil. Africa has a remarkably interesting gin market. I went to a festival and tasted 25 different African gins. There are lots of new bartenders since COVID, and it’s an inspirational spirit for them to work with.

Everything in the bar world continues to excite me. We’ve seen amazing creativity over the last 20 years. But there’s this trend of people not going out. Being convivial, connecting, making new friends. If people don’t go out, we won’t fuel the machine that provides these essential services. In my wildest dreams, I want to walk around the world with a camera behind me or film the right person and show everyone all this wonderful bartending. Maybe we create the Anthony Bourdain of cocktails. Armchair travelers need to see what’s going on.