Last week Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corporation, which owns the Jack Daniels and Woodford Reserve brands, announced it is selling the Southern Comfort brand to the New Orleans-based Sazerac Company.  Many will see this as a homecoming for Southern Comfort.

The original recipe for the whiskey-flavored liqueur is credited to a New Orleans bartender named Martin Wilkes Heron who created the concoction in 1874, which he named “Cuffs and Buttons.”  Heron later moved to Memphis where he began bottling his recipe in 1889, and renamed it “Southern Comfort.”

SoCo, as it’s often called, has stiff competition from flavored whiskeys and has seen a decline in sales in recent years.  But it wasn’t always the case.

Southern Comfort enjoyed a major boost in 1939 when it became one of several companies that tied their brands to the enormously successful film Gone with the Wind.  In the case of SoCo, it was the creation of the “Scarlet O’Hara Cocktail.”

The drink, made with cranberry juice and Southern Comfort with a squeeze of lime, was marketed as the “Grand Old Drink from the South.”  The then New York-based distributors of the brand suggested that customers “try it in a Scarlet O’Hara cocktail, but no more than two lest you be Gone with the Wind.”

Because SoCo is sweet, it has long had the reputation of being more appealing to women.  It was certainly a favorite of ’60s rocker Janis Joplin.

So a few years ago, Southern Comfort sought to increase sales among men with the commercial called “Whatever’s Comfortable.”

While the commercial caught people’s attention, it didn’t draw much of a new male customer base.

It will be interesting to see what Sazerac does in its marketing of Southern Comfort now that it’ll be back in the Crescent City. Personally, I’d recommend some heritage marketing that ties it back to the place where it all began.

Cheers!