Akvavit

And there are army bunkers riddled through this property.

And one of them right down below us is where they store the Akavit.

So it's aging in an old artillery bunker.

Well, why not? Why not? What a use for it.

That is the

safest whiskey in the world.

Well, actually, it's only Akavit.

Akavit.

I might want to have a little sidecar with my frosty cold beer of rye whiskey.

Why not go Aquavit? Aquavit would be a great… Just a caraway? Sure, sure, sure.

Oh, man, yeah.

Oh, and not something I always say, but I would like that Aquavit out of the freezer.

Yes.

I'm usually a neat person, you know, off the shelf, not out of the freezer.

Hot dog aquavit.

Hot dockavit.

[laughs]

Woody you don't necessarily expect, do you? Um, uh, Maker's Mark Bourbon, Tayber Aged Aquavit.

Oh, damn.

As if it's not alco-holic enough, they lob some aquavit in.

Eau de vie in French.

Akvavit in Scandinavia.

Whiskey from the Gaelic uistatha.

Every one of them still saying water of life, long after anyone meant it literally.

And in some cases, I'll leave the category even if I don't have a lot of entries.

Aquavit would be a good example or Absinthe.

I might get two to five entries every year in each of those categories.

I'm going to leave it anyway because it's just an important category to have.

So what's in here?

This is the Saltfjord Ketch, and it is based on Aquavit, which is basically the national liquor of Norway.

It also has elderflower liqueur in it, lingonberry syrup, and a little bit of lemon juice, and then it has a float of ginger beer on top.

Beautiful.

It's just this, why'd you come over? You looked at me thing from Mad Men.

It's like, also, they're drinking Aquavit, which is, like, frozen into a block of ice.

This is really advanced, like, drinking technology over

here.

What else?

Aquavit and brandy are our main things we're doing right now.

And one of the fascinating things is like with our vodka and stuff, everything is grape based.

So I use wine as my base and anything can become a vodka as long as it's distilled to over 95% alcohol and then charcoal filtered.

You built your career from the bottom up.

How do you create demand for your brand? Because Aquavit is a very specific category, which is very interesting because it's very known in the Nordic countries.

Then when you go outside the Nordic countries, everybody has heard about it, visiting the Nordics, but it's not really something that They can connect directly to a consumption occasion.

Do you talk about your brand or do you talk about your category or do you tap on a wider category? We need to build the

So we don't go brand specific.

We build the category talking about the brand stories and retentions first.

But there are specific moments with Aquavit where you have this togetherness.

You have the traditional serves, which are normally short occasion paired with food for around Christmas, midsummer solstice and Easter.

Well, anyhow, let's not talk business now.

If you've got to stick to beer, Pete, make it a chaser to Aquavit.

What is Aquavit? Well, I will just take and show you." A hell of a good bloke.

He knew some very funny stories, too, and he laughed at Mathony's, though they were probably too rustic for a big city taste like his.

"What I really want," said Mathony, "what I really want, I mean, what Mars really needs, get me, is a confidence man." "A what?" "The best and slickest one on Earth, to operate a world-sized con game for us and make us some real money." "Con man? Oh, a slipstring." "A con by any other name," said Mathony, pouring down an Aquavit.

Duran squinted through cigarette smoke.

"You are interesting me strangely, my friend.