Trinity River Distillery believes there is an opening for the US business to help reignite consumer interest in gin. Like several categories in the US, gin sales are under pressure but the Texas-based distiller is investing behind its Devil’s Grin Texas gin brand, which has become the business’ lead product.
Just Drinks sat down with Trinity River shareholder and CEO Tom Ingham – formerly of Bacardi and Pernod Ricard – to hear more about the distiller’s plan to build a national footprint for the two-year-old gin brand in a challenging US spirits market.
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Dean Best (DB): Trinity River Distillery is in around 20 states. Where are you focusing?
Tom Ingham (TI): With the launch of the gin, it changed our strategy. Because of the notoriety we’d received out of the gate, having 16 SKUs and growing was a little hard to manage. We were kind of the typical craft distillery – the Russian doll: I have a vodka, I have a gin, I have a cordial, etc.
I really wanted to understand what the opportunity was for gin and therefore looked at prioritising not only resource allocation but priority to market in the top ten gin‑consumption states in the US. As it stands today, we have some of those: Georgia, Texas, California and Florida. We’re in talks with a distributor in New York, so hopefully from September we’ll be in New York. That would give us an anchor to work on those Eastern Seaboard states that tend to have a higher CDI index for gin consumption and are some of the higher‑volume states overall.
DB: You’ve announced a marketing push behind the gin. Is this one of the bigger ones in terms of spend?
TI: Well, $5m is definitely big for any company for this category. If you look at Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire combined last year they didn’t spend that much on marketing in the US. For this category this is significant. It’s a big bet, for sure.
DB: Why are you making this bet on gin now?
TI: I think somebody’s got to do it. Somebody has to take a stand and say: you know what, clear-spirit drinkers, there’s more than blanco Tequila, there’s more than vodka. Rum has been in no‑man’s land for many years. I used to work at Bacardi; I know a lot about rum.
If you look at gin as a neutral spirit flavoured with nature’s spice rack, there’s a lot of appeal there. Younger consumers – millennials, Gen Z – are more interested in what they put in their bodies. The days of artificial lemon and artificial strawberry that taste artificial are, for a large part of the population, in the rear window. If there is an opportunity, why not us?
Then there’s the economic environment. To be able to buy a high‑quality gin, with the notoriety we’ve received in a short amount of time, for under $25 is almost unheard of in our industry. Normally, any time you buy something that’s asserted to be really good, there’s a price tag that comes with it.
Right now, you walk into grocery stores across the US and see stacks of whiskies that used to cost $50 a bottle and are now $22.99 because there’s such a glut. Decision‑makers came to the realisation the market won’t bear those prices anymore. It’s too tough when gas, electricity and insurance are high – you have to cut somewhere.
That’s where we came in. I don’t think you should have to spend $80 to have an interesting gin that’s amazingly smooth and easy to drink.
DB: How is the gin priced? You mentioned $25 a bottle.
TI: If you go to Total Wine & More nationwide, we’re at $19.99. We’re great value. I really feel this is the gin that checks all the boxes. On packaging, we’ve won awards. People love it and often comment: “This is a beautiful bottle. I can’t believe it’s not $50.” On the liquid, we’re barely two years old and we’ve won double gold at ADI, San Francisco, New York, Singapore, Gin Guide, Gin Masters – both nationally and internationally. Almost everywhere we go, we’ve won double gold. That tells me the juice is good. There’s something here that speaks to approachability, quality and, lastly, value. I have to believe consumers, in good times and bad, are looking for great value and under $25, we easily make that.
DB: NABCA data shows the gin category is under pressure. Why make this investment now in a category that’s struggling?
TI: Even before gin may have been under pressure, it was ignored for many years, so either/or, it’s kind of the same dynamics.
I think the pressure now is we have so many, if you think of how many different gins have entered the market. I’ve mentioned the number of craft distilleries in the US. I’m sure Europe is the same. I always tell my team: don’t get too psyched out that there’s so many new gins there. Not all of them taste that great: just because there’s a lot of something doesn’t mean there’s a lot of good.
Gin is maybe 15% of the total dollars marketed against the US right now for vodka.
We’re looking at the opportunity for clear spirits in general. If I go by the numbers, for every nine vodka drinkers there’s one gin drinker. What if I could make that for every eight vodka drinkers there’s two gin drinkers? Even that small shift would be significant in volume.
Gin is maybe 15% of the total dollars marketed against the US right now for vodka. You can either say things are going to be the way they are or you can say: let’s get a bigger megaphone. Let’s invite clear‑spirit drinkers into the category.
I don’t want people to think of gin only as something you drink with tonic. A lot of people don’t like tonic, even though tonic has evolved. So much has changed around how gin is crafted in cocktails. Is there an opportunity to take a vodka drinker who’s bored with vodka soda and give them a gin that tastes naturally sweet without sugar added – and that’s just by virtue of what the botanicals do on your palate – and offer them something more interesting?
DB: Are your gin sales rising?
TI: Yes, we’re growing significantly. That’s by virtue of our home state, which is an anchor for the brand, and the states we entered even just last year.
For example, in our home state versus a newer state that’s just turned a year old for us – Florida – Florida is within 7% of catching Texas in gin volume. We’re looking to do a little over 23,000 cases this year and the brand is two years old. We’re not even in all 50 states.
My goal is that by the end of 2028 we’re in all 50 US states and at 50,000 cases. I think we can get there very easily.
Right now, it’s challenging because the states are all so different – they’re all regulated differently. The go-to market is very different. But what we’ve found is sometimes these distributor partnerships with these small houses have been to our benefit.
In Florida, we partnered with a very small distributor. They don’t have a huge sales force but I also didn’t have a big line of other brands in front of me. They introduced the brand to Publix, which liked it and listed it. Total Wine followed after that. Had I been with a big house, I don’t know that I’d even have been part of the presentation for the Publix meeting – and that’s the largest grocery chain in Florida.
So yes, it’s daunting to get that reach to market, but as we align with the right houses we’re finding that by the half‑year mark things start clicking. By the end of the first year, we see significant traction in key-account universes, then independents follow. On‑premise loves the brand. In South Carolina, our volume is about 80:20 on‑premise to retail. Mixologists like using the gin.
When my wife and I go out, we’re paying $18‑20 for a cocktail. Bars and restaurants are using cocktail menus to offset other rising costs. My advice is: if that’s so important, why not use my gin versus a gin that’s $10 a bottle higher and still deliver every bit of the quality at greater value? In most cases, that’s been a very easy sell for us.
DB: On the rest of your portfolio, what role will vodka and whisky play?
TI: Vodka is how most craft distilleries start out, unless they’re very purpose‑driven on a specific category. Here, though, we did need some gap fill at the beginning. We launched vodka first. Maybe we were a bit naïve – everybody wanted to be the next Tito’s. They’ve done very well and hats off to them but it’s challenging. Vodka is a very cluttered category. Every state has at least a dozen or more locally made vodkas because it’s very cheap to make. Vodka served a purpose – you have to have something to kind of keep the lights on and those cases did that.
Whiskey is unfortunately one of those things that you can’t tap a barrel with a magic wand and say ‘Oh, you’re five years old’, so it is kind of a wait-and-see game. In the beginning, our process didn’t yield the type of whiskey I was hoping for. Our honey whiskey was a way for us to make something somewhat craft but still a source-based whiskey that we were getting from a larger barrel house, then blending it with our natural wildflower honey nectar sourced 30 minutes from the distillery.
We’ll be launching our first grain‑to‑glass whiskey in the new year. The process incorporates both column and pot‑still distillation – we do strips from both. We use two‑row barley. Two‑row gives you a wink towards an American single malt, then you have a traditional Kentucky Bourbon. It’s where those flavour profiles merge and meet.
On other flavour innovations, our coffee whisky is probably most notable in our home state. As we’ve launched into new states, we’ve always led with the gin, then slowly integrated other parts of the portfolio. Having worked at a distributor early in my career, I know it’s hard to go in and say: “I’ve got 16 SKUs. How would you like to order pallets of each?” They have warehouses full of the next‑best‑thing that didn’t end up being the next‑best‑thing. The good news is gin is getting re‑ordered, which gives us a better track record to talk about bringing in additional products.
DB: How has the recent shake‑up in US spirits distribution affected you specifically?
TI: It’s been tough. I get a lot of doors shut in my face. Bigger houses aren’t typically interested in small brands. Other than franchise markets, the majority of our states are with smaller houses, which brings plusses and challenges. They usually have smaller sales forces and normally the on‑premise channel can get forgotten.
We’ve been very thoughtful to place manpower probably at a level for a distillery our size that’s kind of unheard of. But with a combination of brokers as well as our own people, we try to fill in gaps as best we can and be good partners to distributors. We’re not going to load them with a warehouse full of pallets of our product. Our people go out alongside theirs every day to try and get the word out.
DB: Were you handled by RNDC and, as they’ve pulled back, have you lost some accounts and had to rebuild with other distributors?
TI: We were with RNDC in the very beginning but, prior to their national shake‑up, we’d left them. Things change. What started out as a great relationship evolved into something where we just wanted more. They had a big book and the challenges that come with managing that.
DB: Scaling to all 50 states is ambitious. What are the next steps?
TI: If you look at control states, it’s about 25% of the volume in the US right now. We’re only in two control states. It’s a little more challenging to get into them. Submissions might only be a couple of times a year and you basically have board members in every county that you’re trying to align with, so it takes time.
So far, in North Carolina we’ve had some really good luck out of the gate. We’re looking at opportunities in states like Michigan, Iowa and Pennsylvania – where it’s a little bit of different dynamic because of the control state structure.
We’re only in two control states. It’s a little more challenging to get into them
The East Coast has been tough. We’ve come so close a couple of times to a distributor partnership that would cover anywhere from four to six states. Then, as we got close, something else would happen with RNDC or with Reyes or something like that, and things would change. That’s been the most challenging.
I’m hopeful we’ll get the New York partnership up and running. For me, that’s the anchor, the springboard. By virtue of being in New York, you have that periphery around there with the other states.
DB: Where will you be looking to invest to reach that goal – marketing, production, more people?
TI: For now, the biggest investment going forward is manpower. It takes people on the street every day. It’s next to impossible if you’re just putting all of that responsibility on the distributor. What we’ve found is that each state has its own set of challenges and, from a resource‑allocation perspective, it’s probably to our benefit that we slowed our jets a little bit. You can’t expand too fast. That can be your demise as well.
Right now, I feel fortunate we’re in 20 states and that we’ll probably be in about 26 by the end of 2026. Then I’m hopeful we’ll continue to grow into those 17 control states. That’ll help us have a bigger opportunity to get our share of gin out of those markets.
DB: Are you open to any external investment?
TI: We feel comfortable that we’re doing the right things. As I mentioned, $5m in one year is a pretty big bet. I don’t know that having another stakeholder to give us $6m or $7m is really going to make that much of a difference.
