deemphasizing its role as supplier, while
building major wholesale operations and
brokerage firms throughout the northeast.
“
We fluctuated between being a bottler
in the early days to becoming a very
successful wholesaler in New England,”
describes Gary Shaw, vice president,
national sales. “Today we are unique in
the industry; we are a distributor with a
bottling operation and we want to more
fully utilize all aspects of our business.”
A Full Circle Evolution
Maurice Saul Walker found his way into
the spirits business after Repeal in 1933,
morphing his several-year old pharmaceu-
tical business into a producer of bever-
age alcohol. The company’s colorful past
(
including ties to Cuban dictator, Batista,
which ensured the company access to rum
and molasses) is a laundry list of ahead-
of-its-time endeavors, from launching one
of the first vodkas in America—Cossack
Vodka back when no one knew what to
do with a neutral white spirit—to creat-
ing some of the first original flavors. (M.S.
Walker’s iced tea-flavored vodka was dis-
continued decades before it became one
of the hottest flavors in the industry.)
The company also bottled the first-ever
domestic limoncello. “When I joined the
business, we were closing out flavored
vodkas because they weren’t selling,” says
Michael Brody, vice president, director of
sales, Spirits. “What’s old is new again,
just like fashion.”
When Walker passed away in the late
1940
s, his two son-in-laws took over the
business, growing M.S. Walker into some-
thing akin to a made-to-order custom pro-
ducer. “In our rickety warehouse, we made
whatever people ordered,” describes Allen
(
Maurice Walker’s grandson). “If someone
wanted gin, we made it. If someone wanted
flavored brandy, we made that—we have al-
ways been particularly skilled with flavors.”
Finding success always meant finding
unanswered demand in the marketplace.
“
To compete against large companies like
Seagram’s and Heublein, we had to make
things other people didn’t—some of the
same specialty items that we still make
today,” says Allen. M.S. Walker found
niches along the way, growing into one
of the largest producers of egg nog in the
nation, for example. Working with a local
dairy, the company produces an all-natural,
dairy-based product, and in recent years,
has introduced flavored variations like
chocolate and pumpkin. (The egg nog was
once based on Old Medford Rum, the old-
est spirit brand in the industry—and Paul
Revere’s drink of choice—which M.S.
Walker owns the rights, but no longer can
manufacture because there are no operat-
ing New England rum distilleries.)
Yet, it was one of M.S. Walker’s most
enduring creations—Allen’s Flavored
Brandy—that put the company into the
wholesale game. After WWII, the com-
pany began distributing in Massachusetts
its original flavor, Allen’s Ginger Flavored
Brandy, which had broad medicinal appli-
cations. (Allen’s Coffee Brandy also be-
came a consumer favorite in Maine. See
Champagne of Maine sidebar.)
Today, M.S. Walker is among the
three largest distributors in the state, with
wholesale businesses in Rhode Island and
New Hampshire, and brokerage busi-
nesses throughout New England. “We are
not the little guy anymore, with a $250
million business in Massachusetts alone,”
says Brody. “For many years, we put our
bottling business on the back burner, but
that has changed now.”
New Portfolio Appeal
Paul Coulombe of Maine-based White
Rock Distilleries made front page news
when he sold his Three Olives Vodka
to Proximo Spirits, and more recently,
Pinnacle Vodka to Beam Inc. But many
of White Rock’s under-the-radar brands
joined the M.S. Walker
portfolio late last summer.
“
A lot of these brands
had been neglected for
years, because the compa-
ny’s focus was on preparing
its major brands for a very
lucrative sale,” says Allen.
The 15 brands that M.S.
Walker acquired include
one of the top spirits brands
in Ohio, the number one
selling vodka in Maine, the number two
vodka in New Hampshire, and one of the
most popular Canadian whiskeys in up-
state New York. The company also took
over Grand Macnish, a commodity blend-
ed Scotch whisky bottled in the U.S.
Now that production on most of these
newly acquired brands has switched to
M.S. Walker’s 100,000-square foot manu-
facturing facility in Somerville, the in-
novation will begin. “Many of the former
White Rock brands were straight 80 proof
spirits, but today’s market is all about fla-
vors,” says Shaw. “We are talking about
brand leaders in various markets that have
had no flavor extensions to date—the op-
portunity is tremendous.”
Consolidation also spells opportu-
nity for companies like M.S. Walker, says
Shaw. “As distributors consolidate, you
have mid-size wholesalers popping up who
don’t carry big national brands; we also
see major wholesalers who have lost big
brands and they reach out to us because
they need new revenue.” Shaw describes
doors opening in markets where two
wholesalers control 90% of the market—
“
but the 10% that they don’t control rep-
resents major volume.” The influence of
craft distillers has also been a boost, says
Brody: “Mixologists move the business to-
day and often times, they are looking for
regional, less-familiar brands like ours.”
King of the Commodity Game
If there is one thing M.S. Walker under-
stands, it’s the commodity spirits business.
“
Many of our brands would not be as at-
tractive to large, publically-traded compa-
nies who have to focus on higher-margin
products,” says Shaw. “The commodity
