Who owns baileys

The new bottle is a twist on the traditional shape and reflects the modern moods of modern Baileys drinkers. Every year, roughly million litres of fresh Irish milk are required to produce the creamiest of cream used in the production of Baileys.

This milk is mostly supplied from small, family-owned farms. Some of these thousands of acres are dotted with protected bog, natural woodland, wild meadows and native hedgerows. Sanctuaries for small animals, birds, bees and butterflies. Living the high life! America is its biggest international customer, importing more Baileys than any other country. The liqueur is so popular that people around the world drink 2, glasses of it every minute of every day.

We owned the name and stocks of a small brand of Irish whiskey. That was it, apart from the fact that Gluckman had worked on the creation of a brand of butter, Kerrygold. There is some discussion about what happened next. Certainly, we did no research at all. We spent a lot of time in country hotels and various bars and restaurants beating our brains out. We rejected a green liqueur made from carageenan, a form of Irish seaweed. I seem to remember that, during an exploration of New York bars, we fell upon a cocktail known as a Brandy Alexander, which gave us a steer in the right direction.

We used the original whiskey bottle. Mac got over his first taste and rapidly produced a stable formula although early bottlings tended to turn to sweet alcoholic butter in transit. We carried out a few focus groups; every single person hated it. So we suppressed the results and went ahead with a pilot plant and trial production. Our groups owned a lot of pubs around London, so we went to a dozen. We gave them a case of Baileys and a tape recorder, and asked them to sell it at whatever price they chose, and record the reaction.

It took about a week to sell out, sometimes at stupidly high prices; I remember being told of one pub where a police patrol car dropped in presumably for some refreshing lemonade?

The three men drank an entire bottle — in small doses! That was enough for us; we set about building a small production plant in Dublin, and sought out companies in the group who were sufficiently pliable to take our new baby. Of course no one wanted it; it was too oddball, not fit for gentlemen, or they had something like it already Advocaat! But Holland and Australia were losing money and glad to grab a possible lifeline. With rakish curly hair greying at the temples, he and his Prince of Wales check suit were made for each other.

Doing a joint presentation with Tom was always challenging since he rarely stuck to the script and invariably stole most of my lines.

Despite our somewhat unorthodox double-act, Tom and I managed a persuasive pitch for the Baileys idea. To help things along I cited my Kerrygold experience. Kerrygold was important to me and one of the keys to the development of Baileys. By that time the famed gold-wrapped butter had been celebrated as one of the European business successes of the s and my association with it, I hoped, would add a bit of weight to our argument. I think it did. Our foreplay over, the Irish team responded enthusiastically.

They handled our bottle respectfully and even savoured the Baileys product to which Mac had applied considerable finesse since our initial International Stores effort. Lunch was pretty lavish, with several bottles of wine going down — and very good wine at that. We were in the wine trade after all. I suspect that the word went out to upgrade the vintages when they realised that we had delivered something that they really liked. A couple of bottles of Ducru Beaucaillou of a reputable year appeared and disappeared swiftly.

No one in Dublin knew what to expect from us. He had not been at our pitch nor was he invited to the lunch but, via some magical Irish osmosis hotline, he knew about Baileys and the details of our presentation. We occupied adjacent troughs in the management washroom. And it was not without risk: they knew full-well that they would have to build a plant to make it, they would have to invest in bottling lines and they would have to spend some real money on marketing.

They were not a huge company, and it would strain their resources. No matter how well an idea is received, it is a complex entity and changes are inevitably made. The Baileys team now had to make its own imprint. In those days, in the early s, the word chocolate did not sit comfortably on the label of a premium liqueur brand. It also made the idea easier to copy. We were pretty happy with that decision. Nowadays things are different.

As soon as they started making an imprint on this strange new idea they began to assume ownership. And once they owned it they would commit to it. But they were respectful enough to keep us informed of changes.

And ask for our help when they needed it. I got a call from David Dand in early July of It was about 9am and I was reading the sports page of the Guardian in the office. It will take forever to get it through. It needs a first name or at least an initial. I looked down at the paper and there was an article about a golf tournament. The Open was being played at Royal Lytham. Yet as I thought about it after our conversation, a fantasy began to form in my mind. They had disliked each other for decades.

Their father looked to bring them together as he reached his dotage. He had a huge estate and wanted to keep it in the family. They sat down one night to try to work things out. He tried it and loved it. They made up and the rest is history. Well that was my personal story.

It helped to bring the idea to life for me. I had never intended for it to be used in public as it was a pure fiction. It was pretty tame and utterly unbelievable, which goes to show that not all fantasies work in the real world. I could imagine our drink being enjoyed there a long time ago. It gave a gentle nudge of support to our off-the-wall idea. That meant that the cream that would go into Baileys could be bought not on the open market but from our own company. Even the original Baileys plant was based on a second-hand homogeniser bought from Express.

Baileys was suddenly no longer our creation — it was theirs — and piqued as we might have been at the time, in hindsight they were right.

If Baileys was to succeed, they had to feel that they owned it. One of the strange things about the success of the Baileys venture at that time was that nothing really sank in. We got back to the question of solving new problems and looking for other business. And it was to be about seven years before Baileys really appeared on the radar and looked like a success. It lacked the savoir-faire of brands such as Cointreau with its sexy sophisticated ad campaign.

We presented the Baileys idea in , it was launched in but it was another three years before it began to look like a winner. It was almost long enough for people to forget whose idea it was. I managed to keep my cool. Given that plumbers earned a lot more than I did in those days, I took that as a compliment. People nowadays often ask me how much money we get per bottle sold. Products search. My Account Cart Checkout Wishlist. Recently added item s.

Home Blog. Posted in Drinks History and Facts. How Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur is made Baileys is made from the very best of premium quality dairy cream, triple-distilled whiskey and fine spirits. How to drink Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur Baileys cream liqueur can be enjoyed in any of the following ways: Straight On Ice As a cocktail When mixing the cream liqueur to make a cocktail, note that just like milk, cream curdles when it is mixed with a weak acids.

How much is a carton of Baileys? Baileys Irish Cream is cream-based liqueur - a blend of Irish whiskey and dairy cream - produced by Gilbeys of Ireland, and owned by Diageo. Publisher Name.