Dark Days for Lights

With much fanfare, U.S. distillers last year brought on the market a new drink called light whisky. After years of effort, liquor firms got the Government to change its quirky distilling regulations and permit them to produce a smooth, flavor-thin whisky that they thought would appeal to modern tastes. A brave bevy of brands entered the lists Royal American, Galaxy, Honey-Go Lite, Free Spirit, Northern Light and others. Sadly for this latter-day charge of the Light Brigade, it has been Balaklava all over again. With Scotch to the right of them, bourbon to the left of them and vodka down the middle, the lights, after eight months on the shelves, have barely made a dent in the competition. A very few individual brands may yet sell well, but the industry consensus is that light whisky, on the whole, is an idea whose time may never come. "Light whisky has been greeted with a yawn," says Jack Yog-man, president of Joseph E. Seagram, which sells two lights: Galaxy and Four Roses Premium.

Limited. A major cause is general confusion in the minds of dealers and the public. According to a nationwide survey by Clark Gavin Associates, Long Island-based marketing consultants, store owners believe that at a time when the makers of most alcoholic products stress lightness, calling a new drink "light" does nothing to distinguish it from, say, Canadian or Scotch whiskies. Liquor dealers are unsure whether a new light drink will bring additional business or merely siphon sales away from older labels. As a result, light whisky is often stacked willy-nilly among bourbons and rye blends on the shelves so that buyers come across it only by chance. With their fuzzy image, the lights have failed to attract young people, who continue to down vodka and wine. The lights also have gone all but unnoticed among blacks, an important market. Because there is so little call for the drink, bar owners are reluctant to use their limited space to carry it.

Even many distillers, despite their long fight for the new drink, are unable or unwilling to spend heavily to promote it. Some liquor executives were privately dubious about light whisky from the beginning, and made large quantities only to be ready in case the drink did catch on. Others are waiting to see which brands survive the introductory period and thus prove worth the risk of promoting hard. Says Joseph Haefelin, vice president of American Distilling: "Money is tight and most distillers are waiting for the full market reaction." A few lights are selling well anyhow, but this is partly because of their association with traditional brands. National Distillers' Crow Light benefits from the similarity of its name to famous Old Crow bourbon, and buyers occasionally choose Four Roses Pre mium, unaware that it has been trans formed into a light.

In the absence of big ad budgets, some companies are resorting to unusual marketing gimmicks to push their goods. Federal Distillers has zeroed in on women drinkers with a "Lady Like" brand, which it touts as "love in a bot tle." In the Chicago area, Barton Brands introduced its QT brand with a money-back guarantee if the buyer is not satisfied.

Yet even if light whisky goes down the drain as a separate drink, the liquor companies, which distilled 180 million gallons in advance of federal approval to sell it, will not be grievously hurt. They can always put it into their traditional blends, as Seagram is doing with its 7 Crown. At the very least, though, the advent of light whisky has failed to give liquor sales the rosy new glow for which distillers once hoped.

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