Who is this joker and why does he have a vodka? Flavor Flav has a flavored vodka, and it happens to be Bubba Gum flavored. It took almost three months to get the label approved, and so I am enjoying a vision of William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. calling in regular and increasingly anxious status checks to TTB, and arguing about font sizes.

Le Flav joins the swelling ranks of celebrity-endorsed vodka products, alongside Voli (Fergie, Pitbull), Ciroc (Sean Combs), Aftermath (Dr. Dre) and many others.

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Part of the challenge and complexity is that label rules and trends change often. As recently as a few years ago, TTB would balk about pre-eminently famous people, such as these, on alcohol beverage labels. Founding Fathers Beer is bottled by CBC Latrobe in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. I tend to doubt that TTB would allow a President Obama label, even today (except maybe as a caricature), but George Bush, Bill Clinton and the prior Presidents may well be fair game now or soon.

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It’s not every day that you see COLA news on the front page of the newspaper, but it does happen from time to time. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal featured COLA news on the front page. The story explained that no less than three companies have been trying to use Buffalo Bill as part of their branding — with two of them fighting it out in court. “The two entrepreneurs are fighting in court for the exclusive right to sell beer that trades on the musky aura of adventure surrounding Army-scout-turned-bison-hunter-turned-sharpshooting-showman William F. Cody.”

Eric Bischoff got his first COLA in March of 2011 (and the second one is here). He is a “former professional wrestling icon.”

While Bischoff already has the COLAs and applied for the trademark, it looks like Mike Darby has been selling beer under the Buffalo Bill name since before Bischoff. But “Mr. Darby failed to get federal approval of his label, as required by the law. (Mr. Darby says he thought the brewer and distributor had taken care of that.)” Darby owns a hotel in Cody, Wyoming “built by Buffalo Bill in 1902.” Darby “had to pull his beer from the market” while awaiting label approval.

The third company is affiliated with Bill Owens, but is not interested in fighting over the brand name. The brewery does not even seem to claim trademark on the brand name. The story says Owens has moved on from making beer and now runs a trade group for craft distillers (“It’s much more fun to be involved with people making whiskey, vodka and absinthe, he says.”) This may allow him to avoid a roundhouse kick, a six-shooter, and the swirling lawsuits.

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Stolichnaya Vodka is pretty famous. And if it’s famous for anything, it’s famous for being Russian. For decades it has been glammed up as The Russian Vodka.

Over the past one to two years, however, Stoli has pretty much walked away from its Russian origin. The label on the right, from 2009, proudly proclaims Stoli’s Russian heritage and origin. By contrast, the label on the left, from 2010, sidesteps this issue. The more recent back label shows that the product is made in Latvia rather than Russia. Russia and Latvia are nextdoor neighbors, and were one and the same until Latvia regained its independence in 1991. Still, this is a big change and presents a tricky marketing challenge — that would seem to be tantamount to moving Jack Daniels production from Lynchburg to Los Angeles or Guadalajara. For such a big brand (with sales estimated near $2 billion per year) there has been surprisingly little press coverage of this issue. Back in 2006, Businessweek attempted to sort out this tale of international intrigue:

So what exactly is the row about this time? When the Russian government stripped S.P.I. of its right to the Stolichnaya brand in 2002, it also banned the company from exporting Stolichnaya vodka from Russia. That’s when S.P.I. responded by moving the bottling of Stolichnaya to Latvijas Balzams distillery in Latvia. Yet the Stolichnaya on sale in the U.S. continues to be labeled as “genuine Russian vodka.” S.P.I. and Allied Domecq testified in the U.S. court that the vodka continues to be produced in Russia, at distilleries in Kaliningrad and Tambov.

The 2010 approval also caught our eye because of the strange pairing of Baltic-Region flavored vodka with Hugh Hefner and his bunny.

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This, quite apparently, is what Charlie Sheen has been drinking. It is Tiger Blood Vodka, made in Hungary. No word on whether it’s the source of the Adonis DNA. The evidence is here.

Fox says the real Tiger Blood is something along the lines of mangosteen — a fruit we covered about a year ago.

Editor’s Note:  nothing in this post should be regarded as curative, therapeutic, advisable or serious.

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Holy smokes, change really is afoot at TTB. I was startled to see these wine labels recently, with various and sundry famous politicians emblazoned all upon them, and not in the most flattering light. I suppose there is some extra latitude for parody- or caricature-type speech, and there certainly is or ought to be latitude as to political speech. But often in the past, TTB has disallowed presidentially-oriented labels. Just two years ago, the line was drawn here, as to President Obama, and this one seemed to go too far.

The abstraction, in these caricatures, seems to help, as does the absence of the full names. The Horizon Cellars Winery, of Siler City, North Carolina has a large series of the labels depicted above. We already pointed to various labels with Former President George Bush and Sarah Palin in the past, so today we elected to highlight Former Vice President Dick Cheney, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Former President Bill Clinton.

But there are other reasons to revel in these labels. Any discussion of Joe Biden would be embarrassingly remiss without a fond recollection of that storied day when Joe Biden washed his Trans Am, in cutoffs and no shirt, out back behind the White House.

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Here is Ron Jeremy’s “Adult Rum.” It is imported by One Eyed Spirits, of Texas.

John was going to say something witty here. But, upon reflection, we should not touch it with or without a ten foot pole.

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The Seagram name still carries a lot of weight, even though the company got obliterated about ten years ago. Wiki says The Seagram Company Ltd. (headquartered in Montreal, Canada) became “defunct” in 2000. Until then it was “the world’s largest producer and distributor of spirits and wines.”

The brands live on. TTB’s database shows more than 500 approvals, with the brand name “Seagram,” within the past three years. This excludes famous brands formerly owned by Seagram, such as Chivas, Crown Royal, Martell, Captain Morgan, etc.

The City of Waterloo’s history makes the point that “like so many success stories,” Joseph E. Seagram’s early success was “almost accidental.” Joseph was asked to look after an Ontario grain mill, back in 1864, while the owner traveled to Europe. The main business was grinding flour. Distilling was a side issue, to use up excess grain, but Seagram began buying out his colleagues and shifting production from flour to spirits. The Bronfman family acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons in 1928. In another “almost accidental” quirk of history, “Bronfman” means “liquor man” in Yiddish.

Here is a great song that happens to feature Seagram (in a not entirely flattering light). It is Uncle Lloyd by Darrell Scott. The pertinent lyrics explain:

He and Dad would spend their evening
Sitting in lawn chairs in the yard
Where they’d drink a toast to Seagram’s
Seagram’s never went down hard

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As if “The Wizard of Oz” and “Wicked” had not already made enough money, and entwined themselves enough into our culture, here comes Wicked Wine. It is bottled by Grove Street Winery of Healdsburg, California. I have resisted the urge to see this play, but I must say the graphics are striking. It would be tough to walk by a display of this wine without noticing Glinda and Elphaba. I suppose this could open Grove to the charge that it appeals to minors, like Ratatouille wine, but then again isn’t this the last thing a 19 year old would bring to a party?

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The last post covered some of the most famous singers ever to appear on alcohol beverage labels. Today, we go off in search of the most famous songs to appear on such labels. Not the most famous songs about booze; that’s a big topic for another day.

There are so many labels paying tribute to so many songs. I am sure the astute reader can find examples more famous than those above, but these three are mighty famous, and appear on this list of the greatest rock songs.

Rosalita is red wine produced and bottled by Aspect Wines of San Francisco, California. It pays tribute to the Bruce Springsteen song.

Hotel California is Tequila imported by Sipping Spirits of Glastonbury, Connecticut. It pays tribute to the Eagles song. It has no overt reference to Tequila but Henley, Frey and Felder apparently did not read CFR Title 27 carefully; they wantonly mingle wine and spirits, singing:

So I called up the captain, “Please bring me my wine”
He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969″

And Margaritaville of course pays tribute to the famous Jimmy Buffett song. The song is pretty much drenched in Tequila and Buffett still owns the rights to this name.

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