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What’s up with whiskey and watches?

08 December 2023 By Sarah Neish

The latest trend in luxury drinks is pairing your beverage with a limited-edition timepiece, db discovers.

How do you know it’s whiskey o’clock? Because your luxury bottle of Bourbon comes paired with a hand-crafted watch that lets you know exactly when it’s time to sit down with a glass of something on the rocks.

Few Spirits distillery in Chicago has teamed up with fellow Chicago business — watchmakers Oak & Oscar — to create a limited-edition watch incorporating pieces of barrel from an extremely small-run Bourbon production.

While from the front the sleek timepiece looks just like Oak & Oscar’s classic-styled ‘Olmsted’ watch, turn the piece over and you’ll find a wooden coin worked into the watch back. The wooden disc comes from a cask that was selected by the distillery for a single-barrel Bottled in Bond Bourbon release, meaning that whiskey fans can effectively wear a piece of history on their wrist.

As a final flourish, anyone who buys one of these watches also gets a bottle of Bourbon filled from that same single barrel.

Just 50 watches have been made, each priced at US$1,850.

Drinks brands seem to be increasingly aligning themselves with the world of luxury watches.

Earlier this week db reported that First Growth Bordeaux winery Château Latour has partnered with Switzerland’s oldest watchmaker to create a highly exclusive watch.

The real selling point? Pebbles from Latour’s vineyard were used to create the watch face, giving the wearer round-the-clock access to the winery’s terroir.

According to Swiss watchmaker Girard-Perregaux, each watch face took 30 hours to complete, with artisans carefully thinning the vineyard stones down to a 0.45mm sliver before mounting them on a brass base.

The Latour watch is not available to any old consumer with deep pockets. Instead it will be offered to private guests to the Left Bank château , as well as visitors to Girard-Perregaux’s villa in the Jura Mountains.

No price has been attached to the watch but only 18 have been made.

Drinks producers may be looking for ways to appeal to a younger generation of experience-inspired consumer. According to Anna Kim, global brand director at family-owned Cognac brand Camus, wealthy young consumers are seeking out products that help them to enjoy an experience.

“With drinkers becoming more discerning, they seek products that can authentically communicate their story, emphasising terroir and heritage,” Kim told the drinks business for a piece on whether Gen Z can rescue the Cognac category.