Coors Spirits Co. may be the new kid inside Molson Coors' beyond beer portfolio, but it’s already turning heads in the spirits industry.
This year alone, its brands – Blue Run Spirits, Five Trail and Barmen 1873 Bourbon – have won awards at numerous spirits competitions, including the International Wine & Spirits Competition, the ASCOT Awards, the Tag Global Spirits Awards, and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
At the latter, Blue Run Spirits even picked up a double gold award for Trifecta, crafted by Coors Spirits Co.’s head of whiskey development and innovation, Shaylyn Gammon.
Every day, Gammon juggles the rigors of maintaining the consistency and quality of brands with the creativity needed to craft new award-winning bourbon blends. To do this, she draws on her deep experience in the industry, while keeping a surprisingly restrictive diet on days when she’s busy evaluating whiskey.
Gammon’s rise to becoming one of the most respected whiskey directors in the country is remarkable, considering that she did so in the traditionally male-dominated whiskey industry. But she's clear that it wouldn’t have been possible without years of hard work.
An artist and a scientist
Gammon attended the University of Kentucky unsure about her career path until she came across the food science major. Even though the program only had one other student in her year, it would allow her to flex both her artistic and scientific sides.
“I’m equal parts left- and right-brained,” says Gammon. “I love art and writing, but also math and science. It was a major that I had never heard of before, but it piqued my interest, and I just went with it.”
After graduating in 2012, she found a research and development job at AmeriQual Group, a food company in Evansville, Ind., best known as a producer of shelf-stable dishes for large companies and MREs (Meals, Ready-to-Eat) for the U.S. military.
Wanting to break into the bourbon industry centered in Kentucky, she left AmeriQual for the Campari Group, where she stayed for eight years. While she worked for several brands under the corporation’s portfolio, one of the main brands she developed for was Wild Turkey, working alongside their master distiller duo Jimmy Russell and his son Eddie Russell, both Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Famers.
Smelling seriously
From the start, she proved particularly adept at blending whiskey from different barrels to create a new product. She developed many products, including Russell’s Reserve 13-Year-Old Bourbon, which the bourbon critic Fred Minnick declared the Best American Whiskey of 2021.
That honor is especially impressive when you realize that she didn’t taste the whiskey. Gammon was pregnant during the process and relied on her sense of smell to get the blend right. (She eventually tried it after her son was born.)
Needless to say, she must carefully protect her award-winning smelling capabilities.
“I take it very seriously,” says Gammon.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she had to take extra precautions. “I was so afraid of losing my sense of smell,” she said. “My husband and I even looked into getting my nose insured. It was a lot of money though.”
On days when she needs to analyze a lot of barrels, she makes sure to avoid certain kinds of beverages and foods.
“I won't drink coffee or eat cheese, onion or garlic,” says Gammon. “I stay away from anything that could distort flavor or stimulate the trigeminal nerve. It's how we experience onion, garlic, mustard, horseradish and those types of things that kind of excite that nerve. It's not necessarily flavor, but it's sensation.”
She likes thinking of bourbon differently
Her bourbon blends put her on the radar of the team at Blue Run Spirits, which was about to release its own award-winning bourbon with the help of liquid advisor, Jim Rutledge. She was intrigued from the start, but it still took time.
“We courted each other for about a year,” says Gammon. “When we started talking, they didn’t even have a bottle design, yet. And I was pregnant, so I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make this jump.”
She eventually took the position because she was impressed by how differently the brand team thought about bourbon.
“What I love about Blue Run is that none of the five founders came from the industry,” she says. “That brings a lot of freshness and creativity. They care about the tradition, but in a way that's very inclusive. It’s youthful and aspirational.”
That playfulness includes the butterfly-emblazoned bottles and even the tasting notes. “I like to call the brand millennial-friendly, so instead of traditional tasting notes of cinnamaldehyde, it smells like red hot candies. Fun approaches like that,” says Gammon.
But she also loves that Blue Run Spirits cares about what’s important. “There's parts of bourbon that you just don't want to mess with,” she says. “So they always made sure to use the best quality liquid and, before me, they worked with Jim Rutledge, a Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Famer, who was their liquid advisor.”
The power of blending
Gammon finds the most pleasure in the act of blending several whiskeys to create something new. She’s particularly proud of her work on Blue Run’s Trifecta, which won double platinum at the Ascot Awards and as mentioned above, double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
“It started with 6-year-old liquid,” she says. “I decided that I was going to make it better, so I blended until I had elevated it by adding 8- and 9-year-old straight bourbons.”
Since Molson Coors acquired Blue Run Spirits in August of 2023, Gammon is now involved in the bottling process and will oversee future blends on the other spirit brands from Coors Spirits Co., Barmen 1873 and Five Trail blended American whiskey
“Both Barmen and Five Trail are really interesting and have so much potential,” says Gammon. “I have a lot of ideas.”
David Coors, executive chairman of Coors Spirits Co., is certainly happy to have her on board.
“Shaylyn brings unparalleled expertise to our team,” says Coors. “Whether it’s her ability to identify barrels that stand head and shoulders above the rest, or her ability to harmonize a wide array of elements bringing a distinct vibrancy to a blend, she truly sets our whiskeys apart from the competition.”
Right now, Gammon is focused on long-term growth for the Coors Spirits Co. And she’s always thinking about how she can transform barrels of whiskey into the latest award-winning bottle.
“I like to examine certain barrels and think, ‘This is a great product, but how can I make it better?’” she says. “It's kind of like a giant puzzle.”