Did You Know?

Did you know Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy is the best-selling liquor in Maine? In fact, Allen's is so popular that four of its various sizes are in the Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages & Lottery Operations' Top 10 of best-selling liquors in the 2006 fiscal year (a complete list of the Top 25 can be viewed here.)

To close this post, I'll leave you with five fun facts about Allen's:

1. Of all its nicknames ("gorilla milk," "liquid panty remover," "keep me up all night," "fat ass in a glass," and "the Biddeford martini"), my personal favorite is the "champagne of Maine."
2. According to the director of the state's alcoholic beverages bureau, it has been the top-selling liquor in Maine for at least the last decade, but that it's "not even close" to being a top-seller in any other state.
3. It's mostly a preference of Maine's female popluation (one Bangor bartender referred to that demographic as the "coffee brandy queen").
4. It frequently appears in police reports and court proceedings. One Ellsworth criminal defense attorney joked that he checks the grocery store's liquor aisle on the weekends because he knows "[i]f the Allen's section is half-empty, [he's] going going to have business on Monday."
5. And finally, yes, a 750-ml bottle of (largely untouched) Allen's does reside in my kitchen cabinet.

Three bows of gratitude to Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News for his reporting on this most serious subject. I'd link to Trotter's excellent article that I mined for these facts, but the BDN is like the Press Herald in that it charges for its archived stories. And the Maine Newsstand is still unlinkable. Ho-hum.

- John C.L. Morgan