Irish whiskey connoisseur takes work home with him

Everyone should have a friend like Alexandre Ricard. The 43-year-old Pernod Ricard chairman and chief executive loves to host parties at his apartment in west Paris, where he keeps 1,000 bottles of spirits across two bars.

“My entire reception area is a bar at my home,” he says, beaming with pride in a room at the five-star Hayfield Manor Hotel in Cork. “This Friday evening [September 18th], I’m having a few friends over and we’ll probably taste the whole single pot still range of Irish whiskeys, sitting there in the back bar.”

He then lists off more than 20 Irish whiskeys that he keeps in stock, including Jameson, Paddy, Powers, Midleton, and various brand extensions or age varieties.

Ricard “always dreamt of having a home bar” and it was the first thing he installed when he bought his apartment a couple of years ago.

“Having a home bar is actually pretty cool,” he says. “When I host dinners at home, we have the aperitif at the bar, with the starter actually. Then we move to the dining table to have the main course and the dessert and then we move back to the bar to have the coffee and the digestif. People arrive at 9pm and leave at midnight. It’s three hours of fun.”

It all sounds very continental and fits neatly with Ricard’s smooth demeanour and his dislike of beer, naturally.

Ricard is quick to clarify that it’s all responsible fun. Conscious of his position as head of the world’s second biggest spirits group, he provides alcohol-free cocktails and wine, so the designated drivers don’t fell “left behind”.

“I would hate to have someone leave my place maybe having one drink too many and drive. That would not be good.”

Ricard has seen the tragic consequences of drink-driving up close. “ I had a [school] friend when I was younger, who, two weeks after he got his driver’s licence, had an accident and lost his life. He was drunk.”

Ricard is a firm believer that education rather than hefty taxation is the best way to tackle the social scourges of underage drinking, binge boozing and drink-driving.

“When I was 14, here’s what my parents told me: ‘Alex, if you drink before you’re 18 it’s going to affect your brain. Because your brain is growing. When you’re an adult, your brain is formed and it’s another story’,” he recalls.

They also taught him to drink moderately, although he does admit to having woken up on a few occasions with a hangover.

“It’s good to go out with your family and friends and have a drink or two. It’s part of life. Imagine a world without spirits?

“My parents told me about the misuse, they told me about the underage, they told me about the drink driving and they ended up by saying, make your own decision. Empowerment.”

When I interviewed Ricard in late 2011, when he was head of Irish Distillers in Dublin, the Frenchman told that he had his first drink at 16.

“Yes, in front of my parents,” he says. “One drink, it’s not the end of the day.”

Just one drink before he was 18? “No, I had a few obviously, but I never got drunk.”

The high levels of taxation imposed on Irish whiskey is a bugbear for Ricard and his colleagues at Pernod Ricard and Irish Distillers, the subsidiary acquired in the 1980s that operates the portfolio of Irish whiskeys. “Ireland is now the third highest taxed country in Europe [for spirits],” he claims.

Strong feedback

Ricard says Irish Distillers gets a flood of complaints from US visitors to the Jameson Experience visitor centre in Midleton who discover on their return home that the bottle of hooch they bought here is much cheaper across the Atlantic. A bottle of Jameson costs about €41 here, compared with €27 in the US.

“We are getting pretty strong feedback from a lot of tourists and price is clearly an issue. The excise alone could buy you a bottle of Jameson in most other European countries.”

His message to the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan ahead of next month’s budget? “At least, do nothing [on taxation],” he says. Expecting a reduction in excise duties is “wishful thinking”, he concedes.

“If you increase [taxes] too much, volumes decline and the net impact is not good.”

Ricard was in Cork last week for the opening of the micro distillery at the Old Midleton Distillery. The plan is to give a modern twist to some old recipes and blends found in a notebook dating from 1826 that was owned by John Jameson II, a grandson of the founder of the famous Irish whiskey.

The plan is to produce 400 casks of its new “small batch” product annually.

Jameson is one of the gems in Pernod Ricard’s broad portfolio of spirits. It’s the biggest selling Irish whiskey and recently passed five million cases globally, roughly twice the level of 2011.

The US is a key driver of growth, accounting for about two million cases of Jameson annually. It’s followed by Russia, South Africa and then Ireland, where it shifts 240,000 cases a year.

“Jameson today is growing in double or triple digits in more than 53 markets in the world,” Ricard says.

He cites strong momentum across Africa. South Africa is a traditional stronghold but the whiskey is also enjoying good growth in Angola, Kenya, Namibia and Nigeria. “Jameson is now the third largest spirits premium brand in Kenya,” he says.

“Something is also happening, finally” in Ireland. “There’s some sort of whiskey renaissance here among the generation of 25 to 35s.”

Ireland was once the biggest whiskey globally in the category. But a lack of innovation, high tariffs and prohibition in the US in the 1920s combined to leave it trailing its competitors.

Today, there are 10 distilleries in Ireland with another 25 under construction or at planning stage. “We welcome this amazing development,” Ricard says.

Pernod Ricard has played its part, investing more than €200 million in the past few years to double the capacity of its Midleton distillery, to build a maturation warehouse in Dungourney, Co Cork and to expand its bottling plant in Dublin.

“We’re in investment mode,” says, adding that Powers has also had a complete revamp globally.

Ricard would “love to see” Jameson become a 10 million cases-a-year brand, probably within five to 10 years. “You need to pace your growth,” he says. “What really drives growth behind our brands is consumer demand. You need to balance the equilibrium between volume and value. What really matters is for Jameson to remain healthy, to remain edgy, to remain fun, to be consistent and to do it with passion and love.”

While Irish whiskey is flying for Pernod Ricard (Jameson’s net sales rose by 10 per cent last year), it has struggles in other parts of the business.

The devaluation of the Russian rouble cost it €40 million in profits last year, while Absolut is being relaunched in the US, where sales of the vodka are in retreat.

“The vodka category in the US is much softer than brown spirits,” Ricard explains.

It has also hit some “headwinds” in China as “spending lavishly on spirits” has been curtailed at a time when the economy has softened. Sales there fell by 2 per cent last year.

“In the medium to longer term, the size of China is such that the fundamentals are there,” he says.

All of this added up to the group narrowly missing analysts’ consensus forecasts, but Ricard is sanguine, arguing that the business is sufficiently diversified in terms of brands and geographies to work through these difficulties.

Alexandre is the third generation Ricard to run a company that was founded by his grandfather Paul Ricard in 1932. His father briefly ran the group before handing over to Alex’s uncle Patrick, who is credited with transforming a domestic distiller into a global spirits giant with multiple acquisitions over three decades.

It was chairman Patrick’s sudden death in 2012 that hastened Alexandre’s rise to the top of the business. He spent more than two years shadowing former CEO Pierre Pringeut before taking the reins in February of this year.

Ironically, his first job interview with the company was a disaster. “In 1996, I interviewed with the HR director at the time, and the interview didn’t last long because it didn’t go well,” he recalls.

Ricard left the building and walked over to Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) to accept an earlier offer. He recognises now that this was “probably the best thing” for him. Accenture was followed by a stint with Morgan Stanley, before returning to the family business.

“I re-interviewed with the same HR director in 2003 and finally got the job.”

He has since run its Asian duty free business from Hong Kong, had two stints with Irish Distillers in Dublin, and run its distribution network from Paris.

Ricard is something of a world citizen. Born in Paris, he grew up in Andorra and studied at the University of Pennsylvania. His French accent still contains a dash of American twang.

Balancing act

Fewer than 10 Ricard family members work in the business, which is also a listed company. It’s a tricky balancing act between family and public company that Ricard says gives it rigour and discipline, along with a long term vision.

“It’s a good equilibrium,” he insists. “There’s a board of directors and they’re basically watching me. But not just the board, the family as well. From my point of view, and rightfully so, family is always tougher. I love having a cousin saying ‘I came back from this trip to such and such a country and in this bar they had no Jameson’. I love that … it’s cool.”

This probably happens in July or August, when Alexandre and other family members holiday on their islands off the south coast of France, Bendor and Les Embiez.

They are open to the public, with some small beaches and bars, which have only Pernod Ricard spirits, “obviously”.

He is single, with a girlfriend, but would like a family of his own. “That is a room for improvement,” he smiles.

Alexandre recognises that he is in a privileged position and is the keeper of the flame. “I’ve got the baton now but at some point I will have to hand it over,” he says.

At which point, he can relax in his home bar and enjoy a Jameson, "on the rocks, of course". CV Name: Alexandre Ricard Position: Chairman and chief executive of Pernod Ricard Age: 43 Lives: Paris Hobbies: Cinema and running. "I'm a big fan of the whole Star Wars saga." Something we might expect: He has a home bar. Something that might surprise: "I started living in the US before I ever lived in France. I was born in Paris and went to school in Andorra. At age 10 my family moved to the US, where I lived for four years. I only really started to live in France at age 18."