It’s also cheap, around $15 for a 750mL-bottle, and what coupon-cutting septuagenarian doesn’t like a good bargain? Fireball is ostensibly whiskey, but at a much lower alcohol by volume (a mere 66 proof, or 33 percent ABV), and it’s sweetened so it’s very easy to drink, particularly over ice. This phenomenon isn’t hard to understand. “But my son-in-law had told me this Fireball tastes like Big Red gum, so I said to the bartender, ‘Hey, how ’bout if I have it on the rocks?’” He’s been a fan ever since. “If I drink whiskey, I’ll usually drink a shot of it as I really don’t appreciate the taste,” he tells me. For most of his life he’s been a beer drinker, with an occasional Irish Mist. The 70-year-old retiree from Chicago had his first taste of Fireball at a bar on St. This happened most recently while doing the rounds at liquor stores in New Jersey back in October: “Several owners at, what I would call, ‘nicer’ liquor stores kept telling me that they’ll see older customers purchasing premium brands-good stuff-and then one bottle of Fireball as well,” she says. “I could get to like this,” offered a third grandma.Ī friend who works as a marketing director for a higher-end liquor brand (and wished to remain anonymous) has seen Fireball’s new relevance with older clientele first-hand while out promoting her own products. “Soothing, very soothing,” thought another. “Very fiery,” noted one grandma in that viral video. But the tide has turned: Today, Fireball is being bought by 21.6 percent of adults ages 21 to 34, and 20.3 percent of adults ages 55 to 64.
In fact, as recently as 2015, the mere incongruity of “grandmas” drinking Fireball led to a viral YouTube video. It’s unquestionably college-aged folks who catapulted the brand to $800 million in sales by 2014. Still, when most Americans think of Fireball in its current heyday (let’s say 2011 and on), they picture it as a popular shot in a bar with a lax ID policy. McGillicuddy’s Fireball Cinnamon Whisky was launched back in the mid-1980s, it wasn’t members of Alabama’s Theta Chi fraternity buying handles of it-it was, then, a Canada-only product, part of Seagram’s schnapps line, mostly popular with hockey players and ice fisherman in need of a warming spirit. “Well, historically the brand has always done well with all age ranges,” says Amy Preske, head of public relations for Sazerac (Fireball’s manufacturer). So how did a quintessential bro-shot brand become something senior citizens have begun drinking from the privacy of their own living rooms?
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