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 There’s a certain breed of whiskey loving Southerners who swear by Southern Comfort — whether it’s served on the rocks or as a SoCo and Lime. On it’s website, the fruit flavored liqueur claims it’s “the spirit of New Orleans,” made in 1874 by a bartender “who believed whiskey should be enjoyed, not endured.” 
 
 But guess what. Southern Comfort doesn’t have whiskey in it, and it hasn’t for decades. Now, under the ownership of the the Sazerac Company (which owns brands like Buffalo Trace, Bowman’s, and Firefly) that’s going to change, according to the New York Times. 
 
 You can likely understand why the Sazerac Company would want to put the whiskey back in SoCo. The brand’s reputation ranges from the liqueur of bad college decision making to the drink that earned Janis Joplin a fur coat. When the Brown-Forman company bought the brand in 1979, SoCo used a neutral grain spirit (think vodka or Everclear) as the alcohol portion of the drink. 
 
 Sazerac Company bought SoCo in 2016 and immediately recognized the need for a change. 
 
 “I remember having arguments with bartenders who thought black was blue and swore it had whiskey in it,” Mark Brown, the CEO of Sazerac Company, told the Times. “We thought, as part of the overall positions, we would put whiskey in it. And we have.” 
 
 Chalk this up to the changes you never thought needed to happen. No one knows exactly which whiskey will go into the new and improved SoCo, but Brown did mention it was going to be from a Sazerac brand. Hopefully it’s enough to move Southern Comfort from “don’t touch that” in the minds of whiskey purists to a drink that makes people go “hmmmm.” 
 
 “If we’re right between Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam on the shelf,” Brown told the Times, “that will be fine with us.” 
 
 For those of you familiar with the current taste of SoCo, it’s going to get better. For those of you who’ve avoided the drink, maybe it’s time to give it a try. ||||| When the Sazerac Company bought Southern Comfort from the liquor conglomerate Brown-Forman last year, the business motivation was clear. 
 
 “If you and I ended on a desert island and there was a bottle of liquor, there’s an even-money chance it would be Southern Comfort,” Mark Brown, the chief executive of Sazerac, said in a phone interview. 
 
 Very likely. But it’s also a 50-50 proposition whether any castaway would actually drink it. Southern Comfort has long borne a double-edged reputation as being both famous and infamous. 
 
 The blend of spirits and fruit and spice flavorings is a storied brand, with roots that are believed to go back to the 19th century, and it can be found in nearly every bar in America. Yet it is widely regarded as the drink of unwise youths and undiscriminating palates. The last time it was cool may have been when Janis Joplin made a show of swigging it day and night. (The company thanked her for the free advertising by giving her a fur coat.) ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Louisville, KY, March 1, 2016 – Brown-Forman Corporation (NYSE: BFA, BFB) announced today that it has completed the sale of the Southern Comfort and Tuaca trademarks to Sazerac for a final purchase price of $542.4 million. The transaction will be discussed in further detail during tomorrow’s conference call following the issuance of the company’s third quarter earnings release. 
 
 For more than 145 years, Brown-Forman Corporation has enriched the experience of life by responsibly building fine quality beverage alcohol brands, including Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, Jack Daniel’s & Cola, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey, Gentleman Jack, Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel, Finlandia, Korbel, el Jimador, Woodford Reserve, Canadian Mist, Herradura, New Mix, Sonoma-Cutrer, Early Times, and Chambord. Brown-Forman’s brands are supported by nearly 4,400 employees and sold in approximately 160 countries worldwide. For more information about the company, please visit https://www.brown-forman.com. 
 
 About the Sazerac Company 
 
 Sazerac is one of New Orleans’ oldest family owned, privately held companies and has operations in New Orleans, Louisiana; Frankfort, Bardstown, Louisville and Owensboro, Kentucky; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Carson, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Lewiston, Maine; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Montreal Canada. For more information on Sazerac, please visit http://www.sazerac.com ||||| History and Mystery 
 
 We’ve been crafting our smooth-drinking whiskey for over 140 years, ever since our founder M.W. Heron created the ‘The Grand Ole’ Drink of the South’ way back in 1874. Back then, he was fond of saying ‘None Genuine But Mine’ and it still holds true today – as whiskey lovers around the world reach for the unmistakable, smooth-drinking flavor of Southern Comfort. ||||| Southern Comfort, SoCo, Cuffs & Button -- whatever you want to call it -- is a drink with more mystery than you know. You've probably encountered this spirit at some point in your life -- or at the very least have seen photos of Janis Joplin clutching a bottle in her hand -- but, have you ever stopped to think about what it is, exactly? 
 
 Most people think of Southern Comfort as a whiskey. A look at Google's search trends shows "Southern Comfort Whiskey" as one of the more popular search terms. And the bottle of brown liquid often sits next to the whiskey at your local liquor store, but it is not in fact a whiskey. Or a bourbon. Or a Scotch. Don't let its golden color make a fool of you. 
 
 Southern Comfort, which was first named Cuffs & Buttons, is in fact a liqueur -- a whiskey-flavored one. The original recipe was created by Martin Wilkes Heron in New Orleans. Heron was a barkeep looking for a solution to make unrefined whiskey more palatable. He came up with a recipe that added fruits and spices to the harsh liquor, and his customers loved it. With their thirst as his inspiration, he began marketing his recipe, which he later renamed Southern Comfort. 
 
 While the actual recipe is kept under lock and key, our deepest digging has brought us to this conclusion: Southern Comfort is made from 100-percent grain-neutral spirit base (basically vodka), fruit, spices and at times the recipe has included a little bourbon. We spoke to Charles K. Cowdery, who worked at Southern Comfort back in the day, and he said that the recipe at least used to be "grain neutral spirit, sugar, and a fruit concentrate in which the dominant fruit is apricot." 
 
 It's sweet, fruity and strong. And that's why it makes for such a great cocktail -- and an easier to drink whiskey-type drink. 
 
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– Southern Comfort bills itself as "the spirit of New Orleans," but the generic grain-neutral spirit base it contains (an ingredient not far removed from vodka) doesn't exactly scream "Deep South character." The Sazerac Company, owner of the college-staple brand, wants to change that perception—and hopefully sales—by reintroducing whiskey into the mix in redesigned bottles set to hit shelves in July, the New York Times reports. Sazerac, which VinePair notes also owns the Buffalo Trace bourbon and Bowman Brothers whiskey brands, wants to dump the "liqueur" association it believes consumers often attribute to Southern Comfort, bringing it back to its original roots by adding undisclosed types of North American whiskey in its own stash. The Southern Comfort website explains the famous libation was first whipped up in 1874 by a bartender (identified by the Times as Martin W. Heron) who tried to tamp down the "harsh whiskeys of the time" by throwing in various fruits and spices. But the Times notes that by the time Brown-Forman took over the brand's barrels in 1979, the whiskey had been completely nixed from the mix—and once Sazerac bought Southern Comfort from Brown-Forman in 2016, the idea of adding whiskey back started gaining momentum. The company plans on phasing out flavored SoCo versions while retaining the 70-proof and 100-proof original recipes. It also wants to add in an 80-proof version with a black label on the bottle like those of competitors Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam. (The revamped SoCo will likely cost less than this Scotch whisky in a perfume-bottle-shaped decanter.)