Southern Comfort forms a key part of that shift. In January he paid Brown-Forman Corp. $544 million for the sweet, peach-flavored whiskey drink that originated in New Orleans in the late 1800s and hit its cultural peak in 1970 as a staple of Janis Joplin’s purse. It’s morphed over the years into a brand almost as popular abroad as at home. Foreign markets account for 37 percent of Southern Comfort sales, said Jeremy Cunnington, a Euromonitor analyst in London.
Then in September, Goldring bought Australian importer and distributor South Trade International, immediately adding Southern Comfort to its antipodal offerings. In May, the billionaire paid Diageo an undisclosed sum for Paddy, an Irish whiskey sold in 26 countries. He took Danish vodka, Fris, off Pernod Ricard’s hands.
"Spirits is a maturing business in the United States, albeit one that still has some surprises. But it’s a junior market in a lot of other countries that has tremendous opportunity to grow," says Patrick L. Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, an East Lansing, Michigan, consulting firm.
Goldring grew up in a town awash in cheap drinks and good times. His father, Stephen, and a partner helped fuel the endless party through a beer and liquor distribution business. Even in such a permissive climate, the alcohol game had stigma enough that his father discouraged him from joining the company after graduating from Tulane in 1964 and a stint in the military.
"I told him, ’Well, I’ll take my chances,’" Goldring said, according to an article in New Orleans magazine. Goldring was soon running the business and, a decade later, began buying it, according to a 2009 deposition. In 1984, he bought shares in Sazerac Co., founded in 1850 as a coffee shop. He eventually acquired the whole company.
Goldring keeps a low profile, so low that it’s hard to find his name on the Sazerac website. He has given interviews only to local publications and to a television show about the Jewish experience. Except for an item noting that he attended a Ted Cruz event this year, Goldring’s press almost always centers on philanthropy.
A rare spate of bad publicity came this year, when a television news program found that the nonprofit Audubon Nature Institute, where his son Jeffrey and a company executive were board members, had a deal since 1992 to buy alcohol from his companies. The two resigned from the organization, according to the organization’s September minutes, which didn’t disclose a reason.
“We are not aware of any deal for Audubon to buy alcohol from Goldring owned companies; do not believe that is accurate,” said Sazerac public relations manager Amy Preske in a Friday e-mail.
Mainly, though, the good times keep rolling. In addition to Sazerac -- which could fetch as much as $4.5 billion if publicly traded, according to Anderson -- Goldring owns half of Goldring/Moffett Distributing and a quarter of Gulf Distributing Holdings, which sell 47 million cases of beer along the Gulf Coast and in Arizona annually.
For a slate of businesses like those that are steadily growing, it may seem strange to add slumping Southern Comfort, sales of which have fallen 21 percent, by volume, since 2009, according to Euromonitor. But those who have sold businesses to Goldring in the past have learned that he always has a plan and is willing to wait out the bad times.