Maker’s Mark just got a little less stiff. The bourbon brand, known for its bottles sealed with red wax, told customers today that it’s reducing the amount of alcohol in the beverage in order to meet rising global demand. 
 
 Bourbon, which is a form of American whiskey distilled from corn and other grains, has surged in popularity over the past few years. In its largest market, the United States, bourbon now accounts for 35% of all spirit sales as more Americans have developed a taste for high-end whiskey, which is typically aged in charred white oak barrels for six years or longer. In the 1960s and 1970s, Maker’s Mark was famously sold with the slogan, “It tastes expensive…and is.” 
 
 But international growth is what’s driving demand for bourbon makers like Beam Inc., which produces Maker’s Mark as well as Jim Beam, a cheaper and more popular bourbon. Beam executives earlier this month said Australia, Germany, and Japan were strong markets. Last year, the company warned it didn’t have enough supply to keep up with bourbon demand. It also raised prices. 
 
 In an email today to loyal customers, Beam executives said the company had decided that the only way to keep up with demand was to make its bourbon less strong, stretching the current supply. “We’ve worked carefully to reduce the alcohol by volume (ABV) by just 3%,” the email said. 
 
 I’ve reached out to Beam to clarify whether the alcohol is being reduced by 3%, as the email says, or three percentage points, which would be more dramatic. The footer of today’s email suggests it’s the latter, describing Maker’s Mark as a 42% ABV beverage, which is also known as 84 proof; it was previously distilled to 45% ABV, or 90 proof. That would be a 6.7% reduction in the amount of alcohol. 
 
 “We have both tasted it extensively, and it’s completely consistent with the taste profile our founder/dad/grandfather, Bill Samuels, Sr., created nearly 60 years ago,” two of the company’s bourbon heirs wrote in the email. “We’ve also done extensive testing with Maker’s Mark drinkers, and they couldn’t tell a difference.” 
 
 Watering down the drink is a risky move for a brand with customers as particular as Maker’s Mark’s, which explains why it reached out to its “ambassadors” to disclose the change and potentially head off a backlash. Bourbon connoisseurs often speak in reverent terms about the “taste profile” of their favorite spirits, and producers like Beam heavily market the time-honored and precise recipes that make their products superior. Adding a little water to the drink is an easy way to increase Beam’s margins and do more with less, but at what cost? Some customers, of course, prefer their whiskey over ice or with a splash of soda, but they would surely say that watering down the drink is their prerogative alone. 
 
 Here’s the email that Maker’s Mark sent today, which was passed along to me by David Weiner, editorial director at Digg: ||||| Sex sells, and so does panic, apparently. 
 
 Sales of Maker’s Mark bourbon, known for its distinctive red wax seal, soared 44 percent in the first quarter, its best ever, after the distillery announced in mid-February that it plans to water down its own product and lower the proof due to shortage of raw materials. That led to a revolt among loyal customers, but whereas people usually boycott a product when they are not happy, Maker’s announcement turned out to boost sales. Customers started hoarding what they were led to believe were to be the last 90-proof Maker’s bourbon bottles. 
 
 The firestorm that the announcement caused led Maker’s to sober up. As thousands took to social-media to complain about the change to Maker's, the company reversed the decision a week after the news broke. 
 
 "You spoke. We listened. And we're sincerely sorry we let you down," the distiller wrote on its page Feb. 17. Nearly 28,000 people clicked a “like”, praising the decision. 
 
 Companies of course tend to crow about product reformulations, but that is often the case when they improve the formulation, not diminish it. However, when it comes to marketing, scare tactics seem to work. The public relations fiasco turned out to be a boon for Maker’s Mark, offsetting some decline in parent Jim Beam’s other spirits. 
 
 Beam isn't the first company to face a backlash when tinkering with a beloved product. In 1985, devotees of Coke were enraged when Co. introduced a reformulated beverage called New Coke. Less than three months after what some called "the biggest marketing fiasco ever", Coke went back to its original formula, rechristened “Coca-Cola Classic”, marketed side by side with New Coke. 
 
 In a bit of spin, Coca-Cola eventually claimed that both formulas actually increased their share of the cola market, and some conspiracy theorists even insinuated that this was actually a brilliant, secret strategy intended to regain loyalty of Coca Cola drinks that have been switching to Pepsi. 
 
 Is it possible that Maker’s blunder was premeditated? 
 
 That would have been pretty dumb. For starters, it would have been too risky, bordering on a death wish. No one could have predicted that their customers would rush out and hoard on the bourbon. And in the age of social media it was entirely predictable that customers would revolt vociferously. 
 
 So therefore, the company might have been brazen enough or foolish enough to actually consider cheapening their product as a viable business strategy, but I don’t believe that the announcement about watering down the bourbon was premeditated, just dumb. 
 
 In some ways Maker’s learned what many companies have to grapple with today: they really don’t own their brands anymore, the customer does. They just rent them. 
 
 Avi Dan is the founder of Avidan Strategies, a marketing consulting firm that specializes in business and marketing advice, agency search, compensation, and advertising strategy. He spent 30 years in senior management and board positions with leading global agencies.
– Remember how America's bourbon drinkers collectively freaked out in February over the news Maker's Mark was going to water down its alcohol? Big corporate misstep? Hardly, reports Forbes. The company did an about-face within a week in an attempt to prevent a mass exodus of fans, and it appears those fans went on a bourbon-hoarding bender during those scary few days. Maker's Mark sales exploded 44% in Q1, making it the bourbon's strongest quarter ever. Fans better hope the hoarding has stopped, however: "We won't expect to see those 44% growth rates sustained throughout the year, and in fact we can't support them," says its CEO, per the Wall Street Journal.