Gillian Moore

An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters got a boost on Unit­ed States tele­vi­sion on Thurs­day night when An­gos­tu­ra Ltd ex­ec­u­tives Giselle Laronde-West and Genevieve Jod­han ap­peared on The Rachel Mad­dow Show on MSNBC to talk about a re­cent in­ter­rup­tion in the in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply of the prod­uct. Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, ac­tivist and cock­tail en­thu­si­ast Mad­dow, the show's host, opened the "cock­tail mo­ment" seg­ment of the show by mix­ing two drinks–a cham­pagne cock­tail and a Man­hat­tan–us­ing An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters.

She said that dur­ing the re­cent St Patrick's Day edi­tion of the seg­ment, her pro­duc­tion team could not find the pop­u­lar elixir at any liquor store in the Man­hat­tan area. Fol­low­ing the air­ing of that show, she said, she re­ceived "box­es and box­es" of bit­ters from An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, and in­vit­ed the com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives on, "to cel­e­brate the re­turn of An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters."

"We had a prob­lem with the sup­ply of the bot­tles" Jod­han ex­plained, "...at the same time...the de­mand for bit­ters was just ris­ing," Laronde-West said dur­ing the short­age, she re­ceived "e-mails and e-mails" from around the world, as fans of the prod­uct said, "We can't get the bit­ters. What's hap­pen­ing down there? We can't find it in Man­hat­tan; we can't find it in Eu­rope. "We had to let them know we're not out of busi­ness, we've been pro­duc­ing bit­ters all along." She said An­gos­tu­ra solved the prob­lem by sourc­ing an­oth­er sup­pli­er and as­sured view­ers that the sup­ply of bit­ters would be reg­u­larised.

Call­ing the bit­ters "liq­uid gold," Mad­dow asked about the his­to­ry of the prod­uct as the cam­era zoomed in on the icon­ic la­bel. Laronde-West said the bit­ters had been in pro­duc­tion since 1824, and said of the recipe, "it's very se­cret," adding that on­ly five peo­ple in the world knew the for­mu­la. She said of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd: "We make rum as well. It's a com­pa­ny that peo­ple val­ue in T&T." Of the short­age, Laronde-West said: "This has done a great deal, un­der­stand­ing how much peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ate An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters." Mad­dow wrapped up the light­heart­ed seg­ment, say­ing, "Some­times, it takes break­ing up to re­alise how in love you were."

The seg­ment can be viewed on­line at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/ns/msnbc_tv