Happy Friday!

I’m in a very good mood this morning!!

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I just released some Buffalo Trace Kosher rye and wheated releases to the Mission Insider list.

That, along with the Blanton’s and E.H. Taylor we offered last week makes for quite an initial stretch.

If you’re not on the Mission Insider list, put your name and email into the box on the right of this blog and sign up!

It would make a great day even better to see your email pop up in my inbox.

Have a great weekend!

-David Driscoll

A Lot Of People Like What You Like—And That's OK

I remember last year when a video of Stanley Tucci making a Negroni went viral on social media. The reason I remember it so well is because I had to listen to about fifteen different people rant about how he didn’t do it right.

Partly because of that video, Stanley Tucci now has a food show on CNN. And now I have to listen to the same people talk about how they know more about Italian food than him, yet they still don’t have a TV show.

Here’s the thing folks: liking Negronis and Italian food doesn’t make you unique. In fact, it makes you mainstream. If something is trendy, a famous person is going to get more attention for liking it than you are. Even if you know more about it than them. Period. End of story. Can we move on?

It reminds me of an embarrassing memory from high school that I would like to forget, but cannot because I’m ashamed of it. In the mid-90s, I was a big Nine Inch Nails fan. I didn’t know anyone else at my high school who liked NIN, so that sort of became my thing. That was my band, and I thought liking that band gave me an identity.

Then this other kid that I didn’t really like started liking the band too. He wore T-shirts, starting writing NIN on his backpack, and it pissed me off. I felt like he was encroaching on my turf, as if I was the only kid in the world who liked Nine Inch Nails, and that made me special, or cool, or better than him. I remember challenging him to name more than one song, then getting annoyed and talking down to him when he couldn’t. “You’re a poser,” I ended up saying.

To cut myself some slack, I was fifteen. Nevertheless, I HATE that kind of shit today, so I’m still mad at myself twenty-five years later for behaving that way. I have no tolerance for it.

When someone invests his or her identity into a subculture, then gets territorial about the authenticity surrounding that subculture, it’s a recipe for a serious asshole. Watch any John Hughes movie from the 80s for an example. Or any episode of the Big Bang Theory. Or just go onto a Reddit forum. The chip-on-the-shoulder club is vast and wide, especially when it comes to art, film, music, food, and alcohol.

But just because we’re passionate about something, it doesn’t mean that others can’t also participate with less passion or less expertise.

And just because we might know more about alcohol than someone else doesn’t mean we’re enjoying it more either. In fact, from my experience it’s the people who know less and care less about alcohol that tend to enjoy it the most because it doesn’t turn into a vehicle for their own self-importance.

I don’t care if Stanley Tucci shakes his Negronis. Or if he uses vodka instead of gin. If you do, then you should make your own Negroni video where you do it your way.

Just please don’t get mad when no one offers you a show on CNN, or gives a shit about your opinion on the matter.

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Knob Creek Barrel Selection

It’s almost as if we knew from the first second that the cats were going to cause havoc. And they did.

Our Knob Creek live barrel selection is broken into two parts: the part before my cat Tommy stepped on the keyboard and ended the recording, and the part afterward.

Amanda Gunderson did an amazing job taking what would have been just two people drinking Bourbon and turning it into an incredibly educational video about Jim Beam, Knob Creek, and Bourbon as a whole.

Even after we got things going again, it ended with nonstop video pet bombs in the final flurry, proving once again that cute animals will always win the internet.

-David Driscoll

Introducing Domaine D'Ognoas Armagnac

For those of you who’ve been buying booze from me over the last decade, Domaine d’Ognoas needs no introduction. But for those of you who are long-time Mission shoppers and are new to the domaine, let me tell you about one of the best value brandies in the entire world—an Armagnac made at one of France’s oldest estates that delivers the goods every single time.

Ognoas was once one of Armagnac’s feudal lordships, and the seigneury dates back to the 11th century. It was occupied by various lords and viscountesses for over seven centuries until 1847, when the last remaining heir donated the property to the Catholic church. No longer seeing a need for it, the church handed it over to the French government in 1905, and today the estate is operated as a distillation and agricultural education center. With 565 hectares to work with, there are some pretty neat things happening behind these ancient stone walls.

Because Ognoas is a school, there are educational materials all over the facility and the staff is more than happy to answer all the basic distillation questions. For those of you who are new to Armagnac, it’s sort of like the Bourbon of France. Rather than double pot distillation like Cognac (and single malt), Armagnac is distilled once in a continuous method that uses a primary pot with a secondary column. Like Bourbon, it can be tremendously powerful, oaky, dark, and spicy. Like Bourbon, it’s not uncommon to find Armagnac bottled at higher proofs for greater intensity.

That being said, Ognoas is not one of those Armagnacs. It’s one of the softer, more richly-textured brandies from the region, sort of blurring the lines between brandy and whiskey.

The distillery at Ognoas has been in continuous operation since 1780, making it the oldest in the region. Part of the 565 hectare estate includes the vineyards: Baco, Ugni Blanc, and Folle Blanche all planted on site. Unlike Cognac, which is almost always distilled from Ugni Blanc, Armagnac uses a number of different varietals in its brandies, which can either be single varietal distillates or blends depending on the distiller’s preference.

But my personal favorite aspect about the Ognoas Armagnacs is the oak. The estate has over 300 hectares of forest land on the property, with oak trees grown specifically for cooperage. The trees are selected by the cooperage team and all the barrel-making is done on site. It’s a self-sufficient distillery in every sense of the word and the traditions go back for centuries. The cellar goes back pretty far as well.

How far back? Decades and decades. We just snagged this 42 year old beauty from my friend Charles Neal: 1976 Domaine d’Ognoas for $199, loaded with rich oak, soft fruit, vanilla bean and rancio. When’s the last time you saw 42 year old anything for two hundred bucks?

If that’s too rich for your blood, check out the 1995 Domaine d’Ognoas for $109 that—to me—hits all the right notes for both Bourbon and Scotch drinkers in search of a new adventure. Ample richness from 23 years in the barrel with plenty of supple texture from the marriage of fruit and oak. Yum.

If you’re looking for something with 50+ years on it, check out the 1968 Ognoas for a cool $219. Find me something this good, this old, and at this price and I’ll be impressed.

Or, if you just want to get your feet wet, check out the standard Reserve for $39 and get 10-14 years of richness for a hot, hot price.

We’re just getting started with French spirits here at Mission, so there’s a lot more to come. And a lot more value behind it.

-David Driscoll

Live Barrel Selection Tomorrow on Instagram

Since we’re talking about barrel selections in the COVID era, I thought I’d bring everyone along for the ride tomorrow.

This Wednesday at 5 PM, we’ll be doing a quick barrel selection process with Knob Creek. I’ve narrowed it down to three contenders and Amanda will jump in to add color commentating!

See you then,

-David Driscoll

Barrel Selections In The COVID Era

As you might imagine, there aren’t many retailers heading out to Kentucky right now to select single barrels. As you also might imagine, that doesn’t mean Kentucky distillers have stopped trying to sell them.

How does one select a barrel in today’s COVID era? Pretty easily. They send you samples in the mail and you pick the one you like (to be honest, that’s how most retailers were doing it before COVID, as well).

But what about something like the Maker’s 46 single barrel program, an intensely-personalized process that involves hours of blending in order to replicate what a custom-designed ten stave expression might ultimately taste like?

That’s a little more difficult to pull off. But because I wholeheartedly believe the Maker’s 46 single cask program is the best thing going in Kentucky right now, I wanted to make it happen for Mission. That’s why, this past Friday, Phil and the gang from Beam came over to my backyard for an appropriately-distanced and socially-safe blending session.

Maker’s 46 might be one of the most misunderstood Bourbons on the market today, so before going any further let me catch anyone up who may be out of the loop. What Maker’s did with the 46 expression is insert ten additional French oak staves into a specially-designed barrel and finish the traditional Maker’s Mark for an extended period, adding extra oak contact to intensify the flavor of the whiskey. The flavors of French oak are decidedly different than American oak, so the whiskey gained a complexity of spice and richness from that process.

What Maker’s has done with its customized 46 barrel program allows retailers like myself to select from four additional staves—in addition to the 46 French oak stave—and use those staves in any combination we want. You can select two of each type for a total of ten, or even ten of a single type (which I’ve done in the past). You have complete control over the type and combination you want to use.

In order to replicate what your barrel might ultimately taste like, Beam brings along barrel samples from casks that have been finished with one single stave type. By blending those whiskies together with the approximate proportions (10ml for each stave), you can build to a 100ml sample depending on the combination of staves you select. If you look in the background on my patio table, you’ll see there are poker chips and slotted staves, which is how we keep track of each sample—you put ten chips on to each stave that represent which ones you’ve selected.

Not only is it SUPER fun to do, it’s quite educational as a blending exercise and Maker’s is always updating the stave selection. This past Friday, we were actually the first to use the new Mendiant chocolate stave, which has replaced the roasted mocha stave. I ended up using three of those Mendiant staves to add deep, dark bass notes to what ultimately should be a rich and spicy cask strength barrel pick. I’m very excited to see how our first Mission barrel turns out.

Before leaving, my friend Jaime from Beam gave me a bottle of Maker’s cask strength to try with the new Fever Tree Spiced Orange Ginger Ale. I dusted that bottle in 48 hours (with help). I am utterly OBSESSED with the new Fever Tree Orange Spiced Ginger Ale and the way that it plays with Bourbon.

As a guy who likes ginger beer as a cocktail ingredient in general—Moscow Mule, Dark & Stormy, etc—this was an unexpected development that is going to drastically increase my consumption this month. It’s all I can think about.

That and the fact that Maker’s Cask Strength is still one the best whiskies on the market at any price.

-David Driscoll

Modern Obsession

Where would I be without the internet? I suppose we roam on the internet because we aren't able to find in our physical lives the human connection we need for survival. So we search endlessly online alone.

-From Elisa Lam’s Tumblr account

I could not wait to watch Netflix’s new season of Crime Scene last night, having followed the Elisa Lam case at the Hotel Cecil. I won’t spoil any of the major details if you’re unfamiliar with the tragedy, but having lost several friends to severe bi-polar disorder I was affected in a personal way by the story.

Yet, while I was engrossed in the case and wanted to know more, my interest was nothing compared to the army of amateur web sleuths who internalized the Lam disappearance and made it their life’s focus to find out what “really” happened. Finishing the series, I ended up even more affected by how frighteningly easy it was for hundreds of people all over the world to claim authority over the details, devolve into conspiracy theories, and attack those who disagreed with them—from thousands of miles away, with absolutely no professional detective experience and no direct involvement in the case.

As I fell asleep last night, I was more jarred by the obsessive behavior and self-importance of the amateur crime enthusiasts than the crime itself.

Where would I be without the internet? At complete peace.

-David Driscoll

The Last Hurdle

I’ve had to re-establish a number of old relationships in a relatively short period of time since joining Mission. “Hey, I’m back in retail. Let’s do some business!”

Which always begs the question: If you love retail so much, why did you decide to get out back in 2018?

They’re asking because they think it was industry-related, mind you; not because they’re interested in my own personal journey or motivations. Maybe I knew an important detail about where business is headed and made an economically strategic decision.

But I didn’t leave K&L back in 2018 because of any conflict, or job forecasting, or any downturn in my career. I left because I had lost my passion for this business.

Why did retail stop being fun, you ask? Because of automation.

It turns out you can make a lot more money by mining for Parker points than advocating for products you believe in. That’s where our industry is heading: algorithms that crunch 90+ point Wine Spectator scores for less than $30, and auto-generate marketing emails. In today’s web-based retail world, the business that can best automate the advertising of alcohol into an easily digestible and computable format is the one that wins. The proof is in the pudding.

But when an algorithm based on numerical scores starts to render your personal relationships obsolete, it takes the fun out of working with wine and spirits. I’m someone who has always believed in the human element of retail and the passion of people to sell a product, so the chance to come back and do it that way at Mission was too much to resist.

But there’s been one major hurdle to my relationship building since I took the reins as sales manager this past November—one that stands as a stark contrast to my customer service beliefs, and that represents the opposite end of the automation spectrum. Regardless of whether you have zero automation or full automation of your sales model, there are always bottles that fall into a grey area in terms of their distribution. You all know what I’m talking about: Pappy, Stagg, Blanton’s, etc. These bottles require extra work because of how sensitive they have become for today’s consumers.

Because of the extra work, the public distribution of these bottles is often done by retailers in one of two ways: automated release or marked-up prices.

If you automate a fair sales process for these bottles, people get pissed because they’re not as tech savvy as the faster customers and they miss out time and time again. Why would you give this type of retailer your money if they can’t look out for you now and then? Do they not care about your relationship as a consumer? There’s no loyalty. The fastest fingers win.

If you take the even lazier route and mark the prices up based on demand, you make more people even more angry! Why give someone your money who just takes advantage of the short market, rather than rewarding you for your business? If they’re gouging you on Blanton’s, what else might they be gouging you on? There’s no trust. The highest bidder wins.

As with most solutions in life, the answer lies in the middle: you interject a human element to the sales model that takes into consideration the customer and the situation.

The problem with my customer service sales model is that:

1. It takes extra work

2. It can’t be automated

In order to fairly distribute your best and rarest bottles of Bourbon, you need to know your customers. That means spending time looking at their sales histories, getting to know their interests via email, communicating with them personally when you can or can’t help them out, and then explaining the circumstances so that they understand they are still valued customers even if you can’t get them a bottle of Pappy this time around.

Like I said, this way of doing business takes a lot of extra effort, but you do it because you want to. You do it because you know it’s the right thing to do as a human looking out for other humans. At Mission, there’s never been a process for this type of customer outreach; hence historically we’ve sold these whiskies at prices that reflect the modern supply and demand. As a result, we’ve garnered a negative reputation among Bourbon consumers who don’t trust our prices or our policies (even when 99% of our other prices are more than competitive and fair). And we’ve deserved it.

No retailer will ever convince consumers they have their best interests at heart until they can prove it across the board. That’s why you’re going to see some drastic changes happening in the near future with how we price, sell, and allocate these rare whiskies. If you’re interested in knowing more about how we plan on doing that, I’d put your name and email into the box on the right side of this blog and sign up for my insider email list.

This is the last hurdle for us to clear. After this, it’s time to sprint.

-David Driscoll