Don't Look Back, You Can Never Look Back

Yesterday was a magical day in my world. I woke up to three sweet cats, drank my coffee, read the morning paper, watched the sun come up over the mountains, and set up my grocery deliveries for later that day.

Do you know what I was able to get delivered to my house for less than $50? A 1.75 liter bottle of 9 year old 100 proof Knob Creek. That’s what the wholesale cost used to be, and now that includes delivery and tip.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’ll never pine for the past or long for the “glory days” of whiskey so long as I can continue to find deals like this on the market. For every whiskey that becomes cultish, collectable, and out of reach, another fifty pop up. For every brand that goes up in price, another twenty will become more competitive.

And yet, week in and week out, for the last four years I’ve heard so much lamenting from consumers about the same handful of whiskies, as if that’s all that’s worth drinking. As if they’re all that can make us happy. It’s sort of like the stock market. You think you can only make money with FAANG stocks? There’s a lot more out there than just five companies. You need to diversify so that you have other options when things go south.

Because I was sitting on a delicious 1.75L of Knob at roughly 10:48 AM, I started early yesterday. By 3 PM, I was on a roll, texting some of my drinking buddies to tell them about the deal. I ended up in a dialogue about how Knob and Booker’s are made from the same mash bill, and that the difference comes down to barrel selection and where the casks are located in the rickhouse. “The only reason anyone ever cared about Weller 12 is because they found out it was the same recipe as Van Winkle 12,” I texted one friend; “The only difference is the barrel selection. So you’d think more Booker’s fans would be buying huge swaths of Knob at this price.”

I know guys who love Booker’s, but don’t like Knob Creek. They’re willing to pay secondary prices to secure a bottle of Booker’s, but they won’t even bat an eye at Knob Creek’s value. Personally, I think that’s crazy, but I do understand the impact of sentimental value. As an example, I hate the Eagles, but I love Don Henley’s solo work. I think “Boys of Summer” is a far superior song to “Hotel California,” yet there were guys out there last year willing to drop $5000 a ticket just to hear the Eagles perform the latter in Las Vegas. No one was dropping $5000 to hear “Boys of Summer.”

Because I know I can always find value in the whiskey and wine market, I will never pay secondary market prices for a bottle of alcohol. But that’s not to say I won’t pay secondary prices if there’s something I really want that I can’t get. Take the new Lego flower bouquet as an example. It’s so damn cool that it went viral on release and sold out immediately, everywhere. The only way to get it now is to pay 60-100% more on Ebay, so that’s what I did. I can’t have real flowers in the house because my cats will eat them and get sick, so I this was a unique and stylish alternative. There is no other version of Lego flowers. This is it. You either get this version, or none at all.

But when it comes to alcohol, there are so many versions of new products that are changing all of the time!! To paraphrase a friend’s email from yesterday: as soon as you find something you like, it becomes so popular that it sells out, or they have to change the formula to keep up with demand and it’s no longer what it used to be. For example, the Ardbeg Uigeadail you’re drinking today isn’t the same as what you were drinking ten years ago. Those changes can be disappointing, but—come on, guys—life is full of shit like this. We use our coping skills and we move on. Plus, things usually swing back the other way as time goes by.

As an example, due to the demand for Bourbon in 2016, Knob Creek had to take the 9 year age statement off its bottle and release a younger product. For the next four years, Knob was the same price, but it wasn’t the same whiskey. But last year supply caught up to demand, the 9 year statement came back, and now—I wholeheartedly believe—it’s better than ever. And it’s so widely available with pricing so competitive that you can get a 1.75L delivered for $50 to your home. So that’s what I did yesterday, and it made me very happy.

Another example: from 2018 to 2020, I moved five times, bought one house, sold two, and I’m now on my sixth job. I’ve had to adjust as life dealt me some disappointments, some curve balls, and a series of highs and lows. But now in 2021 I’ve settled down, found a great place to live, and it seems like I have a pretty stable position here at Mission. It’s easy to get caught up in what seems like a better yesterday, but the optimist in me is addicted to forging ahead towards a better tomorrow. If you keep searching, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Unless you’re stuck looking backward.

Listening to “Boys of Summer” again as I type this, there’s a lot of wisdom in Don’s lyrics:

Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

A little voice inside my head said 'Don’t look back, you can never look back.’

I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?

Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go.

I drank Elmer T. Lee pretty regularly ten years ago because it was one of the best values on the market at that time. I didn’t really think much more about it than that. Now I drink Knob Creek 9 year because it’s currently one of the best values on the market. Life is still pretty good.

-David Driscoll

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