The new rye-casked matured, 51.8% Ardbeg committee bottle is here and in stock at Mission! But it’s not available online at this point in time.
I’ve been manually facilitating orders all morning, making sure that everyone on the insider list gets what they need before we put these on the general site.
They’re going fast, but we still have a few cases to make sure we’re on the safe side. If you’re looking to lockdown your bottle, send me an email at davidd@missionliquor.com
-David Driscoll
Even if you only read this blog for the hard stuff, I would implore you not to miss this discussion with Steve Matthiasson tomorrow at 5 PM over at the @missionliquor Instagram (of course, I’ll post the recording the next day if you can’t see it live).
Steve is not only one of the best winemakers in California, he’s the guy that everyone wants managing their vineyard because he’s the current king of organic farming. As a result, he knows where all the good fruit is across the state and he’s finding vineyards in some pretty remote places, turning those grapes into some of the more dynamic and interesting selections on the market.
This will NOT be a wine education class or a live tasting where we say the Chardonnay has “hints of apple.”. I’d fall asleep myself if we did that. Rather, this will be a discussion about what’s happening across the state in terms of agriculture and where Steve thinks the next cool spot will be for winemaking.
I’m very excited about this. Steve is the guy who got me back into California wine and I am a true believer in just about everything he touches.
-David Driscoll
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
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
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
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
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
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