I think you’re going to see rare Bourbon combos become the trend in 2021, as it’s the only way for retailers to guarantee that customers are buying more than just rare Bourbons.
We’re going to play around with it at Mission as well, so I’m starting off with an easy one today. You can get the new Elijah Craig Batch A121 Barrel Proof as part of a combo with the McKenzie wheated Bourbon today, while supplies last!
Testing, one, two…
-David Driscoll
It’s gonna be a busy week here at Mission with a number of exciting new whiskies coming into stock, coupled with two very fun conversations we’ve got planned for Instagram.
Tomorrow at 3 PM, we’ll be doing cigar education with Michael Dougherty (above on the right, pictured with Carlito Fuente) from Arturo Fuente Cigars. Mr. D has worked for Fuente for over two decades!!! He’s one of the most experienced and knowledgeable cigar professionals I’ve met thus far, and I can’t wait to break down the genre with him tomorrow. Very excited about this one.
On Wednesday, I’m back with Phil Olson from Maker’s Mark and we’ll be discussing the new Maker’s Mark Wood Finish 2021 edition, featuring the newest stave in the Maker’s 46 lexicon. That one will start at 5 PM.
See you all then!
-David Driscoll
I am blessed to be friends with Frontier Records owner Lisa Fancher and the admin queen of vinyl, Ms. Julie Masi—both of whom come over to hang out with me regularly in my backyard (when I’m not going over to Lisa’s house to eat fried chicken and sit in her backyard).
We have been friends since our booze-trio collaboration with St. George Spirits back in 2015, but when I moved to LA (and just down the street from both ladies) we were able to do more than just text and email. We were actually able to break bread, empty bottles, and enjoy one another’s company.
Usually when I go over to Lisa’s, I bring booze. When Lisa and Julie come to me, they bring records. Last week, while gorging on Prime Pizza at my place, they slipped me a copy of their new Lilys’ reissue: A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns.
I have listened to NOTHING else since.
Have you ever listened to a new record that was actually an old record, and felt a deep sense of nostalgia even though it was the first time you’d ever heard the music?
Combine Pavement with My Bloody Valentine—two of my favorite bands of all time—and you’ve got A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns. Maybe a little Sonic Youth, too. Some Breeders, as well?
Mind you, this isn’t my first Lilys album. It’s just that this particular Lilys album happens to play a slice of my inner soul, summoning emotions and feelings that I haven’t experienced in years. Yet, I’d never heard it until last week. Every single song is amazing. Every single minute stirs my senses.
Call it shoegaze meets indie rock meets power pop. Call it dream rock. More importantly, call it yours.
I’ll give anyone who buys the new Lilys reissue directly from Frontier on vinyl a $10 coupon off their next order. If you do the digital download, I’ll give you $5 off your next order.
Not just because I want to help my gal pals at Frontier, but because I want more people to internalize this incredible record. What a gift.
-David Driscoll
My ex-coworker Andrew and I used to say that if Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel came in a bottle that said anything but Jack Daniels on it, it would be the top selling Bourbon in the store.
In a blind taste test, I have fooled DOZENS of hardcore Bourbon drinkers into thinking the everyday bottle of Jack Single Barrel was Buffalo Trace or 1792/Barton.
You can pick out that it’s Jack once you know what it is, but blind I’d recommend doing a similar experiment with your friends. Tell them it’s a new Kentucky limited edition and THEY WILL BELIEVE YOU.
In any case, most stores are between $39 - $45 per bottle on the Jack Barrel. There’s a few at $35. But I think we’re the only store willing to go $29.99 and basically give it away.
I’m doing this not to dump product, but rather because I want people to expand their horizons and see how fantastic some of the Jack labels can be with an open mind (and a HOT price).
So grab one. Or two. Or six. You won’t be sorry. It never gets old.
It’s so rich and supple on the palate with lots of vanilla and sweet oak on the mid-palate and a decent kick at 47%.
For me personally, I need sweeter spirits to pair with cigars these days. Not sure how many of you smoke the stogies, but I’ve found that sweeter rums perform better than whiskies do as a pairing.
That being said, I think the Jack Single Barrel has the perfect sweetness level to go with the Arturo Fuente stick I’m planning to spark up later this week.
-David Driscoll
Don’t get me wrong, I love talking about booze with anyone who wants to talk about booze. But I also like mixing it up a bit, which is why I’m excited to chat with Gilbert Marquez tomorrow from Ilegal Mezcal, who is also a renowned hat maker.
Personally, I’m a big hat guy, especially in the era of pandemic haircuts, so I’m excited to talk about hats, too.
Mexcian food, Chicano art, and living in Los Angeles versus Dallas should all be on the docket, as well as some talk about mezcal, too!
3 PM on Thursday—tomorrow; live at the @missionliquor Instagram. We’ll have it archived the next day as well, per the norm.
-David Driscoll
If you were living under a rock yesterday in the booze retail world, let me quickly recap what happened:
Our system once again showed live products on our website that were supposed to be hidden from consumers.
On top of that, the app that limits consumers to one bottle per order shit the bed, allowing customers to order as many bottles as they wanted.
Our entire single barrel exclusive of Weller Cask Strength sold out in ten minutes after people added anywhere between 18-36 bottles to their orders (not to mention the EH Taylor single barrel).
I spent the next ten hours digging out of that mess, and I’ll spend another ten today doing the same thing.
To be clear, NO ONE GOT MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE OF WELLER off the web yesterday. We reverted all large orders back down to one bottle. We’ll start processing those orders today. Ditto for the EH Taylor, which we scaled back to a two bottle limit.
95% of the people who had their orders adjusted were super cool and completely understood. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that. As for the guy who yelled for ten minutes about how he had already sold two of the bottles online, I would say: don’t count your Wellers until they’ve hatched. Or maybe a Weller in the hand is worth more than two bottles online? Pick your aphorism.
I want to quickly tell you a story about one of the most important experiences of my life; one that has dramatically changed the way I think and behave today.
When I moved to Los Angeles in January of 2019, I purchased a townhome in Sherman Oaks as part of an HOA. After befriending some of my neighbors, I was invited to join the board of the HOA to help solve problems in the community and make changes that could benefit us all.
I was on the board from May of 2019 to September of 2020, when I decided to sell my unit and move on. During that time we accomplished nothing meaningful, solved almost none of our problems, and—because I was open, friendly, and accessible—I became a sounding board for everything that was wrong with the community. I had neighbors calling me nonstop asking me to fix things, as if it were my responsibility alone and I could act with executive authority (or divine right!), complaining about everything from ambulance sirens at the nearby hospital to the type of flowers we planted in the front walkway.
When I asked them to become involved and share some of the burden as HOA members, they were nowhere to be found. Everyone wanted to complain, no one wanted to actually do anything to help.
When I decided to sell my unit and move, one of my neighbors lamented to me: “I thought you might really change things around here, but I guess not.”
Sigh.
What I discovered about being an HOA board member is that, for many people, “change” means doing what they want done at that particular moment in time, without any consideration for the community at large. If you don’t help them, you’re an asshole. If you do help them, you’re a hero. Until they need help again, at which point you’ll be an asshole if you don’t help them.
At this particular moment in time, everyone wants access to the rarest possible whiskies at the best possible prices. For many consumers, the idea of “change” involves them getting access to those whiskies at the prices they want.
I will continue to do everything I can to spread these bottles around fairly, but there’s no changing the fact that there will always be 10,000 guys who want access to 100 available bottles.
As my friend Nasser said to me last night: “Rare whiskey doesn’t scale.”
-David Driscoll
After selling quite a bit of the entry level Doc Swinson Bourbon and rye expressions, we’re excited to show you the reward of that effort: the outstanding Doc Swinson 15 Year Old Kentucky Bourbon.
Expensive? Yes, it is.
But we’ve had Dickel 15 Year Old in stock for over a week at $55 and hardly anyone batted an eyelid, so go figure.
In any case, I can promise you one thing: you will absolutely LOVE your bottle of Doc 15 should you pull the trigger. It has everything going for it: big power, rich vanilla, candy corn sweetness, spicy oak, and lots of depth. At 53.6% cask strength, it has all the intensity you’re looking for as well.
Who made it? We don’t know. But count how many Bourbon distilleries were operational in Kentucky in 2005 and you’ll have your list of candidates. I’ve been sipping on my bottle all weekend and I couldn’t be more satisfied.
-David Driscoll
Part of smoking a cigar involves cutting the cap and opening the airway for the subsequent draw of smoke. If you grew up in the eighties like I did, then this incredibly graphic scene from Sam Raimi’s underrated Darkman may have been your introduction to a cigar cutter. I can tell you with certainty that it was mine.
However, up until last week I was naive to the variety of cuts that one can make when prepping a cigar for smoking. I had been performing what’s known as a straight cut, which is pretty straightforward, but not always easy to perform. You simply insert the tip of the crown into the double slicer and push both blades inward.
What you don’t necessarily know until you try it a few times is that you can easily (and I mean very easily) ruin a cigar with a poorly performed straight cut.
If you slice too short, you get a muted draw.
If you slice too long, you can end up loosening some of the filler and wind up with a mouthful of tobacco
If your blades are not sharp enough, you can smash the crown and impair the cigar’s ability to draw
Dull blades can also cause the wrapper to loosen and your cigar won’t burn properly (and you’ll also end up eating tobacco)
I have done all four of these things. Multiple times.
Then I watched a video with the guys from Davidoff and one of the guys said: “I’m using a double V cut for this cigar.”
“What’s that?” I asked myself. Then I asked my colleague Vahi—our cigar buyer at Mission—about the double V. You know what he says to me? “That’s all I do with my cigars.”
Well….when were you going to tell me about it?!!!!!!
It turns out there’s another type of cigar cutter (unlike the straight cutter from Darkman) that carves out a V-shaped crevasse in the cigar, opening the airway without decapitating the entire crown. If you do it twice, vertically and horizontally like a + sign, you get what’s called a double-V cut.
The first thing I did after speaking to Vahi was ring up for a $3.99 V cutter at Mission. The first thing I did when I got home that day was grab a cigar from my humidor and attempt my first double-V cut.
And let me tell you this…..I’m never going back to the straight cut.
Having performed the double-V now on four different occasions, I can tell you that all four cigars drew effortlessly and performed flawlessly. I also enjoy keeping some of the rounded edge of the crown, rather than opening up the entire end, as I prefer the way it feels.
In any case, this revelation in my world is likely old news to more experienced smokers, but since I was kept in the dark for months about this process, I wanted to share it here for your potential future employment.
-David Driscoll