Italian Wines For Spring

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Every Spring I end up spending $500+ on a big batch of inexpensive Italian wines for my personal drinking.

And every Spring I ask myself: “Why am I not simply drinking Italian wines year round?”

There’s a reason for this cycle and it has to do with food. Coming into the summer months, my wife and I usually feel the need to cook more, control our caloric intake, and get ready for our summer bods. However, since we love to eat, we don’t like sacrificing flavor or our bon vivant lifestyle, so we start cooking healthier Italian recipes paired with crisp, clean, fresh, vibrant Italian whites.

This past weekend began a new cycle. I chopped up a mound of fresh broccoli, roasted it in the oven with olive oil, sautéed some garlic and chili flakes with more oil in a pan, added some lemon juice, and mixed it all with pasta and some Parmesan cheese. Super easy, super fast, super delicious.

Especially with the bottle of 2019 Roccafiore Fordaliso Bianco, 100% grechetto with crisp acidity and enticing aromas of stone fruit with white flowers.

If you’ve never heard of grechetto, that’s good; because that’s the fun thing about Italian wines. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of varietals you’ve never heard of, many of which are indigenous to the regions in which they’re grown (and have thrived over centuries because they pair well with the local cuisine).

If navigating the vast world of Italian wine seems overwhelming or daunting, let me introduce you to one of the best guides this side of the Atlantic: my old friend Oliver McCrum.

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Rather than copy and paste his biography here, I’d recommend just clicking on his website linked above and getting lost in his catalog, but I’ll drop a few fun facts before you do so:

  • The wines imported by Oliver are always delicious, well-priced, and interesting. They usually tell a story and exhibit a sense of place. Every bottle is like a $20 vacation.

  • Oliver’s wines are food-friendly and practically force you to get into the kitchen. You can create an entire day around food and drinking (which is exactly what I did yesterday).

  • Oliver has been working in the wine business since the late 70s. He knows his shit and has built incredible relationships over that time with some of Italy’s coolest producers. If you see his name on the back label, you can be assured the wine is good.

I didn’t stop with the grechetto, however. We plowed through a number of Oliver’s bottles yesterday, including the always admirable Piero Mancini Vermentino di Gallura; a white wine from Sardinia that combines fleshy fruit with crisp acidity and medium-bodied weight on the palate.

When you realize that both of these wines I’ve listed are just $14.99, you start to think to yourself: Oliver can ship these wines halfway across the world and they still retail for less than that bottle of shitty, over-oaked Chardonnay I got at the supermarket that’s made just a hundred miles away in California?

I come to that same realization every Spring. Hence, why a huge chunk of my paycheck goes to Oliver McCrum annually.

But I think 2021 will be the year I settle down and drink his entire portfolio year-round.

-David Driscoll

A La Palina Preview

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I’ve worked with great brands over my career run by terrible people. I’ve also formed lasting friendships with great sales people who’ve worked for terrible brands. That being said, one of the most satisfying and warming feelings one can experience in business comes when an absolutely fantastic company hires one of your absolute favorite people and you get to work together on a project that absolutely inspires you.

Lucky for me, that all-encompassing, soul-inspiring experience happened this past Tuesday when my longtime friend Matt Freerks flew down from Seattle to present La Palina Cigars to Mission: a brand revived by CBS heir Bill Paley in 2010, originally created in Chicago by his grandfather in the mid-1800s.

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Matt and I first met in Seattle six years ago, as part of the Westland Distillery launch, back when it was still owned by the Lamb family. As their director of sales, Matt was one of the architects of Westland’s success and a driver of the business that eventually caught Remy Cointreau’s attention. We got along so well that we’ve kept in touch ever since. What I didn’t know about Matt until recently was that he’s long been a cigar aficionado, hence why a few of his friends recently asked him to come aboard at La Palina as the new VP of sales.

As two people who care deeply about food, drink, style, and quality of life, I was very excited to learn about Matt’s latest project and prepared myself for an afternoon of both intense education and utter debauchery.

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When La Palina originally started in the 19th century, the cigars were expensive and manufactured in the Bahamas. Today, many of the cigars are made at Miami's famed El Titan de Bronze factory, using tobacco from Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Having spent the last six months dedicating myself to cigar knowledge and appreciation, I can say with certainty that I have yet to find a lineup that, from top to bottom, has impressed me like La Palina. To quote the brand’s website: “The draw is effortless, the burn even, the blends smooth and well-rounded, the construction flawless: it’s an unforgettable cigar experience for the discerning palate.”

Or, to quote Matt: “It’s a ten dollar vacation.”

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Over the years, I have trained my mouth to take a beating. I’ve tasted 300+ tannic, young Bordeaux wines over the course of an afternoon. I’ve powered through 100+ samples of cask strength whisky, day after day, on numerous trips to Kentucky and Scotland. What I had never done before, however, was smoke ten cigars back-to-back.

Granted, not the entire cigar, but portions of stick, after stick, after stick, after stick. As difficult as it was, I think the side-by-side experience is a necessary one in order to truly understand the make-up of each cigar; especially since we deconstructed a number of La Palina sticks, comparing them to similarly-priced competitors as we removed the inner guts. It was something to see for my own eyes the long filler in every single La Palina cigar, even the most value-oriented labels, compared to some of the poor representations of cheap seco inside other brands.

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When you sample that many cigars in one sitting, however; both the mouth and stomach crave sustenance. Matt and I also share a love for America’s great throwback steakhouses, having once bonded over our mutual adoration for the Golden Steer in Las Vegas. Hence, we headed down the street from my backyard over to the Smoke House in Burbank for gin martinis and prime rib.

I’ll have a full breakdown of La Palina once the cigars hit the store, alongs with all the specs. I’m very, very, very excited for everyone to try them.

(Also check out my colleague Steven Guerrero’s video review of La Palina here)

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Talking American Whiskey with Lost Lantern

I’m friends with a couple named Matt and Dora, so when it came time to start the show yesterday and find Adam and Nora on Instagram, I combined both couples into Matt and Nora and repeated it out loud during the first ten seconds.

Please ignore that.

Adam Polonski and Nora Ganley-Roper are also a couple (and also my friends), and they’re the dynamic duo behind Lost Lantern and its fantastic selection of independently-bottled American whiskies.

We sat down for a drink and a fun conversation yesterday on Instagram, and now I’m sharing that conversation with all of you!

Check out our full selection of Lost Lantern whiskies here.

Happy Thursday!

-David Driscoll

An Introduction to Lost Lantern

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While I originally made my name sourcing unique barrels of single malt whisky from Scotland, purchased from independent bottlers with vast warehouses, I’ve long stopped believing there’s much left across the Atlantic to discover. The supply chain has been co-opted, the distilleries have long been bought out, and the prices no longer offer much in the way of value. Labels that once offered intrigue and variety are often now just leftovers that no one wanted to purchase.

That development was already well underway back at the beginning of 2019, when I found myself on a barstool at Petit Trois in Sherman Oaks, sitting next to Adam Polonski and Nora Ganley-Roper, drinking cocktails, and lamenting the devolution of the Scottish independent cask trade.

“What if someone were to create an American independent bottler?” Adam asked me, as we sipped; “There’s a considerable amount of solid whiskey coming from the United States at this point. Someone just needs to shine a light on it.”

Or a lantern in this case.

That’s when Adam told me he had quit his job at the Whiskey Advocate (and Nora hers at Astor Wine & Spirits). They had taken a leap of faith, jumped in their car, and travelled all over the United States, visiting numerous distilleries and tasting single barrels of whiskey along the way. They were in the middle of a huge road trip and were soon heading out to Utah to meet with another producer.

The plan was to create a proper American independent label, one that would bottle single barrels from various distillers, but also blend numerous whiskies into new expressions. Two years later, that vision has become a reality and the whiskies have been put into bottle. Lost Lantern has arrived at Mission, flush with eight different single barrel releases, along side a fabulous vatted malt featuring six different American single malts in the blend.

We’ll have more details about each whiskey as the week unfolds, but join us this afternoon on Instagram to hear Matt and Nora tell their story firsthand! At 4 PM PST over at the @missionliquor account, we’ll be drinking Lost Lantern and learning more about America’s new independent bottler devoted entirely to American whiskey.

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Talking J.C. Newman Cigars With Michael Dougherty

I never get tired of learning about the industry I work in, which is why I love meeting new people with the ability to educate like Michael Dougherty.

No ego, no elitism, and no chip on his shoulder like half the sommeliers I’ve met in my life. Just a passion for his product and a desire to share it with others.

All the reasons that I enjoy learning from Michael are on display in this little chat we did yesterday. Hopefully you get something out of it as well.

-David Driscoll

More Cigar Talk

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Having covered Arturo Fuente cigars during our last conversation, this evening I’m back with industry veteran Michael Dougherty to discuss his other company: J.C. Newman, America’s oldest family-owned premium cigar maker.

We’ll be live at 3 PM over at the @missionliquor Instagram handle.

Tomorrow will be another big cigar day at Mission, as I reunite with my longtime friend Matt Freerks—once the director of sales for Westland Distillery—now working with La Palina cigars. I’m sure we’ll have photos and some stories to tell you later in the week.

Cinco de Mayo is Wednesday, which is why I’ll be releasing an exclusive single cask of Roca Patron Añejo, originally bottled for the Hotel FIgueroa in downtown LA, in honor of the occasion.

Plus, we’ll have Adam and Nora from Lost Lantern whiskey live on Instagram that same day (Wednesday) to talk about their new American independent bottling company. That starts at 4 PM.

i’m picking out a single cask of Old Forester cask strength on Thursday with Brown-Forman’s Jackie Zykan (that will not be streamed, but I’ll have an interview to post), plus there will be a lot of wine talk this week as we’ve got tons of new whites, light reds, and rosés for your Spring needs.

More soon.

-David Driscoll

New Riff In Stock At All Stores

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The single barrels are selling fast, but we’ve got plenty more on the way and a good supply of the standard bottled-in-bond editions. Rolling this out at Mission has been quite nostalgic for me, a little reminder of how heady the build-up to an exciting new release can be. If you’re too pressed for time to read all the details, I’ve created this brief cheat sheet for you:

  • New Riff Bottled In Bond Kentucky Bourbon $39.99 - Using a 65% corn, 30% rye, 5% malted barley mash, this is one of the easiest drinking, yet potent Bourbons on the market today. Surprisingly soft at 50% ABV, it’s pretty damn sneaky and, man, does it mix well with others.

  • New Riff Kentucky Wild Gin $29.99 - I’m halfway through my first bottle and it’s just gin and tonic central. Don’t overlook this amazing gin because you’re hell bent on securing the whiskey.

Next week we’ll be focusing entirely on the new Lost Lantern releases. And don’t forget the 700ml bottles of Flaming Heart that just landed!

Also, doing a barrel selection for a cask strength barrel of Old Forester next week with Brown Forman. So much to remember!

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Talking Bourbon With New Riff Distillery

In anticipation of one of our biggest new whiskey launches in store history, I sat down with New Riff Distillery’s Jay Erisman to talk about the genesis of the brand, the philosophy on whiskey-making, and all things mash bill, non-chill-filtered, and bottled-in-bond related.

We agreed that New Riff is perhaps the most profound new distillery in Kentucky since Maker’s Mark, so you can see why we’re quite excited to have the products here at Mission.

Available now! Check out the site here.

-David Driscoll