Stop by the Pasadena store this Friday between 4 - 7 PM and taste what is by far the most popular sparkling wine we’ve sold in years: Faire la Fête! It’s $5 per person and it’s a great way to get your weekend started!
If you’re in the store Saturday afternoon, you can taste Central California whiskies with Corbin Cash distillery between 1 - 4 PM. This one’s free!
-David Driscoll
The incredible whites from Foxen Winery in Los Olivos have been a relative secret for the last decade, one of the gems of our local wine scene here in Southern California. But given how Vinous critic Antonio Galloni has been gushing over them these last few years, it's a producer poised for superstar status after a string of incredible vintages. Their legendary tasting bar—known colloquially as "the shack"—is the place to be if you're drinking along the Central Coast, and the bucolic setting is one of the most beautiful in the region.
If you ever want to go up and visit let me know and I will set you up! It's one of the best trips you can make to wine country here in SoCal. But in the meantime, if you need a banging Chardonnay for the Spring months ahead, the Block UU is made from a single plot of 40 year old Chardonnay vines in Bien Nacido Vineyard that were grafted on to old Riesling vines. The Chenin Blancs are also among the best in the state, if not the country. Check out the reviews and selection here.
-David Driscoll
I was talking to an old friend on the phone yesterday and he asked how the booze business was going. This is what I told him:
Imagine you’re one of the only popsicle stands at the beach year round. Then, over the course of a few years, popsicles become all the rage again. Soon there are hundreds of other popsicle stands servicing a very crowded beach. Overall, you’re selling more popsicles than before, but there’s no consistency and business is streaky. You’re making more revenue, but it’s offset by the amount of popsicles you have to continually purchase.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
Let’s say you stock up on cherry because cherry is the most popular flavor, but all of a sudden they stop selling. You’re scratching your head, wondering what’s happening, only to realize that tangerine is the new hot flavor. By the time you get fully stocked on tangerine popsicles to capitalize on the trend, everyone’s raving about guava. Every week a new popsicle vendor has the hottest flavor, and customers bounce around from stand to stand, trying as many new popsicles as possible, rather than continuously buying from your stand.
“That seems difficult,” he answered; “It sounds like oversaturation.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” I responded; “And it’s coming for all of us, sooner or later. It’s forcing retailers to expand beyond their means. No one can carry everything, and no one guesses right every single week. At some point, the bubble goes pop.”
-David Driscoll
As I’ve alluded to recently in my posts about Bordeaux futures, we're looking far back into the past as well! Not everything we're acquiring will need to spend the next twenty years in your cellar. When allocations of mature Bordeaux come across our table, we're always quick to snap them up—especially when they come directly from the château itself!!
It's one thing to purchase 25 year old bottles from a negotiant warehouse in France, but to have access to wines that have literally never left the château since bottling, aging gracefully in the chai under the watchful of the property steward, is rare opportunity indeed. Yet, that's exactly what I have for you today!
Let's break what I just snagged from Château Gruaud Larose in St. Julien:
Esteemed 2nd Growth Property
From the outstanding 1996 vintage (rated 96 as well by Robert Parker himself)
25+ years of maturation, no further cellaring required. Taste the beauty of mature Bordeaux without waiting two decades!
Bottles acquired directly from the château
I've locked in our allocation from Château Gruaud-Larose and we expect our limited cases to arrive by September. Lock down your bottles now by placing a pre-order! There aren’t many chances these days to get primo bottles ex-château for a fair price. I’ve got mine purchased already. That leaves three more cases for the public!
-David Driscoll
My good friend David Souza from Corbin distillery in Atwater, CA personally drove down our newest single barrel whiskey and it was quite the moment to see it delivered. Similar to the Frey Ranch story, David is the fifth generation farmer to grow sweet potatoes and rye in the Central Valley. We are both from the Modesto area, which is how we know each other, and I've been telling anyone who will listen about the merits of Corbin whiskey since the beginning. Now, we are one of the first accounts in America to get one of these barrels. Using 100% estate-grown rye (it's the cover crop for the sweet potatoes), this is a 130 proof 6 year old rye that, for my money, is the best whiskey distilled anywhere inside the California state limits.
Bold, spicy, with enough sweetness from the oak to balance it out, there's no small barrique, oak chips nonsense going on here. This is rye that has spent over six years in a standard size new oak barrel, which gives it richness, but without all that over-oaked character you find in other American craft whiskies. It's full of graham cracker and oatmeal aromas with a peppery finish. The fact that David and his family planted and grew all the rye by hand, makes this a legit grain-to-glass specimen. This is pure California pride in a bottle, from one single barrel.
-David Driscoll
In a world increasingly filled with death and destruction, we have some good news to report this week: wine tastings are back in Pasadena!!
Stop by this Friday to taste with the winemakers from Val del Prete in Italy’s Piedmonte region, localized within the small DOCG of Roero. We’re going to have some spectacular reds and whites to taste with you!
I’ll be in the bar pouring as well from 3 - 5 PM! Stop by before heading out to dinner, or taste some new wines before loading up for the weekend!
-David Driscoll
While serious Bourbon lovers have been loath to embrace the craft whiskey scene in lieu of their favorite Kentucky producers, one small distiller in Nevada has captured the imagination of our entire industry over the last year. Colby Frey’s family has been growing corn in the Sierra Nevada watershed since the early 1950s, roughly 70 miles east of Reno. As the fifth generation to farm, Colby’s innovation was to install a distillery on site and begin using his family’s 2000 acres+ of land to make whiskey. Using estate-grown corn and winter rye, the Frey Ranch Bourbon made a huge splash when it came to market a few years back, with its bold, spicy flavors and romantic backstory. With all the excitement over the standard Bourbon, it didn’t take long for customers everywhere to ask: when might we see a single barrel, cask strength expression?
Well…wait no longer. Our exclusive single barrel Mission cask is here to answer that question!
After tasting through multiple samples with Colby, we settled on barrel #556: a beast of a whiskey, clocking in at 130.18 proof. Unlike many Kentucky Bourbons that lead with vanilla and oak, this Frey specimen explodes with cinnamon, mint, wood polish, and a damp forest note that quickly morphs into a spicy, peppery finish. Using the distillery's four grain mash bill—corn, rye, wheat, and barley—it's a 5+ year old phenomenon that pops in all the right places. From grain to glass, every bit of this single barrel whiskey was overseen by Colby Frey; from the grains, to the distillation, to the maturation, to the bottling.
While Scotch whiskey has already seen the rise of the farm distillery—a la Daftmill and Kilchoman—Americans have been skeptical of the concept, holding true to their industrial Bourbon classics. That being said, we think this bottle of Frey Ranch may be the game changer America has been waiting for. With its massive ABV and inherent grit, Frey Ranch whiskey may take American craft whiskey into the future by returning to its past.
-David Driscoll
As we continue to expand our Bordeaux futures program, we are incredibly excited to offer the new releases from one the best wineries anywhere in the world: the esteemed Château Latour.
Rather than release its wines annually en primeur like the other chateaux of Bordeaux, Latour made the decision back in 2011 to bring its wines to market only when deemed ready by head winemaker Frédéric Engerer. As a result, while other top estates are releasing their 2019 and 2020 as futures, Château Latour is only now releasing its 2014 vintage, along with the 2016 vintage for its second wine: Les Forts de Latour.
I was lucky enough to have lunch with Engerer while visiting Latour back in 2016, and he explained that the decision was based on the increasing consumption of long-lived wines before they're ready to drink. Château Latour is a wine that can live for decades before it reaches its peak, so to witness consumers opening young bottles in their infancy was doing a disservice to the brand. As he states in an interview with Decanter: "We sell wines way too young and it doesn’t have to be this way. Consider other wines like vintage Champagne, no one thinks it is abnormal for a Champagne house to keep wines for many years and only release them when they are ready."
While Engerer has approved the limited release of these two vintages, both will need at least another 10+ years of cellar time before they show their true form. During that above mentioned lunch, Engerer brought four bottles of Latour and Les Forts each and made us taste them blind. People were guessing 1982, 1988, and 1990: the best vintages of the last forty years. As it turns out, Engerer brought wines from the four worst vintages of the 1970s (see the above photo I still keep on my iPhone). His point was to showcase how Château Latour from any vintage has the inherent potential of a masterpiece.
Leaving the restaurant that day, there was no doubt in my mind moving forward that Château Latour is one of the best wines in the world—if not the best. We were fortunate enough to get a few cases of the latest Château Latour releases, and we're hoping they find a good home. If the worst vintages of the 1970s fooled a table of experts, I can only imagine what these great vintages will taste like down the line.
-David Driscoll, Mission Sales Manager