Instagram Live With Balvenie Today

I was emailing with a friend (and customer) last night about his recent trip to Balvenie, excited for his thoughts and feedback. It was his first time up to the Highlands, so I had called ahead to make sure the folks from William Grant rolled out the red carpet for him. What were his thoughts?

“It’s my new favorite distillery,” he wrote back; “Nothing on Islay is remotely comparable. I had an equal experience at Springbank—the hospitality was immense—but the site at Balvenie is just so much better.”

I’m in 100% agreement. Balvenie is so impressive right now, I feel like no other distillery nails the luxury experience quite like they do.

Then there’s the whisky to talk about. My buddy was lucky enough to try the new French Oak 16 year old at the distillery and has been craving it since returning, so we put an order in for him. I, myself, haven’t had the opportunity yet to put liquid to lips, but that will be rectified today when I sit down with the Balvenie team at 3:30 PM PST for a live sampling.

Join us at the @missionliquor account if you’re free!

-David Driscoll

What's New Is New

It’s not just social media influencers who understand the importance of new content these days; just about everyone who’s on Instagram and TikTok is looking for new material, hoping to generate another round of dopamine in the form of likes and comments from their friends and followers. In a sense, everyone who participates on social media is a marketing company of one, studying patterns as to what garners the most amount of attention, and finding the best way to promote their personal brand.

And the answer? New and exciting media. New, new, new. More, more, more.

We all have those friends who post photos from vacations past and write something completely lame like: “Missing Paris this morning,” or “Remembering New York right now.”

Wanna know why they do that? Because they’re out of new material. They’re digging into the past for something interesting that will give them the attention they crave today. It’s their way of saying: “I don’t have anything new worth posting about, but don’t forget about me!! I’m still here!” It’s like borrowing credit to feed the social media monkey.

Now apply everything from above to the wine and whiskey market and you’ll understand why competing in today’s industry is incredibly difficult, both for suppliers and retailers. Much like your friends’ social media posts, the products that continue to generate the most attention from customers are new releases. Sending out an ad or an email about an older product is much less effective (unless you’re offering that product for a substantial discount) because we’ve all become hardwired to search out the next shiny new object. Once a product has been out for a few months it loses about 90% of its desirability.

And why do consumers covet the shiny new object? Because they’re also looking for something new to post about on their social media! If they can be the first to track down and open an exciting new bottle, they’ll harvest most of the hype and attention around that release, which will spike their interactions with others online. Never mind the fact that 80% of the whisky influencers today are purchasing their followers from bot farms and turning off their likes counter so you can’t see the giant disparity between the number of people supposedly following them versus the ten or twenty people actually liking their posts! If they can find something new to post about, they might get some real people who actually care about what they’re posting this time around.

In the meantime, we’ve completely forgotten about that amazing Bourbon we opened last month, or that bottle of Scotch that we drank a few ounces of before making space for it among the other 200+ mostly-full bottles in our closet. If it isn’t new, it isn’t valuable. That’s the lesson that social media teaches us every single day and reinforces with a system of validation that we’ve come to mistake for self worth. If you’re not constantly creating new and exciting experiences, you’re worthless.

-David Driscoll

White Burgundy Insanity

Now that we’re cranking through the Granndach 12 year after this morning’s big email blast (300+ bottles gone so far), I’m going to tell you about another reneged deal that just led to another stupid, ridiculous opportunity for Mission—one that I’m taking advantage of myself right at this moment.

If you’re following the pattern this week, or the news about supply chain logistics and the lack of warehouse space, then you probably know what’s happening. Retailers and suppliers have been ordering large quantities of booze 6-8 months in advance, only to find that the demand has dropped in the meantime. Not only does it mean they’re turning inventory at a slower pace, which means less liquidity, it also means they don’t have the warehouse space they were planning on at this point in the year.

We all know what it’s like to land at the airport, but have to sit in the plane for a half hour while the jet waits for a boarding gate to dock at. Imagine the same situation for wine and spirits coming in from abroad, but instead of waiting 30 minutes you have to wait 2-3 months. 

No bueno. 

Because the intended customers for these deals are big box retailers—powerful entities who can afford to push major distributors around without consequences—we’re starting to see deals that were put together earlier in the year fall apart on delivery. 

As in: “I changed my mind. I no longer want it. You deal with it.”

And that brings me to today’s offering that I am OVER THE MOON about!! As some of you know, I drink a great deal of white wine just about every night and, if I can afford it, I prefer a large percentage of that wine to be white Burgundy. 

If I can drink crisp and clean Burgundian Chardonnay for $15-$20, I’m pretty happy. If I can get a deal around $12-$14, even better. $10 is incredible. But $7.99? That’s unheard of in today’s market. If I could find a white Burgundy for $7.99 that I liked, I might buy 5 cases of it and shove it into my closet!

Louis Jadot isn’t the most romantic negociant (as in a producer that buys wine/grapes from small farmers and creates a larger blend), but it’s a staple of the bulk Burgundy market. You’re not going to excite a room full of sommeliers by bringing Jadot to the party, but no one’s going to kick it out of bed either. The wines can range from serviceable to fantastic, but that pretty much applies to all of Burgundy. Any serious wino knows that Burgundy is the ultimate crapshoot. Hence, when you get a sure-fire hit, you ride that horse until it bucks you.

Do a Wine Searcher query for the standard Jadot Macon Villages and you’ll find it clocks in between $16 - $20, depending on where you look. While I wouldn’t be excited to buy the 2019 Jadot Macon Villages for $20, I certainly wouldn’t be disappointed with it. But gimme that same bottle for $7.99? That’s a completely different proposition. Suddenly, it’s about the best dollar-for-dollar deal in the store on just about anything.

Crisp and clean on the palate with notes of melon and stone fruit, this is the house wine I’ve been searching for all month. Having exhausted my last bargain bottle (the Erste Neue White Peak), I’ve been ready for a change and this deal plopped right down in my lap at just the right moment. 

If you even remotely like white wine, I’m not sure you can afford not to buy this deal. This is Burgundy—the most prestigious wine region in the world—that’s been picked, fermented, bottled, and shipped across the Atlantic, then trucked across the country, delivered and marked up by a retailer…..and it’s still just $7.99. I’ve got about 50 cases on hand at the moment, but I’m buying 5 today for myself, so that leaves 45. If 45 guys each buy a case, this thing won’t last until the end of the day. 

Nothing makes me happier than deals like these. So long as the logistics situation remains in its current state, we may be seeing more deals like this in the near future. But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth right now.

BUY THIS WINE.

-David Driscoll

Scotch Whisky Insanity

Earlier this year we went to Scotland to work with local bottlers and put together a few contact projects. One of our main goals was to create a shockingly good 12 year old blended Scotch that we could sell between $25-$30 as a house brand. While exploring our options, one bottler came to us with a very interesting proposal: Rather than create a blend for us, would we be willing to take the remainder of an older private label they had already created for a different customer?

We were intrigued!

As it turned out, a giant American retailer (who will remain unnamed) commissioned this well-established blending house to create a Johnnie Walker substitute called Granndach: a super smooth 12 year old blend with a solid backbone of Tullibardine single malt (amongst other Highland malts), coupled with a 12 year old grain component. Packaged in a square-ish, JW-style bottle complete with gift box, these were slated to sell at the $35 mark MSRP.

Then the unthinkable happened: COVID began driving away in-store retail traffic and that large American retailer reneged on the deal, leaving the bottler high and dry with the bespoke inventory and a huge warehousing issue. They offered us a deal to take the rest of it, and—after tasting how good it was—we couldn't refuse. Now we're passing that deal along to Mission customers, offering a quality 12 year old Scotch for an absurd price.

Bottled at 80 proof, the flavors of the Granndach are traditional and to-the-point, and the style is old school in its nature. That being said, for what it is….it’s really, really good. It’s a classic Highland style blended Scotch that absolutely delivers for the dollar. You can tell the malt content is higher, the texture is supple and creamy, and the finish is sweet with vanilla and toasted grains. I could drink this on the rocks all day, or with soda in a Highball on a warm summer evening. 

As I’m tasting it now, I’m looking for flaws and I can’t find any. In fact, I’m marveling in the richness and surprisingly decadent flavors that continue to build with each sip. If I had to compare it to a Bourbon, I would use Eagle Rare 10 as a qualitative comparison. Solid, dependable, always a great option for the price. But what if it were half the price? How many would you buy? More importantly, how many would be enough?

That’s what we’re about to find out. This is the kind of deal you buy cases of rather than bottles. Give them out as holiday gifts, buy some for your friends and family, use them around the office, etc. It's not a whisky that will change your life with its depth and complexity, but for 12 year age-stated Scotch of this quality at this pricepoint, you're never going to run out of uses.

Granndach 12 Year Old Blended Scotch Whisky $14.99 (Elsewhere $35.99)

-David Driscoll, Mission Sales Director

Kentucky: Day 6 - Tying Up Loose Ends

After four straight days of tasting appointments and barrel selections, Friday was our day to see some new faces, shake hands, work on the logistics of our purchase proposals, and tie up any loose ends before leaving Saturday morning. Many of those tasks aren’t worth mentioning for the moment, but given how many new distilleries are operating in Kentucky these days, I figured we should at least pop in and see a few of them. Lux Row, for example—the company behind Rebel Yell, David Nicholson, Ezra Brooks, and Blood Oath—has a new facility in Bardstown that I had never seen in person. Now that they’re distilling their own juice, I thought it might be worth checking out.

Whenever I see a column that’s multiple stories high and at least 34 inches in diameter, I know things are headed in the right direction. Most of the American whiskies that have failed to capture the public’s imagination over the last decade were made on pot/column hybrids, rather than industrial-size beer stills. While I can’t tell you scientifically exactly why that is, there’s someone I know who can.

If I’m rolling through rural Kentucky and I’ve got time for breakfast, there’s one man I always call to be my date: Bourbon legend Jim Rutledge, the man who made Four Roses into the brand it is today. Even though Jim retired back in 2015, we still keep up via phone and text. We met at Mammie’s in Bardstown to eat a hearty meal and shoot the breeze, as well as talk distillation. Jim’s take about my column still issue from above: in a nutshell, smaller columns are harder to control. It’s not as easy to keep a handle on the temperatures, and it leaves room for variation or mistakes. He had about twenty minutes worth of scientific detail to back that up, but I’ll keep it short for now. Jim always has interesting news about the industry, so it was great to catch up with my old friend.

Some of you may remember that our friend Dean Berger passed recently, and Vic wanted to honor Dean’s memory by eating one of his favorite meals at one of his favorite restaurants. Apparently, Vic and Dean had traveled to Bardstown together back in 2019 and Dean was obsessed with the Cinnabon pancake at Mammie’s. We shared one in tribute to our friend, and even Jim couldn’t put his fork down. It was that good.

Before our departure, two people told me that we absolutely must eat at Jack Fry’s on this trip to Louisville; one of them being Mission customer and Louisville native Christopher Guetig, and the other being WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash. Established in 1933 by a “rambling, gambling kind of guy” of the eponymous epithet, Jack Fry’s was a legendary hangout for fans of horse racing and boxing, known for its bookmaking and bootlegging affairs. “Mohammed Ali would eat there,” Nash told me via text; “It’s one of my favorite restaurants on the road.”

We sat down for an early dinner. Vic ordered a Manhattan; I ordered an Old Fashioned. We had escargot and fried zucchini blossoms to start and I opted for the scallops, while Vic went with the bone-in rib eye. Both were outstanding and capped a perfect end to a long, but successful week of Bourbon buying. Our 6:30 AM flight looming over our heads, we called it early and did our best to get some shuteye ahead of the 4 AM start.

-David Driscoll

Kentucky: Day 5 - Four Roses

Yesterday was a barn burner from beginning to end, as we packed in three appointments across three cities, moving south to Loretto and back through Coxs Creek, before finishing in Louisville on a nonstop single barrel collision course. The best compliment I can receive during these tastings is: “Wow, that was so much easier than usual.” I pride myself on being considerate, polite, engaged, and business-focused when selecting barrels. There’s no bravado. No prodding for older samples, or extra allocations. There’s no sloppy behavior (you’d be surprised how many retailers get shitfaced and make a scene during these trips). We get our work done and we let these fine people get on with their day. It’s the reason we keep getting invited back to do this again and again. It’s the reason we’re going to get two Four Roses barrels this year, while everyone else gets one.

Waiting for us in the selection room was my old friend Mandy, who started at Four Roses the same year I made my first trip out to select barrels roughly ten years ago. We had a great time catching up and we started the ten barrel sampling blind, tasting through each whiskey before looking at the specs.

We had already selected our first single barrel through a sample pack mailed out to us earlier in the year, but for our second barrel we picked an 11 year 6 month old OBSF from everyone’s favorite fourth tier. Look for this fantastic cask as the months roll on. It had a beautiful balance of vanilla and spice with a richness that stood out from the 8, 9, and 10 year old barrel samples also in play. It’s nice to see casks of this age back in the mix regularly.

Back in Louisville, we had a dinner appointment with Andy from Jim Beam to talk Knob Creek at the newly-established North of Bourbon, one of the hottest and most-talked-about restaurants in Louisville right now. Everywhere we went, people asked us where we had eaten, were eating, or planned on eating later in the week. North of Bourbon was on everybody’s list.

The booths at North of Bourbon are actually shaped like hollowed-out barrels, giving each table not only a thematic element, but also an intimacy that allows for great conversation. Vic said: “This is definitely where you bring a date in Louisville.”

I was blown away by the intricate flavors of the New Orleans-inspired cuisine, from the boiled peanuts we had as an appetizer, to the julienned squash Caesar salad, to the pan-fried trout topped with caviar and served over a pork broth with vegetables. Owner Greg Jennings sat with us for a good half hour, talking food, Bourbon, business, and life, tasting through some of the whiskies on the table and doling out pours of new arrivals. We finished with a glass of Beam’s new Hardin’s Creek releases, both the 15 year and the 2 year side by side, then called it a night. I can’t wait to come back here.

-David Driscoll

Kentucky: Day 5 - Maker's Mark

Since we’ve been talking about the evolution of Kentucky’s Bourbon tourism over the last few years, and the adjustments from distilleries like Heaven Hill and Angel’s Envy to give the die-hard consumers what they want, let’s talk about the evolution of Maker’s Mark distillery. The Loretto facility started by Bill Samuels in the 1950s (when he purchased the Burks’ distillery for $35,000) has gone from a quaint and simplistic singularity to a full out Napa-esque nature campus, complete with million dollar art installations, animal pastures, multiple vegetable gardens, mushroom farm, bee keeping, grain fields, two lakes, an apple grove, a blackberry patch, and a fantastic restaurant called Star Hill Provisions. In fact, we should probably stop calling it Maker’s Mark distillery at this point. When you visit the estate in Loretto, you’re now visiting Star Hill Farm.

It’s an incredible juxtaposition to see a giant gang of bikers—wearing Harley T-Shirts and leather, and who are clearly Maker’s Mark superfans—meander their way from a raucous Bourbon tasting into a quiet, farm-to-table restaurant with an emphasis on sustainable and local ingredients, but that’s the direction Kentucky’s Bourbon distilleries are headed. Not that I have any issue with the gentrification of Bourbon, mind you. I’m quite comfortable sitting back and watching capitalism take its course at this point, especially given that thousands of collectors have taken that capitalism into their own hands. It’s certainly much more enjoyable to have a delicious three course lunch from Star Hill Provisions before creating my Maker’s Private Selection than hang out in a stale board room and taste barrel samples. Couple it with the fact that the weather during every single visit I’ve ever made to Maker’s Mark has been nothing short of spectacular, and I will tell you flat out: there’s no distillery I look forward to visiting more than this one. It’s like a Bourbon Disneyland and I soak up every bit of that energy.

What other distillery can serve you a starter of fresh gazpacho sourced entirely from the gardens just next door to the restaurant?

Which other Kentucky producer keeps a herd of Wagyu cattle on hand for the explicit purpose of serving the most flavorful steaks to its guests? No one. You’ll never eat as well at any other stop on the Bourbon Trail as you will when you visit Maker’s Mark.

You’ll also find no better accommodations for a barrel selection than the clubhouse for trade and VIP guests situated next to Heritage Lake with a spectacular view of the water and a retracting door that opens onto a private deck. Ryan Paris drove us up to the lodge in an electric golf cart of sorts, meandering through the warehouses along the way, stopping to pop open a few 7+ year old single barrels in the process. We needed a control whiskey to compare against our Private Select creations.

I won’t bore you with the details of our tasting and blending session, but let’s just say that we ended up calling this barrel “American Dessert” because our goal was to design a whiskey that tasted like fruit cobbler and vanilla ice cream. We certainly did it. Look for that little number later in the year. In the meantime, get ready for a new five star bed and breakfast, along with a rooftop bar and cocktail lounge at Loretto’s Star Hill Farm. The evolution of Maker’s Mark from charming country distillery into upscale Bourbon resort and tourist destination is just getting started.

-David Driscoll

Kentucky: Day 4 - Heaven Hill in Bardstown

There’s not much to tell you about Heaven Hill that Bourbon drinkers don’t already know, but for those who have never been to Kentucky: Heaven Hill’s distillery is not at their Bardstown facility because it burnt down in 1996 and the company made a deal with UD to buy the Bernheim distillery in Louisville. Nevertheless, their warehouses are still in Bardstown, as is their visitor’s center, and they’ll be opening a new distillery on site in 2024 called the Heaven Hill Springs Distillery, bringing production back to their base. We’ve been traveling with some of the Heaven Hill team this week, including my good friend Conor O’Driscoll, so for this experience we were a larger group.

Like a number of distilleries now (particularly in Scotland), Heaven Hill has incorporated a fill-your-own bottle program as part of a massive overhaul to its visitor’s center program. For all the geeks out there that have been begging for things like cask strength Bernheim wheat whiskey and limited edition 14 year old casks like the Heaven Hill Select Stock, they’ve listened. They’re available as part of certain paid tours, but you’ll have to scan your ID when you buy one so they can make sure you’re not milking the system. There’s a strict one bottle limit per person and they keep a record of who bought what. Sound familiar?

Believe me when I say that Kentucky is well aware of the sea change in consumer tastes and desires over the last decade and they’re making serious adjustments based on what the newer generations want.

That being said, let me warn you about what you wish for. Even the core distilleries in Kentucky, those with an old-fashioned dedication to inexpensive wholesale costs, are slowly starting to abandon their historically-low MSRPs. They’re through giving that money away to secondary market flippers when they could be making it themselves. Case in point? The fact that Heaven Hill has decided to put its rarest and most coveted bottles in its brand new tasting bar, rather than for sale in the gift shop. Why make a few hundred bucks on a bottle of Heaven Hill 17 year when you could make a few thousand offering it for $120 an ounce? The former situation benefits collectors who may never open the bottle, while the latter puts liquid to lips. It’s a win-win for Heaven Hill.

Why are distilleries like Heaven Hill making these changes? “Because of bottle flippers,” said our Heaven Hill guide; “No other reason.” It’s also why the 14 year old Select Barrel will run you $200 while the 12 year old Elijah Barrel costs $60. Now that distilleries are getting a taste of what it’s like to be a retailer, they’re making similar adjustments to their strategy.

Heaven Hill is also listening to what specialty retailers want from its barrel program in the form of a cask strength option and more control over the details. We were not only able to choose the age of our barrel, but also the warehouse location and the actual warehouse! How cool is that?! We’re also going to be the very first American retail to debut a new Heaven Hill single barrel option, but more on that later. I was really impressed with the warehouse team at Heaven Hill and the level of preparation that went into our experience, not to mention the data and specs on each available cask. They were prepared for any possible question we threw at them, and they were excited to share as much information as possible.

Heaven Hill has also invested a serious amount of coin into their new tasting warehouse and it was well worth it. Getting to choose our barrel in this environment was one of the coolest things we did on this trip, which highlighted the improvements they’ve made to their visitor center, not to mention their schwag in the gift shop (Mellow Corn vintage T-shirts!!). We had the SoCal team from Southern Wine & Spirits (Heaven Hill’s CA distributor) join us for the barrel selection process so they could speak to its awesomeness when they return to the market later this week.

A big thank you to Heaven Hill for their access, transparency, and generosity. I’m so excited about what we’ll be offering Mission customers moving forward.

-David Driscoll