If you’ve ever had dreams of starting your own spirits import company and traveling the world in search of the planet’s best booze, Nicolas Palazzi will tell you all about the realities of the artisanal dream. To paraphrase what he told me on the phone last week while catching up: “I spend 90% of my day calling warehouses to check inventory, then trying to figure out why they only have 25 bottles when the spreadsheet says 27.”

Nicolas Palazzi is one of my oldest friends in the booze business. The man representing Paul Marie & Fils Cognac, L’Encantada Armagnac, Neta Mezcal, and the Navazos Palazzi spirits has been slowly building an empire out in the Empire State, having used his childhood ties to the Cognac region as a starting point. Tomorrow at 5 PM, I’m going to ask Nicolas what it’s like being a French spirits importer in the middle of a global pandemic, an exhaustive tariff battle, and a market that keeps growing as if there were no limits on the general public’s ability to consume.

We’ll be at the @missionliquor Instagram site at 5 PM PST. See you then!

-David Driscoll