Still and naturally, the talk turned to Tequila. Our younger participant thought it was odd that it was hard to sell higher-end Blanco Tequila. The older guy tried to look wise, a little bit grizzled (pity that he shaved every morning).
“Back in my day,” he began, “when we rode our brontosauruses to the beach—they were great for carrying our surfboards—and Janis Joplin ruled the airwaves, white tequila was the cheap, raw stuff, the stuff that Jose Cuervo wanted to get rid of—it was awful. Even when we were kids, we ponied up for the gold.”
“Sure, but that was then, old man,” answered this impudent youth. “We have a different world now. You see this thing; it’s called a cell phone. Janis never had one of those.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But what! The world has changed; the world of tequila has changed.”
“I know, and I know you’re right. Back in my day (surfboards on dinosaurs, etc) I would bet you that all the quality tequila that we get now was dumped into a big vat and became Cuervo. That’s why it was so much better than.”
“No, it was better then because you’re looking back through rose-colored glasses.”
“Fair enough,” the older fellow concedes, even though he looks no wiser. “But I think white tequila is pretty spectacular right now.”
“Yeah, it’s the best, really,” says the young man, “It doesn’t try to be anything else. It doesn’t try to be too smooooth. It’s not all about a stupid barrel.”
“No, you’re right; it’s bright, lively, vibrant with the fresh fruit of the agave plant. Sometimes there’s a great licorice note running through the whole thing. Have you tried the Herencia Tequila Blanco—that stuff just jumps all over your tongue.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty good, but I’ll take that Corzo Blanco. Plus, it makes the best Margarita north of the Pecos.”
“Okay, mea culpa, my generation spoiled the image of Blanco tequila, but we didn’t ruin the drink.”
“That’s one thing you didn’t ruin.” The young man said.
“It’s not good to shave in the afternoon.”
“Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know. Someone says it in every Latin American novel I read.”
The word on the street is that Absinthe doesn’t really cause madness, that it’s a rumor spread by French doctors a century ago. Well, you can’t prove it by us.
As you may have heard, Absinthe has recently been cleared for sale in the
The release date was announced as December 21st and we were named as a retail source for this elixir. This is just what a retail store needs just before Christmas—a whole bunch of people calling up trying to buy something that isn’t for sale yet. We did what we could—we took names and numbers and promised to call people when it got to us. We got only 56 bottles from St. George and they were gone within 24 hours.
We did open one bottle for ourselves, and is a truly fascinating drink. We found that the St. George Spirits Absinthe Vert certainly didn’t need any help from a sugar cube, although water gave it the signature creamy louche and opened up the flavors. The herbs wafted from the glass, with anise and licorice leading (it was reminiscent of Good and Plenty candy, really, and one of our tasters kept wondering out loud, “Why am I thinking of my childhood?”). For all that, we didn’t drink enough to see any green fairies, although we had to be careful with this 120 proof cocktail.
We still have the French Lucid Absinthe in stock, and we’re looking forward to the next batch from St. George, due in February. Hopefully, the world will have calmed down just a bit by then.
There are wines out there that are so sought after, you sometimes doubt if they really exist at all. Lord knows we think some highly touted wineries are the fictional creations of frustrated novelists posing as wine writers.
Some of these wines do actually exist, but arrive in such small amounts that even we don’t publicize them much. Take, for example the 2003 Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon. If Napa Valley has first growths, this wine is surely one of them. We get a healthy allotment of this wine because we’ve been around a while, but even a healthy allotment is 12 to 18 bottles. Some customers try to get us to hold them for them, but we don’t, although we let those who ask know when it arrives. We don’t post it on our web site, we don’t put it in our catalog (by the time the catalog is in a customer’s hands, the wine will be long gone). It’s a $300 bottle of wine, but we know it’s going to vanish.
Shafer Hillside Select is one of the wines you have to keep an eye out for, you have to have an idea when it will be released (for future reference, it’s an October release), and then you have to get on the phone and give us a call. Because if you miss it, it’s gone for a year.
As Americans, we tend to love the maverick—you know, the slightly wacky, shoot from the hip type who forges their own destiny. The world of winemaking, beer-brewing and whiskey distilling are full of these sorts, and we genuinely enjoy their company.
Just to give you an example, we recently received a shipment of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey and we noticed an odd thing on their labels. Each label is signed by the distiller or assistant distiller who bottled that particular batch of whiskey. The label also has a comments section, and one of them read “listening to Patsy Cline”. Another said “riding in
“Our head distiller, Jake Norris is an avid music fan, so he writes on the label what he was listening to while working in the distillery. His hope is that a consumer could put on the same music, pour a glass and they could share a moment together.
“David Nice, assistant distiller, is a wild man on a fixed gear mountain bike. He will write what he’s planning to ride while in the distillery or even take some labels on his adventures and describe what and where he was riding. Whoever purchases the
We thought you might enjoy hearing about what these particular mavericks were thinking when they came out with their one of a kind labels.
