My favorite retailer and all-around whiskey personality, David Driscoll, recently offered a package deal at Mission Liquor in Pasadena, California, to showcase New Riff’s flagship bottled-in-bond range … He suggested we do a comparative tasting to see how New Riff stacks up against the Biggest of Boys in the whiskey game: Buffalo Trace. This week: Bourbon.
My favorite retailer and all-around whiskey personality, David Driscoll, recently offered a package deal at Mission Liquor in Pasadena, California, to showcase New Riff’s flagship bottled-in-bond range … He suggested we do a comparative tasting to see how New Riff stacks up against the Biggest of Boys in the whiskey game: Buffalo Trace.
Fire Dept. Coffee is a veteran-owned business out of Illinois that hires and is run by active and retired firefighters. They support first responders through the Fire Dept. Coffee Foundation by giving back to those who have been injured on the job, mentally or physically, or who are facing other serious health challenges. They offer a wide variety of coffees (ground, whole, or in pods) as well as a monthly subscription club for their spirit-infused coffees (rum, tequila, Irish whiskey, etc.).
The Malt Whisky Yearbook is an annual “field guide” to the world of malt whisky and the malt whisky industry. Author/Editor and Keeper of the Quaich Ingvar Ronde started in 2005 – and every year thereafter – compiling 12 months of news, facts, and figures from the industry while also managing to capture the overall trend and feel of the marketplace. In a way, it’s like a whole year of whisky magazine issues compressed into one compact and concise guidebook.
…some people are truly dedicated. I have friends who have a network of spies friends and subordinates who visit far-flung liquor stores at opportune times to check for rarities and allocations. One in particular oversees a distributed team of sales engineers, and directs his underlings to fetch rare bottles for him on work time. I won’t say who, but…
So why do I continue to pan every whisky that I either dislike or think is overpriced for its intrinsic value? Why not take the easy road and say everything tastes like Heather in Springtime and be done with it? Why do I continue to expose my sensitive ego to every Keyboard White Knight who just can’t handle a negative review of their house dram?
So what’s my opinion of the service, one year in? Despite their slightly spammy marketing practices, they’ve matured a lot as a company. They fulfill orders via local US retailers, now, so shipments arrive quickly and they ship to a much longer list of states (see below). They’re good at reminding me via email when one of my included membership perks is ready (time to choose some free whisky? Yes please!) and they aren’t too pushy about their other optional offerings, which are plentiful.
The Malt Whisky Yearbook is an annual “field guide” to the world of malt whisky and the malt whisky industry. Author/Editor and Keeper of the Quaich Ingvar Ronde started in 2005 – and every year thereafter – compiling 12 months of news, facts, and figures from the industry while also managing to capture the overall trend and feel of the marketplace. In a way, it’s like a whole year of whisky magazine issues compressed into one compact and concise guidebook.
In a bit of a departure from my usual “whisky-only” reviews on this blog, I’d like to say a few words about Compass Box’s Affinity. If you haven’t been following the flurry of Compass Box releases lately (and why should you? Every g-ddamn one of them has been north of $150), you might not know that Affinity is actually a “spirit drink”, which is the only legal way to label a blend of Scottish whisky and French calvados (apple and/or pear brandy).
Today I bring you a public service announcement about your brain. … Anchoring is a cognitive bias that causes our brains to “depend too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (considered to be the ‘anchor’) to make subsequent judgments during decision making. In practical terms, this means if I tell you that the brand-new GlenBracken 15 is an excellent whisky and easily worth $80 a bottle, and assuming that you already have some positive perception of my ability to discern value in whisky, then those two pieces of information are the anchors that your brain uses to form a mental model…
