Services/Retailers
Our services and retailers category covers online and offline shops and other sellers of alcohol products. Primarily it consists of reviews of subscription boxes, including by-mail cocktail kits, “spirit of the month clubs,” and various wine clubs.
On a busy street in Paris’s 8th Arrondisement, you’ll find the official headquarters of Armagnac Castarede, the oldest Armagnac producer still operating. At the end of my recent Cognac-focused trip to France, I called up the office on a lark, only to find that proprietor Florence Castarede was actually on site and would readily welcome…
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We receive comments on de Négoce at a steady clip (and feel free to keep them coming). While we aren’t here to play judge and jury over our readers’ uniformly dismal experiences — our original reviews were all based on media samples — I decided to take a spin myself and purchase a few bottles…
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You know whiskey advent calendars and wine advent calendars and beer advent calendars. Now sake gets its due, courtesy of Namazake Paul, perhaps the most noteworthy online seller of sake in the U.S. Namazake Paul’s advent calendar — the only one of its kind — is quite the production, featuring 23 180ml cups of sake…
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Sourced Craft Cocktails just dropped a pair of Halloween-friendly kits, including this bundle, featuring two ready-to-go mixers, a bottle of Kraken rum, and the usual accoutrements (skull-topped picks, coasters, koozies, and the like). The two cocktails include the “Sea Monster Mai Tai,” which is really a straightforward version of the classic, and the “Graveyard Smash,”…
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When Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur opened a new Brooklyn distillery in May 2019, founder Josh Morton was adamant about creating a full bar and tasting room experience for visitors: cocktails, spirits served neat, seasonal specials, and even a full bottle shop. But under New York law, virtually all craft distillers in the state with retail…
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One of the best whisky retailers in the world is The Whisky Exchange — and one of the retailer’s best product lines are its “Perfect Measure” sampler sets, which consist of numerous 30ml bottles of whiskies that you will likely have a hard time finding in any format, anywhere. Recently the company sent me a…
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Last month, our friends at Garrison Brothers Distillery launched a cocktail competition to unearth the very best cocktail made using their unique Texas bourbon. The winner was crowned: Albert Pero III from New York. (New York!?), the founder and creator of Spirit for Spirits, “a bartending battle YouTube show that highlights all the amazing things…
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“One part community, one part content, one part tasting” — here comes another whiskey kit, albeit this one is not being sold as a subscription. Bevridge is a collaboration with Whisky Live, and at present it offers a single kit, a $249 collection of ten 50ml samples of American single malt whiskies. The big sell…
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As high-end cocktail subscription service Shaker & Spoon notes, “Over the years our boxes have featured countless drinks to enjoy while twirling away in the twilight hours—so now it’s time for a slight change: three options primed to become the belles of your next brunch.” This installment of S&S’s box attempts the impossible: Making vodka…
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Blind tasting whiskey is lots of fun… but it’s awfully hard to do alone. I mean, you bought the bottles, so you know what they are. Blind Barrels solves that problem with what it calls the first blind whiskey tasting subscription kit. I’d suggest that Flaviar was there first, but there’s room for both of…
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