You are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. And I wasn't on the first one, but this is In The News. In The News. In The News. So you guys all brought news topics from recent media. What's the bit? What's the bit? Alcohol related things in the media, and I guess our take on them. Okay, people love our take. Yeah. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's, and on this one, I guess I'm just here for my colorful improv. Isn't that most episodes? It's literally every episode. Okay. Hey, I'm Pat from Spirits. Alicia in Wine. Roger, Beer. Jenna, also communications. Fans full improv. And fans full improv. Word in Edgewise. All right. Who's first? Roger? Okay. All right. Good. Yeah. The beer is cold. Let's have Roger go first. This week on In The News. You guys want to try a beer? Yes. Please. Especially one that won't be available anymore. So it's with a heavy heart that I have to relay the news. Two parts. One, Christmas is canceled. Anchor will no longer make their famous Christmas ale. They're actually not going to make that beer anymore? Yeah. It's gone. They're never making it again. No. You finally can get the complete set. Yeah. Yeah. You can stop buying it. I mean, in fairness, Anchor has been complaining about making Christmas ale for years now. They- They've been complaining about it? Their own product. Yeah. Literally, they have. They've been like- I complain about having to do this with you guys every week for years now. They change the recipe every year, which I don't know why they think they have to because they barely change it. So my argument would be- Too less juniper berries this year. Yeah, exactly. It usually tastes about the same. Then the last couple of years, they would full on change the beer. One year it was basically a porter and everyone, of course, hated it. Yeah, that year it sucked. Yeah. So they change the tree on it every year, like that's enough. Just come up with a beer recipe, don't fiddle with it anymore. Then that's the excuse they used, that they were tired of making a new beer? They didn't elaborate, but that's what they've said in past years. So I think finally they just sort of were like, we're done with it because they wanted to stop making it a few years ago and everyone complained so they kept making it. Does this tie into the other big anchor news? So the real big anchor news that's of more relevance is that it's no longer going to be distributed outside of California. Bam, bam, bum, bum, bum. Spear is going to drive out there and buy little bottles of old fog corn again. Yeah, yes. That's tragic. It really is. What is the rationale? They didn't really elaborate at all. That's bullsh**. I read this article too, Roger. Seventy percent of their sales are in the state of California. So they didn't think it made a whole lot of sense to be elsewhere. Sounds like they should have a more engaged sales force. Yeah, that's what the problem is that, okay, so first of all, they were sold in 2010 and then in 2017, purchased by Sapporo. So from a dollars and cents standpoint, when you're owned by this multi-billion dollar corporation, I'm sure they didn't think that they were selling enough beer. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't know. All right, we're going to start with not the anchor everyone knows. You're going to get a normal cup and the rest of us have little shot glasses. BYOC, baby. Bring your own cup. I'm going to use my wine glass. Yeah, same. Me too. Anchor Brewing famously started in 1896, but in the modern history of the brewery, Fritz Maytag purchased it in 1965. The first time they bottled a beer was in April of 1971. At the time, they put the beer in four packs so that it would be price-wise, a little more congruent with six-pack pricing at the time. But it's really hard to overstate the influence of this brewery on craft beer in America. They were the first porter brewed in America since prohibition. The beer that we're drinking right now, Liberty Ale, was essentially based on a completely forgotten beer style both in the US and England called India Pale Ale. Now, they don't like to call it an IPA though, right? They don't, right. They just refer to this as Liberty Ale or they think of it more as a Pale Ale. They didn't have an anchor IPA until 2013. A lot of people consider this essentially the first IPA in America. It definitely influenced people looking into the style and brewing something that was very hop forward, especially in comparison to beer at the time in the 1970s in America. This was like off the charts different from what most people were drinking. Got to love that trademark Tang. Yeah. Tastes like apricots and pennies. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how many people are really going to be missing this. I'm not trying to try it. It's just like it's an old school taste, right? It's not at all something people are really reaching for anymore. It's very- But they sell the hell out of it in California apparently. I guess so. It's very well done. I mean, it's fine. I would drink it. But I agree, I think there's plenty out there that it's fine if it's not too difficult. I think the key thing to anchor is the yeast. We've talked about it before on the podcast. I think it's of the four building blocks of beer, I think yeast and maybe water, but yeast between hops malt and barley gets talked about the least, and it contributes so much of the flavor of beer and gets overlooked. So if nothing else, drink an anchor and you realize how unique yeast can contribute to the flavor and aroma profile of a beer. I would argue that this is one of those instances where there's an opportunity for brewery to really lean into their yeast taste, and to imply that this is old man beer and only old people like it. The flavor of this yeast is akin to the famous sourdough flavor of San Francisco, and young people are super into fermented foods and stuff right now. So I think you could do a whole thing with pairing this beer with other things that have a unique- All these kimchi loving hipsters didn't drink enough of it in the States outside of California. Right, right. Did they set any kind of standards for the types of yeast used by IPA producing breweries that are making this West Coast style? Like when they started in the 70s, did people follow suit with their yeast selection? No. Are they unique in the yeast they're using here? They're unique in doing it. So the other other beer, which I'll pass around, Steam Beer, the thing that's kind of unique about this beer is that it's, it uses a lager yeast, but it's fermented at ale temperatures. And this was essentially done like out of necessity. So that's kind of the story behind like anchors. The brewery is just Anchor Brewing. A lot of people call it Anchor Steam, but the style is Steam Beer. They're the only brewery that can call a beer made that way, a Steam Beer. If someone else brews it, they have to call it a California Common. Well, because Fritz Maytag trademarked Steam for beer quite a while ago. Right. But yeah, when people started emulating like Liberty Ale, they were mainly looking at like from a recipe standpoint, the amount of hops being used and the type of hops. So Cascade hops were a relatively new hop at the time. You really didn't have many other hops. So Anchor famously used this Northern Brewer hop. So their beers would obviously have a pretty unique character because of that. This steam beer very much is reminiscent of sourdough on the nose. Very much. I think that really comes through here. The thing about the yeast is that they've propagated their own yeast for like 50 years and never cleaned it up. So it's gotten to become its own like cellar palate animal that they don't really do. Yeah. It's its own thing. And it gets sold like different commercial yeast suppliers sell essentially a version of this that I'm sure they can just, they got cultured up from some keg or a bottle at some point. Right. Bootleg yeast. Yeah. That happens all the time. We've lamented long enough. Pour one out for Anchor. It's tough to watch an institution slip out of the market. It is a good beer. As much as I make fun of the yeast and stuff like that, and the old man character, it's a really well-made beer. You are getting old. I also think it's a cautionary tale with a lot of these breweries think that they just need a rebrand. I don't know if you guys remember, they had some of the most iconic labels in brewing, and they famously did not change them ever. Yeah. What is this crap? The label is awful. It's super. It looks like when they did change it, it's really bad. It cheapened the look. It's like traffic sign yellow. They had the perfect logo. They didn't need to change it. Once they did, I think everyone, it was such a dramatic change that we got questions about, is this different beer? Yeah. Because it's like, why would you fiddle with anchors? Again, this can be one of the cautionary tales for when a business gets taken over. Somebody thought it was the right thing in 2021, and it can help contribute to just the decline in sales. This is not a segue. You know what that reminds me of? New Belgium, going to flat colors, flat colors, no complexity. In The News. When you had mentioned the label change, a beer that underwent a recent image makeover, complete refresh, so dramatic in fact that we had a lot of customers that were very confused about it. We were asked dozens of questions on a weekly basis. About what happened to Fat Tire. How many people said what happened to Flat Tire? A few. How many people assume that Fat Tire is the brewery? A lot. A lot. Yeah. Fat Tire, again, one of the most iconic craft beers. It famously used to be referred to as a Belgian style ale. A while back, they started calling it an amber ale. Like a lot of other regional classic breweries and classic brands, is that they've watched a slow decline in the popularity of Fat Tire over the years. Obviously, a big part of that is that there's the explosion of choice. Like there's so many breweries now, so many options. So you can say that part of it's that it's an amber ale and those aren't exactly trending. But some of it's just that when Fat Tire was king, there were not many craft beer choices like there are today. So in 2019, New Belgium was acquired by Lion, which was an Australian subsidiary of Curran. Their brewery is very healthy because of the Voodoo Ranger series. Like they're selling more New Belgium beer than they ever have. So the brand's on fire, but Fat Tire sales are down. So their solution was in 2020, they decided that they needed to change the Fat Tire recipe. They changed the Fat Tire recipe. They've been tinkering with the Fat Tire recipe. That's like if they changed the recipe to Wheaties. Did they also blame Choice Explosion? No, so they blamed that young people don't like the flavor profile of Fat Tire. Everyone blames the young people. Jenna's fault. Millennials are still getting blamed for everything, and we're getting into our 40s. First, you ruined Kleenex, now you're coming for Fat Tire. Yeah. Research showed that they needed a new and lighter brew that appealed to younger of age drinkers. I like that. We're not trying to market the kids, but literally 20-29 year olds didn't like Fat Tire enough. Again, I would argue that they're never going to capture the kind of sales they did in the past because again, you're never going to recreate the scenario where you were like, well, you didn't have to go up against high noon then. Yeah. I mean, so when they have a brand like Voodoo Ranger that's on fire, so much so that other breweries are trying to make their version of Juice Force and what not. Beer Hugs. Yeah. I don't understand why you take your most iconic product and just completely change the liquid and keep the name. I'm just going to throw this out there. Maybe it changed for the better. We'll let you taste. I haven't had it yet. We'll see. So when did this actually roll out this new formula? So that's a matter of debate. They're being really cagey about this. Roger just pointed out the fact that none of us have had a Fat Tire in four years. Basically, there's when the liquid inside the bottles changed, and then there's when the packaging changed. I would buy this new label on a hoodie or something. It looks like an old Deschutes label. It does. I think in December of 2022 is probably around when the liquid changed, but the packaging didn't change until two or three months ago. That was when it made the news and everyone was so confused, and they're like, what the hell is this? Then when they cracked it and poured it into a glass, they're like, what the hell is this? It's so much lighter in body than old Fat Tire and just everything. Classic Fat Tire just had that rich maltiness to it. Yeah, exactly. It's completely gone here. Hence the Wheaties joke earlier. It had that biscuit-y quality. I mean, it definitely was made with some biscuit malt or special Belgian malts. The flavor intensity is really lacking. It's one thing to have all those flavors still present and just structurally, it's lighter and more delicate, but just in terms of the flavor intensity, there's not a whole lot going on. This tastes like beer with a hint of lemon. Yeah. What I thought wanted to get your guys' take on that I felt was kind of amusing was that they're like, nobody can sit down and drink a six-pack of Fat Tire. I'm like, does everyone always sit down and drink a whole six-pack of beer? I drink a lot of beer. Why are you looking at Greg and I when you say this? He has accusation in his eyes. It just is so funny that they're like, we're in deep trouble if everyone's deciding that for a beer to be a good seller, it has to be something that you can just pound. That's also incongruent. I'm here for that. It's also incongruent with their entire premise around the marketing of this product. In that 20-29-year-olds are drinking less than generations before and drinking better. Now, they're making a style for them to drink six of. But these are not the people drinking six beers, like the people in their 60s were and still are. They also, again, I would argue, why do you need something else that you basically already have a version of this? I don't know if you guys are familiar with the old Montucky Cold Snack. Oh, yes. What is that? No. Oh, we should go get some and try it. It has the cool 70s style packaging. It's just some crappy golden lager from Montana. Which 8% of the proceeds go to charity, so it's supposed to be a better value macro lager. It's basically just contract brewed macro lager with a charitable benefit to it. It's super popular in Colorado with kids that ski. New Belgium made a beer that tastes like this, that's crushable for the youngins to drink. It's like, can you just do that and make your IPAs and just leave Fat Tire alone? You don't need to sell a ton of Fat Tire anymore. That's true. They could have just added to the line, right? Yeah. Just like, in the same way Deschutes has ratcheted back production of Black Butte and Mirror Pond and stuff and focused on other things, or Bells changed what they focused on. Hell, Goose Island's not making or barely making honkers, whatever, anymore. They're focusing on beer hugs and stuff. You can just not have Fat Tire as your flagship anymore. Still make Fat Tire and just focus on other things. Don't try to change it. No more Flagship Fridays for Fat Tire. Nope. I remove them from the, they've been stricken from the landing page. I do have a question. The packaging is different. Right. It still says Fat Tire Ale in extremely large letters on the can. I feel like the packaging that it comes in probably also says Fat Tire Ale very largely. How are people confused by this? It is Fat Tire. Well, it doesn't say Amber Ale anymore. Then when they pour it in their glass, it's clearly not nearly the same color as it used to be. Then when they don't taste the same. I guess I just mean before you purchase it in the store. I think because Fat Tire is such an iconic craft beer that the design is very different to the point where it seems like they did have a very weird busted attempt to expand the Fat Tire line a while back, where they made a Belgian White and they called it Fat Tire White. Dumb. It confuses everyone because they're like, wait, what? Why wouldn't it just be New Belgium White? Why are you involving Fat Tire in this? Obviously, it was just because like you said, Greg, a lot of people associate New Belgium with Fat Tire and it has a lot of brand recognition. Yeah. They just did a Fat Tire extension. Everyone's like, this is stupid. Yeah, because they're trying to steal their own Voodoo Ranger trick. Yeah. That confused the hell out of everyone. Some people felt the same way like, wait, is this a different Fat Tire, Fat Tire? If you are listening and work for a marketing agency, I suggest you approach New Belgium. Fat Tire, more like Fat Tire, am I right? Yeah, there's been many deflated jokes being made about this. When he gets the room wide ground. Pat was on his phone when you said your jokes. Pat was rolling his eyes too hard to talk. Yeah. Couldn't they have done a facelift, like just the new packaging but kept the beer the same? Couldn't they have done literally anything else? Yeah. Yes, of course they could have. Yeah. They should have just not cared about, you're never going to get the same Fat Tire sales ever. Yeah. And just leave the beer alone. This is actually very similar to what happened with Newcastle. Remember good old Newcastle Brown Ale? Yeah. Sales of Newcastle went down and down and down, and then they're like, oh, you know what we should do? We should redesign Newcastle. They took it a different way though. A lot of the reason people like Newcastle is that it was easy to drink, even though it was a brown ale, it didn't have much body, and it was just not offensive, not hoppy. Pretty easy to drink brown ale. They decided they're going to make it at Laganitas and turn it into an American craft brown ale. I like that. It's super hoppy, it's way heavier, it's way roastier. So everyone that love Newcastle is like, what the hell did you do to Newcastle? This isn't Newcastle, I don't want this. Then we all know many people want American brown ales, no one. Okay, but everybody who likes Newcastle is also like, why are the kids skateboarding on the sidewalk? Yeah. So I mean, now it's just sort of this weird in limbo brand that I wouldn't be surprised if one day it just goes away because, and they still make the original one over there. So that's funny. It's like, really? Not in England, but in like Amsterdam or whatever. They're like, oh no, nobody would drink this version here. It's like, they're just making what they think an American would want out of a brown ale, I guess, which is just again, very toned out. Do we still sell this? Yeah. Yeah. Turns out what Americans want in a brown ale is Cocoa Puffs. They have contempt for us, but it's way not enough contempt. I mean, they literally are trying to make what a brown ale was in like 2000 is like what they redid Newcastle as. In The News, we're talking Vino. I want to get into some wine. Couldn't have transitioned faster on that one. I won't take that long. But firstly, just some quick mentions for people in the room. Everyone familiar with the Hahn wines? They were sold recently, right? Yeah. Hahn has Smith and Hook out of Paso. They have all their Hahn varietals out of Monterey. The Hahn has the chicken on it, right? On the label? Yeah. So they have a chicken, a little rooster? Yeah. Then their SLH, their San Lucia Highlands line as well. They sold to Gallo very recently. How much? Undisclosed, of course, but- Several hundred million, I assume? Yes. That seems big. They're a really big winery with a lot of sub-brands. They've already done this a few times. They spun off the Cycles Gladiator was them way back. Really? The 47-pound rooster, whatever that was. Rexgoliath. Rexgoliath. Fact-check me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Cycles Gladiator was a replacement for Rexgoliath when they sold that brand. But now they're just giving up the whole business. Gallo is the biggest wine company out there. Gallo? Yeah. Is anybody bigger? I don't know. Is Constellations still in wine? No, Constellations is up there. Yeah. But Gallo, just to paint a picture here, they own Apothic, Barefoot, Black Box, J Vineyards, Lamarca, Prosecco, Oran Swift, and you with New Amsterdam Vodka and others. Night Train, Thunderbird, also true. Dude, High Noon as well. Peter Vella. And High Noon. They also sell Mordo Cans, Vodka Soda than the entire beer industry. Suck it, Roger. I mean, High Noon is their cash cow right now. It's crazy. My slightly less exciting piece of news that I just wanted to share for the old world drinking crew listening in is that there's a movement right now going on in Beaujolais for premier crew establishment. There are 10 crews right now in Beaujolais. Fleury is now the first to appeal to the INAO. This is a step above villages? Yes, the lash, yeah. But Fleury is the first crew to put forth a bid for seven of its 48 Le D, so these established vineyard sites in the local registry. But seven of them, they have said are premier crew worthy. So these would be the first in Beaujolais to get premier crew status. So we'll see where that goes. It'll take years, but just this movement is now happening in Beaujolais, which is interesting. What are some other examples of French premier crew? Well, all of Burgundy has many, many premier crew sites. Yeah. This feels gutsy. There's a push right now in Alsace to establish premier crews. It's way closer to actually happening. They have ground crews right now, but they're starting to then fill in now with premier crew as well. When I was a budding young wine professional in 2003, I was reading Karen McNeil's Wine Bible. I think she makes a point in there where it's like, some wines on a critical scale at 100 points just will never stack up because of the way that they're built like Beaujolais. So you should appreciate everything for what it is, instead of how it compares to everything else. Now, they've gone from basically being written off by wine writers to wanting to stand with the big boys in terms of governmental qualification. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if they've been anti-governmental qualification and to your point, their winemaking has changed significantly. They used to do all carbonic and now most of the serious wines are traditionally fermented and they can taste like Burgundy can in 10 years. So the winemaking has gotten a lot better as well. And this is not unheard of amongst, to your point, some of the less prestigious appellations. Pouille Fouissé just in 2020 got 22 Premier Crew sites awarded to it. That's of course down in the Macon, not in the Cote d'Or, not in the prestigious part of Burgundy. It's still just recognizing the site potential of certain vineyards and how they are just simply producing better fruit than the rest. You could prove me wrong really fast, but maybe this is an example of the wine industry at large getting a little less traditional and uptight. She's like, no, it's definitely still traditional and uptight. In The News. I'll use that as a segue, because you could argue that perhaps in my next story that we're actually going to taste wines with, which is going to the Rhone Valley. There's a big push right now. So they were just in town a couple of weeks ago. They went all over the US, kind of the wines of the Rhone, if you will, whatever the trade body is, on a big tour to kind of drum up some publicity around White and Rosé to show off diversity to the Rhone. And they have made some big statements about doubling the production of white wine. And to your point, maybe they're a little bit less uptight now because they're seeing how popular white wine is throughout the world and looking at these numbers and saying we want to be a part of this party. And so I have two whites to taste today on kind of very different price points. And I just wanted to see what we thought about the potential of this growth. We'll definitely be seeing kind of more on our shelves in the years to come, but it's not a fast moving category for sure. Right now, the Rhone, the number is a little funny if you look at AOC versus just Rhone in general, but it sits between basically 5-10% of the wine is white coming from the Rhone. Okay. Just throughout the entire region. Right. And they want to double that figure. They'll do it through replanting and do it through AOC law changes. For example, just last year, the crew of Gigondas in the southern Rhone was given permission to now produce Gigondas white wine. Now, that's a big deal. Which they never were allowed to before. So all these people that have been planting white grapes had to declassify and make white wine just Coturon. And this one coming around from the Perrin family, think Beau Castel, one of the most noteworthy families in the region. Of course, yes. This fruit is mostly from Vincel, which is a northerly kind of crew in the south. Wait a minute, what did you say? The crew in the south. It's from the northeastern part of southwestern, southwest. So, sorry. For Karel and I know. From a northern location in the southern Rhone, but it all has to be Coturon as it stands now. So I think we'll begin to see more AOCs in the Rhone, allow for white wine production. So you're saying like we could see a St. Joseph or some other only red wine, traditionally red wine area bottling with that name on a white wine. Correct. Those St. Joseph currently is permitted to make white wine. So maybe a poor example. That feels like all of France just loosened their belt like one notch and messed up a little bit. That does support your mention earlier. Interesting. So is this a generational thing do you think, that young people like tend to gravitate more towards white wine so it's- For sure. I think they're looking at those numbers and white wine consumption. But I think it's also a reaction to Grenache not being able to handle the heat of the Southern Rhone. Some of these wines are getting so overblown, so alcoholic. So in some sites where these white grapes are a little more tolerant of it, and again, you have so many blending opportunities. The white grape, for example, that's permitted to which has to be the majority of it from Gigandaz in this new rule is Claret, and it's very kind of like Chenin Blanc-like. There's a white Claret. There's a- Damn it. I thought Claret was a- we also call a red blend a Claret, right? Just when you think that we're starting to make sense, Edouard. It's like literally the old English term for Burgundy, right? The different spelling. Oh. C-L-A-I-R-E-T-T-E. E-T-T-E. Yeah. This will have to be minimum 70% of your Gigandaz Blanc. Gigandaz. Oh man, if Chris was here, he would totally put a finer point on it. Oh yeah. Okay. I want to hear just thoughts about this and I do want to- This is a really nice wine. It's $11.99 on the shelf, all organically farmed. It really is made for food. It has that bitter finish that white Rhone's tend to have, but there's like- It's pithy, like lemon pith. There's a lot of pithy fruit. They tend to have a little more texture and body. This is all stainless steel and the acid is still pretty fresh. Sometimes it can drop a little bit, but I think they've done a really nice job, mostly Grenache Blanc in the wine. I do not associate white Rhone with being this bitter in this cutting. What is this certification here? Yeah, it is a bit bitter, isn't it? It's bitter and focused. I think bitterness is a hallmark of it, for sure. What's this AB certified? Is it organic, agriculture, biologique? Yes. It's not biodynamic, but organic in terms of its certification. What I wanted to also show you just the potential that they've already discovered for white wines coming out of the Rhone is that Condrieu is a white only appellation up there for 100 percent Viognier. It's only 500 acres, the whole appellation. I just wanted to show a more serious example to show that they have the knowledge and the history and tradition of doing really great whites in a very serious way. This is Alicia justifies opening a bottle of wine that she likes. Would you please pass the Quandro? What did you call it earlier? I don't record on you probably. This is Gigaul's Quandro. This is the 2020 Vintage. It is $64.99 on the shelf. Didn't we try this on the Gigaul podcast? No, we did their Coduron Blanc. I don't think we did their Quandro. Could be wrong. But yes, not to be confused with the cheap Spanish Cava, Codono. Codono, Quandro. Say it again. Quandro. Quandro, okay. Not that far off. So this will see some time in oak, you'll get that texturally and aromatically in flavor. This is all Viognier? All Viognier, 100 percent by law. This is where it's at. You smell this? Yeah. You can see the aromatic difference. Just firstly, they keep their yields so low and that secures the pronounced aromatic intensity in the wine. Additionally, you can see what Viognier is bringing in the florality, the honeysuckle, the rosewater, the lots of stone fruit really leaping out of the glass. That's Viognier. Everything you just said is 100 percent spot-on. It's like melons and orange blossom all in one. Oh, the florality. It's so complex and it's so refreshing at the same time. It's nice. It almost has a little bit of cereal references earlier, a little fruity pebbles, but again, just an absolute Oseanian food wine, but the show is the potential of whites from the Rhone, and I wanted to talk about this goal of theirs because they can Does this have salinity to you too? A little bit. Claret can be known for a little salinity too. Claret can. Which Claret? The White Grape Claretite. E Claretite. The little one, et. Awesome. Awesome. How much is this? 64. She said it already. 64.99. It's hard. The Appalachian is so small, has a great reputation, so it's not that much wine. Dumb question. Rhone villages or whatever, what are they called? That's not even the question. That's the prelude to the dumb question. What are the regions called? Crews. The best of the villages. We're giving crew status, correct. What crews do we currently have with white wine? Mostly, we have some Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Blanc, Condrieu, and then we have a lot of Couturon and Couturon Village Blanc. We could be seeing new regions. We carry maybe like one Saint-Joseph Blanc, and already the crew of Vermeutage up in the north produces about a third white wine, but we don't see too much of it. We'll see though maybe Chaves. Anyway, but we'll start to see, hopefully, we'll see new ones but Gigandasse is the big one that announced. Wow, now that I'm done sending emails, this is a really nice wine. It's a really nice wine. Yeah, very peachy and nectarine. I like it. Okay, so. It seems like it has a bit of heat. I bet the alcohol is up there. Vionier is one of those. It's going to accumulate a lot of sugar there at the end, and if you don't watch that pick date, your acid is going to just fall off. It's not a high acid grape variety. You got to watch your pick dates, kids. In The News. Pat, my next news story is for you. We'll be airing this here now in the month of July. Next month, you might see some advertisements on social or whatever in the news, but Washington State Wine Month, and you grew up there. Spent some time there. Is this news? This is where I learned how to climb trees. This feels like a press release to me more than a news. Well, the news is that they are celebrating all the great wine, but I'll give you maybe a reason why we're talking about this and not on its own episode, but they just surpassed 1,000 wineries in Washington State. Yeah. Wildfire smoke from British Columbia is ruining the harvest for all of them this year. In 1975, there were just 10. Wow. Exponential growth that we're seeing in Washington State, and next month is the month to discover it, I think, if you haven't already. Great. We're not doing any big promo or anything. This is just my love for Washington State. We are going to taste one of my all-time favorites from DeLille Seller's. They're Chalor Blanc, and this is appellated as Columbia Valley. There are 20 AVA's in total in Washington State. DeLille, I really don't think you can go wrong with any of their wines, so have Adam, but specialize in Bordeaux style wines. This is their take on a white Bordeaux. It's 67 percent Sauvignon Blanc and 33 percent Sémillon. Swirl the round. There's a little reduction. Let that blow off a little bit. That means farts. Yeah, that's a sulfury fart. Yeah. This spends some time in French oak. It smells like a stinky ditch. Seven months on lease. Is that not what you want your wine to smell? It smells like Sémillon. It's like vegetal bright fresh thing. An asparagus. What the f***? Yeah. Taste the wine. Taste the wine. Like wet mushrooms. Wet mushrooms. There's a little umami in there. I mean, it tastes fine. Yeah. It tastes amazing. It tastes like citrus and peach at the same time. It's kind of creamy in texture. Creamier more than I thought. But it has acidity like a laser beam too. Yeah. You're picking up that ditch note, Raj? No, I'm picking up gooseberry. So yeah, we have all of that acidity from the Sauvignon Blanc, but the Semián and the winemaking is giving us that really creamy texture. So it's like the best of both worlds. It's $33.99 on the shelf, but a really serious example and it shows, I think, the depth of Washington. It's not just the $10 Riesling. Yeah. The finish on this wine in the mouth-watering quality it has is like, drink more. Right now, drink more. So most of the fruit here in the Sauvignon Blanc is coming from the Sagemore Vineyard. So just anytime you're reading the Boucher, Sagemore, very prestigious vineyard site. So an excellent producer, excellent wine. It says here that they do- What do we sell this for? $33.99. Whole cluster pressing to release free-run juice. Is that a pretty unique process and how many people do something like that? So with this wine, it is unique. Whole cluster isn't really that unique, but you mostly see it on the red side with like Pinot Noir and some Syrah, and occasionally on the whites. But what we're getting there when you do it whole cluster, you're creating more oxygen channels in that vat, and so there's a little more aromatic intensity that comes from that. Oxygen bringing that out and you're eliminating that even any contact with skins in terms of the juice because it can really fly out. This is a pretty amazing line. Wow. That's high praise from Roger. In The News. In The News. In The News. We're talking hooch. Whiskey fungus encrusts a Tennessee town. I love this story. I love this story so much. Oh my God. Pat, what was the goose island? They named a beer after this gross mold. Badonia. Yeah, and everybody thinks it's pretty and beautiful, and it is. It makes everything like high def. No, it makes everything like black and fuzzy. Like most molds. The buildings are covered with black fuzz. You remember. They were down there with us. Burned kind of. Yeah, they does. It does. It looks sooty. Instantly relict. Yeah. So the actual headline is Whiskey Fungus Fed by Jack Daniels Encrusts a Tennessee Town. Because this fungus eats and digests the alcohol vapors in the air, and that's why it grows on distilleries, close to distilleries, next to distilleries, et cetera. So long story short here, Jack Daniels in their need to continue pumping out more. Jack Daniels has had to branch out and start building warehouses, not just on their main campus, but also in Lincoln County, Tennessee. So their main distilleries in Moore County, famously Dry County, the county next door, Lincoln County, leased them some land or sold them land, et cetera, to build new warehouses they were building. Their plan was to build 14. They're going to get like, hang on, there's an exact number here. There's a dollar amount tag to this, a million dollars in annual property tax revenue from these warehouses, which for a county that only has $15 million in general fund spending, that's a lot of dough. That's a lot of dough to get from Jack Daniels, right? Pat, listen, I misread this when I saw the headline. I thought that it was the people of Lynchburg. Of course, the people of Lynchburg have been suffering this for hundreds of years, but they know what butters their bread. Yeah. Everybody in Bardstown, Kentucky, you're going to move to Bardstown, you're going to get this black **** on the walls of your house, on the exterior walls of your house. You know not to park your car outside because it's going to get the stuff on it. But these people are brand new. Some of the things that are specifically mentioned that everyone is upset about is that residents have complained that a sooty, dark crust has blanketed homes, cars, road signs, bird feeders. Won't someone think of the bird feeders? Oh my god, the bird feeders, we couldn't possibly do that. I'm yelling too much and Roger's angry. Patio furniture and trees and the fungus has sped uncontrollably, fed by alcohol vapors, wafting from charred oak barrels of aging Jack Daniel's whiskey. Is this where they asked them to clean them and they said no? Can you power wash it off? Here's where these complaining residents lost me. Christie Long, the owner of a local mansion built in 1900. I'm sorry, Christie. Your opinion is now invalid. Wash your damn mansion, which she operates as a wedding venue, blah, blah, blah. She's upset, her lawyer's upset. They're suing the county and that Jack Daniel's did not get the proper licensing and permits to build these warehouses. That's what they do. Ms. Long said, her corner of Lincoln County is going to be black as coal unless Jack Daniel's installs air filters in the barrel houses, one of which sits about 250 yards from her property. Now, I will say the county and Jack Daniel's should have, I mean, you're building warehouses literally on top of neighborhoods. Come on now, especially when they haven't been there before. This is a different situation than somebody whose farmstead is across the street from the Jim Beam Distillery. This is new. You know this is going to happen. It sounds like they weren't as transparent as they could have been in planning this. How much would an air filter help? I don't know, and I don't think anybody truly does. How much would an air filter mess up their process? I think that was part of the fear. Their concern is that filtering the air is going to mess up what makes Jack Daniels Jack Daniels, so they would never do it. Of course, Jack Daniels says that it complies with all local, state, and federal regulations regarding the design, construction, and permitting of our barrel warehouses. We're committed to protecting the environment and the safety and health of our employees and neighbors. The director of technical services, maintenance, and barrel distribution at Jack Daniels said that studies have shown that the fungus is not hazardous to human health and does not damage property. Could it be a nuisance? Ms. Willis said, Yeah, sure. And it can easily be remedied by having it washed off. But according to all these people locally here saying, it's impossible, next to impossible to wash off. They're power washing every few months with bleach and stuff, and it's still really not making a dent in it. It comes back right away. Right away. The mansion lady doesn't want to use the power washer on her. So the fungus actually, it thrives off the alcohol vapor that evaporates out of the barrels. And we've known about this since at least the 1870s when Antonyn Badoin, the director of the French Distillers Association, observed a plague of soot blackening the walls of distilleries in Cognac, France. Badoin? Yes. And then, so a guy named John A. Scott, a professor of public health at the University of Toronto, who has studied the fungus since 2001, and helped name its genus Badonia in honor of Badoin. Didn't Goose Island think that it made their beer even more delicious when it was on the girls? I would say that was pretty good beer. This man says he's not aware of any research specifically looking at the health effects. And he thinks it's lucky that this doesn't actually hurt people. So this is not a new thing, but perhaps just causing some controversy because it's in this new place, whereas so many of the towns, the distilleries, store their barrels and they've been doing it for decades. Doing it for years. They just all put up with it because it's the center of their economy. But I would argue as a distillery, you need to be putting it out there that this is a known thing when you're going to expand into unknown territories like this. Right. And the residents of those towns have not yet reaped the financial and not the financial rewards, but the rewards of those new tax dollars going in and the investment that they get to enjoy other things. And this is a small county. There was some, I read somewhere that there was only like 35,000 residents. Lincoln County, Lincoln County. Yeah. Lincoln County only has 35,000 residents. Made famous by the Lincoln County process. Yeah, probably. So when you walk around the Rick houses, how often do you see it inside Rick houses? A bit. Do they wash it off in there? No, they never touch it in there. But also, I'm not a microbiologist. I'm not sure what black fuzz I'm seeing, where, I'm not sure which is bisonia and which isn't. Okay. I'm never having you in my basement. Okay, last question. Because I can't identify your molds? Can they open their windows? Yeah, the brick houses have windows that generally stay open. A home, the residence. If you do, then I think you're probably going to get this stuff in your house. I'm not sure there's a lot of central air too in some of these older homes. Yeah. Gross. There's another complaining residence that said, Jack Daniels built a barrel house next to her house in December, and whiskey fungus has been accumulated on the roof of her home and her car and trees on the property. The other chemist before I mentioned that named it Bedonia, he said he's seen that the fungus actually chokes out trees, like chokes them down the roads. That's not good. Anyway, this woman says, I could try and sell, but what am I going to get? Who's going to want to live here? Nothing. You know what? They said they don't know if there are health effects? Well, there's no way. The guy from University of Toronto says he's not aware of studies, he's studying it, but dude, we've lived around it as long as we've been aging, distilled spirits, I think we're probably fine. We've got bigger issues. I'm thinking it's probably not great to breathe that in. We're all loaded with microplastics right now. Or- I'm not worried about this fungus. This is just the last of us just waiting to happen. Also, potentially, it's going to turn us all into bloated monsters, yes. I mean, how often do they- every time there's something that's potentially a health risk, they're like, there's no evidence that it's a health risk. It's just like, train derails, water's okay. COVID was only for two weeks. Water's fine. Would you drink it? No, I wouldn't drink it. Have a cigarette. Yeah. Now, okay, is that reason to taste some Jack Janes? Oh, there's more Jack Janes. I got more Jack Janes. That's part one of two for old Jack. Can we taste this whiskey or what? No, listen to this next story. This is even better. I love this story so much. The Supreme Court rules against dog toy resembling liquor bottle. Have you seen it? This trademark dispute pitted Jack Daniels against Bad Spaniels. Jack Daniels is the most iconic spirit label, and it's aped more than anything. This is wonderful, except I want to side with the dog toy. This case is about dog toys and whiskey, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a unanimous court decision. Two items seldom appearing in the same sentence. What, Kagan and unanimous? Yeah. Bring the Supreme Court together. So the issue here is there's a dog toy company that was making these spoof Jack Daniels looking bottles called Bad Spaniels, and the label said it was full of dog piss or something. They said that they were covered by First Amendment and parody of this famous brand, and Jack Daniels said, no way, this is going to cause consumer confusion because apparently consumers will think that Bad Spaniels dog piss is the same as Jack Does it squeak? That's the real question. You know, I haven't chewed it yet. I'm not sure. Is there a ruling on that or is this like a pending? So the Supreme Court essentially like sent it back down. It's in Jack Daniels' favor, but essentially they're going to leave it up to some other circuit court to figure out when parody law applies and when it stops. This is not your problem. So now that we're thinking about dog toys instead of mold, can we try them? Does it taste like dog? Did they say it tastes like dog? No, this is a Binny's. So listen, I could have just grabbed Jack Daniels for you guys, but we did just get a couple of barrels of hand-selected Binny's Jack Daniels' Single Barrel, which is a very delicious whiskey where regular Jack Daniels' Black is fine, and a very serviceable whiskey, and there's nothing wrong with it. Except the mold. I think the Single Barrel selections really are a cut above. Greg would agree, he went on a barrel pick. Is this one cask strength? It is not cask strength, no. We are going to pick some more cask strength in a couple of weeks. The cask strength is shockingly good. It's shockingly good. It's amazing whiskey. This is probably going to be pretty good too. Is our cask strength going to be in a 750 or in a 375 now? 750. Or a 700. Oh yeah, maybe it's a 700. I would mix that with Coke. Ouch, Jenna. I was just kidding. It's good. It's very good. It is very good. It's got that bazooka joe bubblegum. Well, yeah, it's Jack Daniels. So it's always going to have that bubblegum. You know, that's part of its DNA. You know, you love it or you don't love it quite as much. I don't feel that anybody really hates it. Bananas and cloves and limestone. It's real good. So much banana. It's 94 proof, I think? Yeah. What do you think, Raj? Ever since you pointed that out, it's like your stupid hot dog water with Blue Moon. I just taste bubblegum and runts now. Yeah. That might fall. Blue Moon tastes like hot dog water. Do you taste runts or Gros Michel? It's good. This is nice whiskey. Yeah. Very fruity. Is it worth moving in next door? No. Getting the old Badonia lung. Yep. In The News. We're talking hooch. I'm not going to make you taste this next one. You'll thank me later. How many more stories do you have? I got a few. It's a pet case of stories. I'm just looking at this pile. Fireball Maker is sued over bottles that don't contain whiskey. Oh, yeah. You guys hear about this? I know. Yeah. A fireball is a flavored whiskey bottled by Sazerac. It's a cinnamon whiskey. It used to be Dr. McGillicuddy's whatever. Yep. Then they changed it to fireball and it took off and it became the biggest growth liquor in the world for several years in a row. Essentially, what's at hand here is they have started making a malt-based version of fireball that is not actually made from a distilled spirit. Malt-based. Just because like everything in the liquor business, it's a real estate game. This is a land grab because there are, and I quote, 170,000 stores in the United States that are allowed to sell beer and wine but not spirits. So by making a fireball made out of malt that's of some strong-ish strength and has some kind of cinnamon-ish flavor akin to fireball, they can get fireball into those accounts where they can't actually sell fireball. Whiskey. That's bullsh**. This is bullsh**. Total bullsh**. I have had the malt fireball. It is absolutely offensive. Well, how do you feel about regular fireball? I mean, listen, if you think regular fireball is bad, you've never experienced bad until you've had malt fireball. What's the proof on the other one? It's lower. I want to say it's like 22 percent or something. It's malt liquor fireball. I don't know how they get it that high. How do they get it that high? Maybe it's only 18 percent. We have to look it up. We don't sell it. Does it cite how it's been selling? It does not, but the plaintiff, so they're getting sued from a woman from Chicago, Ms. Anna Marquez of Chicago fired suit because she bought, it's marketed as fireball cinnamon is how it's labeled. She bought it unaware that it was a different product from the whiskey she expected. Fireball cinnamon has lower alcohol content than its whiskey-based cousin and can be sold at grocery stores and gas stations across the country and comes in multiple sizes. So fireball cinnamon is a malt-based 33-proof product, whereas fireball whiskey is a whiskey-based 66-proof product. What's the proof on the malt? 33. 33 proof. Okay. That's pretty good. I mean, that's a very high alcohol beer. Yeah. Is the package totally different? No. The packaging looks almost identical. And it says it's made with natural whiskey and other flavors or something. And then so she claims that natural whiskey and other flavors is a clever turn of phrase because people might misread it as natural whiskey, thinking it was a reference to the spirit and not understand that it was a flavor. Whiskey flavor. It is flavored with natural whiskey and other flavors. What is a natural whiskey flavor? Nothing. Nothing. So that's pretty crappy. Now, the lawsuit was filed by a guy who has filed more than 400 lawsuits targeting food and beverage companies. Usually, if you have the ambulance chaser of consumer package goods. Class action lawsuits, yeah. But usually, if you have a bottle, you're like, this is gross. You just don't buy it again. Yeah. That's it. But sometimes you sue. There's more to this story, my friend. There's also a 42-proof wine-based fireball cinnamon. Okay. Roger's mind was blown at the mall base, but Alicia is freaked the f*** out by a 40-something. We have wine-based margaritas in our stores right now. Buzz balls. Yeah. So the fireball fax page is hilariously long. Why did my fireball cinnamon freeze when I put it in the freezer? You know, so fireball got a lot of trouble. Fireball, like many, many, many, many other alcohols, contain some added glycerin, which is really just a sugar that's there for mouthfeel. Unscrupulous internet people might say, well, that's a fire retardant chemical. Yes, there are glycerin and glycerin-adjacent things in different fire retardant chemicals and stuff and because it's a precursor to these other things, it's considered that like bad stuff in certain Nordic countries or something. So Fireball was first in the news. This is probably what, Greg, like 12 years ago maybe. We had people on Facebook like, you can't sell Fireball. You know you're in the wrong when Norway is not selling it or something. With their weird fish and anise-flavored liquor candy. Fireball is a classic example of you want to eat the sausage, but you don't want to see how the sausage gets made. To further confuse people, the wine one is 42 proof and then there's a whiskey one that's 42 proof as well. Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing. Stop it. We have beat this one up too much. We need to move on to the next one. All right. Next headline. American Single Mall Whiskey. A freewheeling cousin of Scotch comes of age. This has been a story for like five years. This is a story that is just dragging on, dude. Finally, last year, every American Single Mall distillery was like, it's close, it's going to happen this year, we're going to have our defined regulations. The whole gist here is that the TTB, the Alcohol Tax, the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which is a subcategory of the ATF, which controls beverage, alcohol, labeling laws and distribution laws, all that stuff in America, is finally going to have a new defined category for American Single Malt whiskeys. American Single Malts to this point have fallen under the same rules and regulations as any of our other whiskeys, where if you're going to name the grain on the label, it has to be at least 51% that grain and be matured in new charred oak. If you're going to call it straight, it has to be two years old, all that jazz. So the problem there is that malt whiskeys totally suck when they're aged in new charred wood barrels because malt is very delicate and the wood just overwhelms malt. And that's why if you look at Scotland or Ireland, they're pretty much using exclusively used casks. Bourbon barrels mostly. Yeah, bourbon barrels mostly. So finally, this all started in 2016 with the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, which was started by friend of the podcast, Matt Hoffman and some other people who were making single malt whiskeys. Matt. Our first. Westland. Over one hour episode. Really? Yes. Nice. Happy to be a part of that. No one is surprised that Pat was on that episode. They talked about the trees of the Pacific Northwest for hours. Fun fact, the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission's first ever meeting was at the tasting room at the Binny's in Lincoln Park. Also true. Yeah. They've slowly over the years gotten together and talked about how they want these rules and regulations to go. It's gotten to the point where they're going to allow used coop ridge. From what I'm hearing, and that's not in this article, is that these guys are kind of hung up fighting amongst themselves now on a minimum age. And so the whole thing was going to be, can we use use coop ridge? Yes, they all agree that they can use it. Should we have a minimum barrel size? A lot of people said yes. Enough said no, that they want to keep using small barrels. That they said fine, we won't do that, but we need a minimum age. What do you know, the small barrel guys don't want a minimum age. This is such bulls**t. Do you fear that it's just going to be a watered down? Either way, we're going to have allowable used cupboards, which is the most important thing. We're going to be stuck waiting through that as consumers and industry experts to essentially vet who's doing it the right way and who's still taking small barrel quick shortcuts. Just like with every other kind of whiskey. Just like with every other kind of whiskey. Honestly, it's a better playing field than it currently has. Either way, I see this as an improvement. So, you know, whenever the TTB changes rules for stuff, they have a period of public comments where people can email and call and weigh in on what they think it should be. Then they compile all these things, then they bring it back to the producers, then they go back and forth. So we're finally, finally, hopefully, by this fall, supposed to have an actual legal definition. Do you think that there will be an opportunity to create stricter regulations in the future, at least once this initial draft is put forth? Just in terms of, as I think of different wine laws throughout the world, a lot of times there's like the first one and then years later you get champions of stricter regulations after higher quality. I doubt it. Looking at beverage alcohol law in America, really not much has changed since Prohibition, right? Yeah. I think you're looking at the turning the aircraft carrier, so to speak. There's powerful interests that are established. And this is kind of like that in a microcosm, because the biggest producers are going to want to have the lobby what they do, and then everybody else who's trying to innovate is going to be working to catch up. Yeah. And so to put this in perspective, this has gotten to this point because it truly has reached critical mass. There are over 200 distilleries making single malt whisky in America now. That's more than there are in Scotland. So there's a lot of people making American single malt now, and we do need some form of what they can and can't be doing, I think, with this and how they should be legally defining it. And what is the new proposed percentage requirement of, like right now they have to just be over 50 percent? Single malt, it's going to be 100 percent malt. Yeah. Otherwise they should call it malt whisky or something. Yeah. Then it would just be malt whisky, but single malt historically, globally has been single distillery, 100 percent malted barley. And we're looking at the same thing here. Single year or not single year? Not single year, no. So we actually have a pretty good one to try. We have Westland Garriana. Hey, this Garriana slaps. This was the sixth edition. This is 100 proof. This is aged partially in Quercus Garriana, which is Garri oak, Oregon native oak species. Non-chill filtered, no coloring added, matured for a minimum of three years. It smells like cinnamon. I took this off the closeout rack at the Lincolnwood Binny's for $120. It smells like cinnamon and it tastes like chocolate and it's amazing. It's very malty and it's got that chocolatey dark fruit that kind of like those just kind of nebulous chocolate-covered dried dark fruits. We have some chocolate-covered raisins in the rack. For sure. We do. So they see some new oak in this because they have to, some used oak because they can. It's really good. So yeah, it is really good. I think I've noticed lately people have been talking about Ombarana barrels and I think you get some of that sweet baking spice on this too like you do on those. Oh, for sure. Those are like over the top, but it's very nice here. You mentioned those on the closeout rack. I feel like this whisky is phenomenal, but the price point is kind of scarce. Yeah, this price point is tough. We're going to see more accessible prices coming up, like Virginia Distilling's got something that they're going to put out at a more reasonable price. We've got some, we have some good priced, so not good. We have some, we have some things at more approachable price points. Certainly. It's a big category. You can find in your local Binny's with the other World Whiskeys adjacent to Single Malt Scotch on the set at your local Binny's. We are going to have a big World of Whiskey style festival tasting just for American Single Malt's this coming fall at the Lincoln Park Store. I think we're targeting either November 6th or November 9th. So we haven't quite pinned down the date yet, but there is going to be an American Single Malt style, big like walk around festival style tasting this fall. Yeah, that should be cool. You heard it here first, nerds who stuck around till the last of this episode. That's all for this edition of In The News. So that was In The News, part two's, and I am amazed that there was two different Jack Daniels stories. It's real cool. What about a black mold that is covering a town and the other about a dog toy? You mean encrusting a town. Gross, so gross. This is like some kind of skin disease. Oh my God, the buried lead of that whole story is like, so many communities have been suffering this blight, but silently. I was more excited to make fun of the lady who owns the local mansion. Yeah, our hearts go out to you. So thanks for listening to this episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, back in your feed with something Roger probably. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Alicia. I'm Roger. I'm Jenna. Keep tasting.