LGP 74 - Cavalier Inner Circle Green Jacket

Transcript

Speaker: ah Hey everybody, welcome back to Let's Get Pairing, this episode number 74, and today we are smoking the Cavalier Inner Circle Green Jacket. It does not like camera very much, but you could you can sort of see it there. We'll talk all about the cigar, we'll tell you what we're pairing, as always, but for now, grab yourself cigar, grab yourself a drink, let's get pairing.

Speaker: And we're back. Welcome back, everybody. This is Let's Keep Pairing, episode number 74. I'm your host, Tripp, here in ah LGP South, as we're calling it. Coming to you from LGP North, the dungeon of dark, dank, doom, and dumbassery.

Speaker: It's Dennis. Dennis, how you doing Oh, that's a bunch of Ds. There we go. got an I prefer the dungeon of flatulence. Oh, that's a good name. It's the cave of farts. It's the Disney movie that never got made. It's the alternate version of Aladdin. Yeah, man. We're good. We're doing well. Kind of a little warmer than I expected going into Christmas week and generally just holiday season time. it's kind of strange. to We just had a snowstorm. It was great. And now of suddenly snow's gone. We're back to this weird phase of it's kind of rainy, kind of humid.

Speaker: What kind of temperatures we talking about? I have no context anymore. Mid-40s, I think we're going to hit this week. But we went from 18. I think this time, yeah, this time last week, a week ago, it was about 17 degrees outside.

Speaker: So it's different. It's very different. I have found the longer I've lived, I've lived in Florida like three years-ish now. The longer I live here, the more out of touch I become with like normal seasons.

Speaker: and Like in October, somebody was like, man, it's really cold today. And some text thread. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's cold places now. It was still the same temperature it was at the end of the summer here. Yeah. I mean, it's Florida, baby.

Speaker: Yeah. ah To be fair, it does get cold. It does get cold in Florida. not usually. i will I will say that. Like it's ah it's oh, it's 69 out. Right. um And that's after the sun has gone down. It was like 80 today.

Speaker: but ah Last week or the week before, it was like 60, 50 degrees. In the 50s, at least. During the day, I'm talking. Nighttime's a different story, because nighttime, it always hits like 60 or 70. Even in the most of the summer. Part of the summer.

Speaker: Not the whole summer. Anyway. just Enough about the weather, because nobody ever likes to talk about the weather. You just what? I just had to tape my cigar back together. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. um I mean, that's partially, you know, you never know who to blame with that, right? Like, it's partially ah the world's fault because it's drier out everywhere this season.

Speaker: But ah both Dennis and I had the the head of our cigar crack a little bit. Mine, i didn't notice whether it was already cracked before I cut it. His was definitely cracked before he cut it.

Speaker: um But in the cigar's defense, we got these from Coop. ah Maybe Coop had him sitting on a counter or something for a couple weeks. Who knows? He pre-cracked all the cigars for us just in case. Pre-cracked. I got you, boys. Don't worry. I got i got you covered. Thanks, Coop.

Speaker: So shout out to Coop. These were provided by Cavalier. All right, so what we're smoking tonight is the Cavalier Inner Circle Green Jacket. ah Dennis, you called it immediately. Green Jacket is, of course, a reference to the Masters.

Speaker: um So, well, let's start with Cavalier. we're We're both fans of Cavalier, fans of Sebastian. The Cavalier was founded in 2015 in Switzerland by Sebastian Decope, and they didn't expand to the U.S. until 2018, so they have, like,

Speaker: um I think they have incorporated a U.S. company that's part of the company in Geneva. um Sebastian started the brand after spending time in Honduras and meeting cigar makers like Aiden Perez and Nestor Plasencia and just spent some time learning from them and was like, I can do this. I can but do you would with some help from these guys, I can do this. So he partnered with Aiden to develop the Cavalier Blend.

Speaker: Um, reportedly his wife Island actually came up with the idea for that gold diamond that has become, uh, kind of iconic to the brand. I love it so much. I'm a big fan of that.

Speaker: It's great. And it really, it's, it's one of those things where even if you don't care about cigars, you scroll past that on Instagram and you're like, Whoa, what is that? um it was It was just a genius move right at the right time when when you know the high the height of people posting pictures of their cigars with nothing else was on the internet. um So the...

Speaker: Inner Circle was originally released in 2022 as an homage to the people who have been with Cavalier since the beginning of the company. So, you know, Inner Circle, get it? um And kind of to highlight, the it was not the first, but it was one of the first new blends to come out of their fact their own factory in Danley, Honduras.

Speaker: um After they, they i don't know if they parted ways with Aiden Perez, but they had to expand out into their own factory. Good for them. um The green jacket, meanwhile, is the, i believe it's the third or fourth release in the Inner Circle series or the Inner Circle line.

Speaker: The blue label is the original that is a regular release. I think the red label is also a regular release. This one is an annual limited edition that started last year as a store exclusive.

Speaker: it started as a store exclusive for the vault in Meridian, Ohio. And proved popular enough that people were calling the shop from all over the place trying to get them. um So Sebastian figured, all right, let's let's bring it worldwide.

Speaker: So now they're available all over the place. um Interestingly, so this is a yearly um limited edition. So every year going to have one of these. This is the first year of that.

Speaker: um But included in the 10-count box is an extra cigar, which is next year's blend. I think that's something they're going to do moving forward, which is a pretty cool touch. um i just I like the idea of that, of giving you a preview of what you're going to get next year.

Speaker: um And that can kind of, um I guess it could bite you in the ass, but I i see that more as next year you know what you're getting, at least somewhat. um At least you have an idea of what you're getting, if you remember how a how that one cigar went.

Speaker: ah which I feel I could sell more cigars. That seems like a genius marketing plan. um As Dennis mentioned book in the green room, the name is a met is a reference to the Masters Championship Golf Tournament where when you win, you get a green jacket.

Speaker: think everybody probably knows that. um I'm not sure why exactly the they chose that, but I think it's because... God, I can't remember his name. The guy that owns the vault is a golf fan, I believe.

Speaker: our friend Ed Ryan would know better than me. he He goes up there all the time. Unfortunately, he has to drive all that way ah because it's one of his accounts. right. So on to the tobacco, of course.

Speaker: ah We have a mostly Honduran blend, but not entirely. So the wrapper is Honduran Hamistran Claro. The binder is Habano from Honduras. And for fillers, we have Sumatra, Honduran, Nicaraguan, and tobacco from Paraguay.

Speaker: As I mentioned before, this has made it Cavaliers Fabrica Centroamericana de Tobacco. I think it's FCT.

Speaker: Everybody has a abbreviations that they use. That's where like Naxa comes from and stuff like that. Anyway, um we are smoking the only size there is, a four by forty seven Churchill.

Speaker: Price is $18, so that makes it $180 per box, um I believe, because I think that bonus cigar is is kind of a freebie, which is cool. All right, so right off the rip, we talked about how they both crack, but mine is smoking fine, even with the crack.

Speaker: You had to tape yours up little bit, look put a little band-aid on. With a post-it. used a post-it as a band-aid. It's not really working very well. Winston Churchill style. have that and little Yeah, a little piece of paper keep his ah gloves clean.

Speaker: Pre-days of the bands before we had bands. And to keep his lips clean. That was part of it. like He would put it on the on the head so that he could well he could chew on his cigar without making his doctor mad or something like that. I don't know that there was any way that man could keep keep his lips clean, paper or not.

Speaker: That's a different story for another time. Yeah, put a post-it on mine. You know, listen, I thought, looking at the cigar, thought, well, probably not going to be really my thing. um seemed just kind of in that wheelhouse of fairly mild, not something that I'd really want to get into necessarily. And man, my perspective was completely changed in the last five minutes because holy crap, I love the breadiness. this This really great kind of gingerbread quality has been coming up. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking.

Speaker: yeah And you know maybe it's because I'm getting a lot more air on the draw from the crack. I try to um tape it up a little bit, but... ah Yeah, man, it's this really great kind of toasted bread, this gingerbread thing.

Speaker: It's got a really interesting flavor, and it's certainly not... It's on the milder side for sure, but it is not as mild as I initially expected. Yeah, I would call this like a medium. moment um It's a pretty good... Yeah, pretty close, solid medium.

Speaker: Probably mild on the strength side of things, I would guess. you are sure I'm not a great judge of that. I'm just talking about flavor-wise. There's not a ton of intensity to it. Yeah. There's a little spice on the retrohale, but not enough that it would turn off people who are sensitive to that. Yeah. It's that baking spice.

Speaker: Yeah, it's more like a baking spice. There's something else there. It's that on the retrohale, I'm getting the shortbread cookie kind of thing. that You know the aftertaste? When you eat a shortbread cookie, you get that aftertaste in your mouth, on your palate. It's like that for me on the retrohale, and I really, really like it. I do see what you mean. Yeah.

Speaker: Almost like an orange kind of an orange biscuit, if you've ever had one of those. Yeah, I was going to say there's a little bit of citrus to me in this cigar. um little bit of earth.

Speaker: Just a hint of spice and like black pepper. like but hint of baking spice and a hint of black pepper. It's more about like that breadiness. there is that like You said gingerbread, and that's exactly what it is. like A little bit of that ginger quality.

Speaker: That kind of like tingle on the tongue kind of thing. It is a bit drying, I will say that. So I think I'm personally, I'm going to start jumping into my pairings because I need i need a little little wetness on the palate.

Speaker: I agree. Let's do it. Let's get pairing. Did it that time. All right. First up, I have one from Frame. I'm not going to go super into Frame. Frame is a great brewery out of Oregon um that I feature a lot because I have a subscription with them that gets me all sorts of cool barrel-aged stuff, which this is one of.

Speaker: So this is Lemure. forgot they put their their names up there at the top. Lemure. I should have looked up what Lemure means, but I failed.

Speaker: um So this is one of their newer releases. This came out in October. My next box is on the way. It'll be here the day after Christmas. Can't wait. Um...

Speaker: So this is their kind of tribute to a Lambic. It's actually part of a series of tributes to Lambic. They've been doing over the last few years a bunch of different Lambic-inspired Belgian-style sours.

Speaker: um This one, they take 600 pounds of black-capped raspberries, 300 pounds of marion berries, and 150 pounds of red raspberries, all from Oregon, locally grown. That's cool.

Speaker: um and blend them. Can you imagine what but is that, 900, 1,050 pounds of berries ble up looks like It's got to look like a horror scene, like a murder.

Speaker: Like you just blended up bodies or something, right? Like that would be gruesome looking. Then they add 10 month white wine barrel aged sour ale to the vat.

Speaker: And then that just sits there for two months and just hangs out. They probably mix it up at first. you know, get it get it all nice and married together, but then they just age it for two months like that, and then bottle condition. um So this is a very dark red, kind of purplish,

Speaker: sour ale. um It is fermented with Britannia mice and lactic bacteria, it should have a little bit of funk going on, but it has been aged 10 months, so Probably not too much funk going on.

Speaker: They did talk about cool pool ships in some of the history of the style, but I don't think they used their cool ships for this unless they used it use them for that two months of of aging before adding to the bottles.

Speaker: Before bottling, I should say. um This comes in at 6.5% ABV, I think. Let me double check. Because I had it in my notes and I somehow deleted it.

Speaker: Oh God, it doesn't say. I'm a ashamed. No, 6.49. I'm right. Oh, thank goodness. ah Yeah, that's about all there is to say about this one. it's It should be pretty fruit forward, but I'll let you know. So go ahead and introduce us to your first pairing tonight while I take a sip of this.

Speaker: Tell you guys what I think after.

Speaker: I am ah trying to figure out what the deal is with my first pairing because it it is... Very interesting in that ah there's a lot of conflicting information up and around this particular brand name because it is a name used in a lot of different lot of different things like the restaurant industry as well.

Speaker: um And I can't figure out if this is tied to the restaurant or not. It's not entirely clear. i think unofficially, I think it is. Let me show you what I have and then I'll tell you a little bit more about it.

Speaker: So I'm drinking this really cool thing that I picked up at Penn Station. There's a little liquor store in Penn Station. so that Look at this cool bottle. That's very cool. It's a single serve kind of little thing. It's a sparkling Paloma by a company called Via Carota.

Speaker: And they produce craft cocktails. This one happens to come in at a very reasonable 11%. It's 200 milliliter in this. I had a glass and I could not pour it into the glass. I refused to pour into the glass because this is such a a really pretty bottle. It's textured. So it feels really nice when you pick it up.

Speaker: It's quite heavy. It almost feels like when you see, um you know, in old movies, when you see a lady have like ah a perfume atomizer, she picks up this really nice looking bottle with the atomizer and does, and it feels like that.

Speaker: Or even in, you know, an old apothecary bottle maybe. something you would put your, you know, some kind of an elixir into. um Yeah, so I have, as I mentioned, conflicting information. Apparently, what happened with this is they launched in 2023. This was a collaboration with the King Street Beverage Company, who is a company that essentially does ready-to-drink cocktails. That's their specialty. So you come in say, hey, I want to do a ready-to-drink cocktail. This is my branding. These are some of the ideas that I have. Help me do the thing. And they you know they source the the the ingredients. They...

Speaker: work with you for the the packaging, the manufacturer thing, and likely the distribution nowadays, I think it's pretty common to have a one-stop shop. You see a lot of that around.

Speaker: um Now, this is kind of a confusing thing because this is kind of melding, um it's melding Italian culture and and Mexican culture and it's not a Paloma in the classic sense of a Paloma necessarily. This does have tequila, but it's not grapefruit forward like you would expect ah you know kind of a classic Paloma to be.

Speaker: um I can't tell what's in it. I think it's orange. It's got a very unique... um I did do just just some very quick research. It's definitely tied to the restaurant. They have it on their website.

Speaker: um Oh, they do? Yeah, so if you go to the the restaurant's website, they have k craft cocktails or canned cocktails up there or something. Oh, so this is this is actually... So is this is Jody Williams and Rita Sody? Yeah.

Speaker: I think so. This is their their restaurant in the West Village in New York, which I've probably walked past. Okay, I've walked definitely walked past this many a time. Because on the website, you can order takeout and look and see the Rita and Jody menu and stuff. I see. All right. Well, good to know. Because i had I had several other people's names that came up when I did some searching, and I couldn't figure out if it was if they were just on the restaurant side or if they were also involved with this.

Speaker: You know what it could be? It could be a thing where it was a brand that kind of conflicted and then they took it over to roll it in with their own thing or or something along those lines where like, you know, lines can really get blurred where it started as one thing and then changed to another thing kind of stuff.

Speaker: um And it can be hard to tell when that happened sometimes. Just saying. I've done a lot of ways cocktail research and it can get really confusing. you know And it gets kind of messy in in a similar way as when we talk about bourbons and we talk about, well, this distillery says this. They claim, they make this claim. you know Back in the olden days, this happened, and you hear a different story from someone else, and you have to start going back and forth and like, I don't know. Have you ever watched How to Drink?

Speaker: Yeah. I watched a recent episode of his, and he said a phrase that spoke to me so so so deeply. which was corporate lore.

Speaker: The corporate lore says this. ah But what I found is this, ah which is exactly you know what happens all the time in our research, where you know this this brand says that they were started in 1710 by a monk who was abandoned as a child.

Speaker: And then you you look into it a little bit, and it started in 1920 by a Nazi or something like that. ah And you're like, okay, yeah. the You guys just made all that up, right? um There was a child who abandoned a monk because he found out that the monk was the Nazi, and so he left and started a new life on the road.

Speaker: And his name was Indiana Jones. john c I was going to say John Cena. Jesus Christ. And his name... um but Listen, man, I really like i like that there's an Italian spin on the Paloma because i love Palomas, but I realize that they're not for everybody because the tequila tends to be really intense.

Speaker: the The intensity of the acid from the lime and then also if you get a Paloma in certain places, it'll be a little spicy or it'll be very salty. That intensity is very much kind of...

Speaker: it's It's turned a little more classic and subdued, and a classy I should say. Very Italian in that, kind of subdued, a little bit more focused on the bitter side of it, focused on the, not the initial profile that you get, but the the finish.

Speaker: is really what they're going for. And so the the bubbles on this are fantastic, like champagne bubbles, very intense. And the flavor you get and on the initial sip is not the same flavor that you get on the palate, that lives on the palate. And that's really where all that flavor kind of comes out. That's when you really notice it. And so I think it's not clearly stated anywhere if it's if it's grapefruit or or something else.

Speaker: I can tell you by the taste, it doesn't seem like grapefruit to me. To me, it sounds like bitter orange. Okay. which Which would be a very Italian way to do it. Yeah, and I think that would make sense. Oh, there's a weird sticker on the back. What is that for?

Speaker: um Speaking Palomas, I like a Paloma. But what I do almost every time, if they don't already have one on the menu, is go Mezcaloma. um you know like If you love a Paloma, but it... ah or Or if you don't, if you just kind of like a Paloma, you see something in it, but you're like, it's just not...

Speaker: not blowing my skirt up, not intense enough for me, like Dennis said. They're a pretty intense drink generally, but if it's not intense enough and you want to turn it up a little bit, go for, ask for Mezcal instead of tequila.

Speaker: It is fantastic. My, one of my favorite things has been a Paloma with, um, ghost pepper tequila. Oh, I can see that working. I really, I really, really dig it.

Speaker: Um, and little bit of salt. So not on the rim, but just kind of, If you have someone that has saline that can throw you know liquid in there, if not, throw some salt in there.

Speaker: Give it a proper stir. I don't necessarily like them shaking. It depends where you go. Sometimes you get them shaking. It's fine. um and And then I completely forgot what was going to say. And oddly enough, a slice of cucumber or a dried dried lime, dried piece of citrus. I really like that for yeah kind of my own Paloma if I do it at home.

Speaker: Paloma seems like a weird drink to shake. Anything you're pouring on the rocks that doesn't have like egg white in it seems very pointless to shake. Just put it in the glass and give it spin. Well, I think, you know, in some places what they try to do with the shake is is they are... Making it theatrical.

Speaker: Well, it's the theatrical aspect of it, but also if you're not using saline and you're just using regular kind of coarse salt. Oh, yeah. If you're using any any powdered ingredient, yeah. If you're using something like a coarse salt, if you're using things like, even like a a pepper powder, like a seasoning powder, you put that in there, you're really gonna wanna shake it. But the other thing is a lot of those places use two and a half ounces instead of two ounces or one and a half. They use a little bit more alcohol.

Speaker: And to even out the flavors, they'll do a really intense shake to where everything kinda, excuse me, gets very slushy. They use a very small, small ice for it to break down to turn almost like that slushy thick quality. That sense.

Speaker: And then this way, what happens when you take your grapefruit soda or whatever kind of particular soda you want to use, generally citrus soda of some kind, right? When you pour the soda in there, it kind of builds up this this, not a head, not like a classic fizz head, but it builds up this thing that just sits over the top.

Speaker: So every time you drink, you're getting mostly that crunch and little bit of the ice and maybe a little bit of the alcohol, which is then being pushed up by the soda eventually.

Speaker: Alright, teach me stuff. It's like a mouthfeel thing for certain places and you know I don't disrespect it. It's not my favorite and necessarily, but yeah I've had some good ones. Alright, before we get on to how our pairings are going, Sam is smoking a Greg Cliff 10 year anniversary and his first pairing, perplexing to me, but by me this more normal than I thought, is Old Forrester and Cranberry Juice.

Speaker: Oh! Is that a thing? Cranberry Juice and Whiskey? I don't know, but that sounds great. Or am I unfamiliar? I love Forester. I'm a huge... Did he say which Old Forester? He did not. I'm guessing the just the Old Forester bourbon. I can't remember what they call it. I absolutely love the Prohibition.

Speaker: And anytime I can get the Prohibition or there's another one, I can't remember. I really love from Forester. I remember the years I liked. The 1915 and the 1920, think. I think 20 Prohibition. Hmm. think the twenty is prohibition

Speaker: don't know. Anyway, on to pairings. Lemure is going down easy. This is delicious. I don't even like berries, really. Like, I'm not a berry guy.

Speaker: But this doesn't taste like just berries. it It tastes like fermented berries, I guess. Like, got a little bit of that funk to it, a little bit of that earthiness. um It's got like a real, you know, Lambic-style bitterness, or ah bitterness, brightness, rather.

Speaker: um

Speaker: Let's see what else is in there.

Speaker: It's interesting because it if you had told me it was aged in wine barrels, that would make more sense than raspberry.

Speaker: Wow, so it's really not coming out as much as you thought. No, like, it's... There's an intense fruitiness, but i I can't put my finger on what it is exactly, and maybe that's part of the blend.

Speaker: it may It may be having those Marion berries in there, which are pretty... They're like sour blackberries, kind of. Yeah, they're I really like Marion berries, man. They're really fun. It's an Oregon thing. They're everywhere.

Speaker: Oh, no shit, I didn't know. Yeah, like, and and they like... They're an invasive weed there. Uh... We used to have Marion berries in our our backyard that like I had to cut those back with a chainsaw kind of thing. Like I would have to go through with ah like a hedge clipper, you know, one of those kind of hedge clippers and I would chop everything down and then I would go through with a weed whacker and then I could bring the the lawnmower in because they like took over half our backyard at our first half.

Speaker: um It was gnarly. they were A lot of pie. lot of what? Sounds like a lot of pie you've been able to make. It could have been, but they're also very sharp. and like They get like these like big, thick ah branches in the bushes that are hard to cut through and have like these giant thorns on them.

Speaker: Those things are dangerous, man. A lot like them damn briars I got stuck in the other day. Could not get out. It was... oh God. It was awful. It was awful. Let me tell you.

Speaker: Wow. as Sam says 50-50 cranberry juice in Old Forrester, and it's Old Forrester 100. Cool. All right. All right. I'm going to try that sometime. My son loves cranberry juice, so maybe I'll try it next time he makes fresh cranberry juice.

Speaker: Because that sounds interesting, at the very least. Yeah, this Lemure is working great. um It is a very interesting... It's much more interesting and complex than I thought it was. Was this one of the ones I had with you, Dennis? I think it was. I i know i don't think... i I would have remembered. I feel like I would have remembered if if we had this together. Okay, and may I may be thinking of a different one. than I may have had one of these previously um when I first got the box just because I wanted to try it.

Speaker: um How's your, how's your, your, um, whatever it was called, your Paloma from whoever made it. I can't remember already. Yeah. Via Corotta. Via Corotta. That's the one. Via Corotta craft cocktails is Paloma. I, truth be told,

Speaker: I don't know if if i would if I like this more because I like the bottle so much. if this was in a can, would I like it as much? i Maybe not. I actually don't think. ah ah The can, its that the bottle itself, is so lovely, and they have a couple of different things. They also make Negroni.

Speaker: It's one of those things that want to go back to the store and see if they anything else and get more of these just to keep the bottles because I really like them. Those bottles are so cool, man. It's just so snazzy, and it's got it's got a really nice, proper feel.

Speaker: It feels substantial. You know, when you when you pick it up, it and this is the thing. that I really appreciate with companies that are starting to do ready to drink things. They understand the reason why people like to go sit in a bar is because you sit in a bar, you can get a glass and you get something you can hold that's solid and It's one of those things that you kind of, at at some point you have to give it back. I know some people will steal them, but you have to give it back. there's an There's an exchange that happens. It's given to you filled with something, you experience it with this device, and then you give it back.

Speaker: um And a lot of the ready to make cocktail stuff is in cans, they're in plastic, they're in little bags, maybe sometimes they're in like those boxed like Tetra Pak containers.

Speaker: That doesn't feel very good. But if I'm getting on a train and I'm sitting you know two hours on a train, two and a half hours on a train, and I pop one of these bad boys and I set it down and it has a clunk, it has a feel to it, it suddenly makes me feel like I'm having a better experience because The presentation, the glass, where the the substantial quality of it really changes the whole experience. Same thing on airplanes, right? If you've been on an airplane, you get a plastic cup to drink your, you know, whatever drink you order, unless you sit in first class. And you sit in first class, you get a glass and you get a proper glass.

Speaker: You get a proper glass. put it down, you feel it. And so I really admire that they've taken this and I'm sure it's not cheap. I'm sure that therere the overhead to get these glass bottles made is certainly a lot more expensive than doing plastic or you know even even a can.

Speaker: um Yeah, dude. So ah you know i the cocktail's fine. I think it's it's not bad. I think it's working okay with the cigar. Certainly not taking away from the cigar, but I think it's the packaging. If the inside was as elegant as the packaging, I think we'd have a complete... I'd be a super fan forever.

Speaker: But to be fair, this is only the first one I've ever had. So I probably want to go back and you know see if I can find something else from them and and give those a shot. And you know maybe the Negroni is going to be my thing.

Speaker: Possibly, right? But it's good. I think it's a good take on Paloma. I think compared to a lot of the stuff that's out there in terms of ready-made cocktails, I think it's up there in terms of quality. of the ingredients. It doesn't taste like a malty kind of pseudo-alcohol thing.

Speaker: it doesn't change For me, a lot of them are just overly sweet, like to the point where it's like cloying. Unpleasantly sweet for me. This one's not in that that territory?

Speaker: No, no, not at all. and I think it's classically Italian in that sense, right? You know, where the bitterness is coming out and the bubbles are... They're not soda bubbles. They're sharper than soda bubbles. and i i To me, that's great. That's a win, immediate win. I love that. and it also it i don't have heres It is capped, so you need a bottle opener or or a cap opener, I should say.

Speaker: to pop this thing off, but it's kind of elegant and classy. And I can i can see somebody getting a couple of these and going on a trip somewhere, or going out into the, you know, to a park or to the beach and bringing this with them in a cooler and like, hey, if I saw this in a cooler, I would go for this.

Speaker: My me reaction to that was that ah they do that and you can't you can't just use this as like your water bottle or something, you know? can't just put cool cool stuff in it. But you could do like the, you know, the thing that people do sometimes where like fill it with green water and then you could cap it. If you have a capper, like I'm i'm assuming you do being a beer making person.

Speaker: Oh, dude, I have so i have so many cappers for so many different things. And let me do let me do a sizing test. Nope. All right. So I tested one of these corks, the new... Yeah. but Not cork corks. Imitation cork. Imitation corks.

Speaker: There are a bunch of different sizes of those, though. But I could probably find a size that you know that works. That much less worried about. I'm sure I can do some fun with it. And hey, maybe even turn it into some kind of a weird desk lamp because I like to do that kind of stuff. There you go. That'd cool. So yeah, man.

Speaker: All right. Moving on to our second pairing tonight. um I have a couple that I've had before on here, but it's been a little while at least. ah First up is Coralejo Tequila.

Speaker: Oh, wow. Yeah, you've had that. So this is a ah very interesting story to Coralejo. The Colonel... Colonel Hacienda Coralejo, which means like the Colonel Hacienda Ranch, basically.

Speaker: Coralejo means ranch, essentially. It was founded in 1700 in Mexico, which is now part of Jalisco, but it's still one of the few places that tequila is allowed to be made because it is technically outside of the area where tequila is allowed to be made, but it is it used to be part of it.

Speaker: So it's not part of Jalisco, which is where tequila has to come from, but it is ah historically part of Jalisco and a region where tequila is actually allowed to be made.

Speaker: um There's documentation that tequila was distilled there as early as 1755, and it became first place and it became one of the first location it became became the first place who produced tequila commercially in the 1960s. Nobody had, you know, 1960s is, I don't know what I spilled here, but that's right. 1960s when commercial tequila production started happening. Before that, it was like, you know, you live in a village in Mexico, you have a guy that makes tequila. You just go buy it from him.

Speaker: There wasn't any nationally distributed tequila brands or anything at that point. Um, the most they had was regional. Um, So in the 1960s, they started producing tequila commercially there. There's not much documentation on what actually happened to the distillery after those initial like tequila production productions.

Speaker: But at some point, production stopped. In 1994, the distillery was completely re rebuilt, refurbished, um and they launched the Coralejo brand.

Speaker: So they use only Blue Weber agave piñas harvested from their own fields near near the distillery. So they have their own, you know, this is like single source stuff.

Speaker: um They harvest them from the fields near the distillery. The wash is double distilled in I hate saying trying to say this word, charantias?

Speaker: Charantias? I don't know. But it's a still which is usually used for cognac. Um, and they, they instead are using it for, it's like the traditional style of cognac still, um, that is not usually used for tequila, but that's what they're doing.

Speaker: They age in a mix of French American and Mexican Oak for four months. So that's, that's very likely wine or cognac Oak from France, uh, whiskey Oak from America.

Speaker: And, uh, i don't know if it's new oak or or second, third-use oak from Mexico. Comes in this really nice, but kind of like...

Speaker: don't know. Something to me, this this label on the bottle screams cheap to me. Always has. Oh, because you have seen that at Duty Free. It is a, it reminded me immediately of this, like, I don't know where that liqueur is from. It's like this creamed liqueur that's all over Duty Free and it has, I think, giraffes and stuff on it. It looks very similar to that shape and style. That's very likely what it is. I can't remember what it's called, but yes. I think that must be what made me think like, don't like it.

Speaker: um But our friend Bear... Caribbean Bailey's. Yeah. Our friend Bear told us about this, and I had to go try it, and I've been really impressed. It's a delicious tequila. tell you more about it after I take a couple sips with this cigar.

Speaker: For now, Dennis, tell us what you're drinking.

Speaker: Perfect timing as I'm trying to keep my cigar lit here. Finally, I took the paper, but the little post that I've used to kind of tape it up. I'm just putting a half of the cigar in my mouth and hoping that I actually injure I mean, other than the crack, my construction has been great. um i talk i told I mentioned earlier how I've had draw issues. I mentioned it in the green room.

Speaker: But I've had draw issues with some of Sebastian's cigars before. um Since moving into the new factory, I don't think I've had any. um So this is no exception. Perfect draw. um Perfect burn. and burn Excellent burn on mine as well. The only problem is the crack, which, again, we're blaming Coop for.

Speaker: ah Yes. All right, dude. Let me show what I got it's It's adorable. And again, something that I bought in in Penn Station because I was coming home on Friday and thought, well, let me let me stop at this little liquor store they have in Penn Station and see what they have. you You never know what you might find. And sure enough, they're things that I've never seen before. So it's kind of a win in that sense. ah It's very cute.

Speaker: let me Let me give you an idea. This is the glass and this is the can. and On first glance, it reminds me of a tiny PBR. I'm sure that's not what it is. It is... Oh.

Speaker: Tip-top Negroni. Tip-top canned cocktails. Lovely little giraffe with monocle and a top hat, which is really cute. Comes with this lovely can that says, don't shake. huh Now, look at the ingredients. Really interesting. Dry gin, vermouth, and red bitters.

Speaker: Not Campari. Red bitters. I mean, you know, Campari's expensive. They probably have a one or two official partners that they actually say that they're putting Campari, that they let them say they're putting Campari in it.

Speaker: um I mean, in all possibility, it may just be Campari. Like, it may not be anything except Campari. And they just can't put the name it, right? just can't put the name on it.

Speaker: It's also possible they're using, a you know, one of the other red Italian bitter liqueurs. Red bitters is a strange thing to call it, but I guess it's easier than putting on the can Italian red bitter liqueur.

Speaker: There is something at the liquor store that you can purchase that is essentially... It's a red bitter. It's a Campari... It's a Campari adjacent.

Speaker: and Campari adjacent type thing. Yeah, cause because Campari is a

Speaker: I mean, it's like Jack Daniels, right? Like, it's it's a thing. It's its own thing. That is not distinctly different from everything else in its category, but it's just a specific one, right? Like, but the, you know, the Italian Red Amaro category is a lot smaller than the whiskey category.

Speaker: Yeah, well, for sure. Absolutely. so So there's probably two or three competitors out there. maybe Maybe five. um But Campari is like, you know, they're the Kleenex. They're the ones that if you're buying it, you're probably just going to buy the brand name.

Speaker: This is remarkably viscous. The legs on this thing are out of this world. Now, normally I would say that's a bad thing. I think given the fact that this came out of a can and is portable and that small and slightly different product than what you would, you know, what you would expect to get in a at a cocktail bar.

Speaker: Fine. I think we give it a pass. No big deal. So Tip top cocktails or sorry tipt Top Proper Cocktails is the full name. They were founded in 2018 by Neil Cohen and Nick Dixon, headquartered out of Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker: they came in and at this time around twenty eighteen this would essentially right before code we we all were just starting to get into this ready to make get ready to drink cocktail thing can cocktails or cocktail flavored drinks for coming out everywhere everybody was making them and almost always they were made out of malt based stuff so it was like what i mentioned earlier The spirit was not a traditional spirit. It wouldn't be like a proper vodka or tequila or or whiskey or something. It would be a malt-based alcohol, derived alcohol, that would then be flavored like a yeah you know whatever the cocktail might be.

Speaker: And so back then, easy to hide a lot of things with fruit flavors and tropical stuff. And there are a lot of bad canned cocktails then. Oh, yeah. Because it's basically... i mean, it's the equivalent of...

Speaker: taking a a white claw, an unflavored white claw, and you're adding all of the flavors of a mojito or a Jack and Coke or something like that.

Speaker: And you can't get that close to what a mojito or a Jack and Coke really tastes like. No. Using just those flavors. Exactly. You can get the right, excuse me, you can get the right kind of essence of really what that cocktail is meant to be. And so this was kind of the thought that they had when they came into it. And they said, hey, all this stuff really sucks. It's overcarbonated. It's really sweet and sugary. And they came up with the idea that ultimately, if this can't be served at a really good cocktail bar, then it doesn't deserve to be canned, period.

Speaker: So going to My talks exactly, man. And, i dude, I wholeheartedly agree the idea is no no, like, fake colors or weird flavors added or preservatives.

Speaker: um They kind of focused on things that were really simple to make that that had classic, these classic recipes. The Negroni is – I don't know that you can get a lot more classic than in a Negroni because of the history and because of the – it's – I'm trying to think of the best way to put it. it It's a, a Negroni is a very simple cocktail, but it is a very complex cocktail because one slight mist up and it changes the entire thing. It is very exact. And the balance has to be perfect.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Now, and The Negroni stuff, oh, I should have mentioned this can 100 milliliters. So the idea for these really tiny cans, number one, it's the oxid and oxidative quality. They wanted something that's small, less likely to oxidize on the vermouth side of the house. Well, especially because, um you know, if you want one of these, you can pop one open.

Speaker: You don't have to run into the possibility of somebody opening it, drinking half, and saying, oh I'll drink the other half tomorrow, and then the next day it's Yeah, exactly. and And then it's not the same. So also, I didn't mention, this is 56 proof.

Speaker: Wow. So roughly, roughly what you would get out of ah you know out of ah a proper cocktail, if I had a single cocktail pour, this is my cocktail, I get the pour.

Speaker: It'll be about there, you know depending on the gin, fine. Depending on if you want to do a Mezcal Negroni or if you want to do something else. Fine. um This thing, this company blew up and is now in a whole bunch of airlines. It was adopted by airlines because it's small. It's easy to, it's an easy sell.

Speaker: If I saw this on a bar cart coming through, you know, in the nosebleed section of an airplane. I'd be like, ooh, give me that giraffe. yes I don't know what it is, give me that giraffe. Yeah, it's's it's kind of good. It's classy. It's good marketing.

Speaker: Very simple. And now Negroni, very storied. I think a cocktail that you and I absolutely love. Hands down, one of my favorites. Unfortunately, um you can't always get them.

Speaker: No, it's weird, right? it's It's weird how they tend to be kind of a ah specialty cocktail, I guess. like any Any decent bar can make it. But if you go to, like, I was on a cruise ship and I asked one of the bars for Negroni they were like, yeah, I can't make You want a Bahama Mama or something like that? And i was like, yeah.

Speaker: What do you mean they couldn't make it? They didn't have vermouth? I saw Campari. I saw vermouth. And I said, can I get gronin? And said, no, we don't make that. but But I see, and they're like, nope, we don't make it. Order something else.

Speaker: What? Oh, yeah wow. Oh, no, I went with a Dark and Stormy. That's what ah that's what i had. You know what it is? i it Also, again, to be fair, I think a Negroni is very classically an industry drink.

Speaker: I think that's part of it. is like it's really There are a lot of people out there who love a Negroni, but it's kind of a cocktail nerd drink, right? I mean, hey, listen, it's beautiful. it's it It lends itself really well to a lot of wonderful things. For example, my Negroni, if I'm using the gin, my Negroni, and I do this for a lot of things, any recipe that calls for a sweet vermouth, I take it out and I use Dubonet instead.

Speaker: I love that little bit of of extra bitterness that Dubonnet has um from the quinine in it. it's It's just different. It's funky. it's It adds some complexity. And again, to be fair, I think a lot of these bars are not doing it because they're not going through vermouth like that. Like who's asking for a vermouth cocktail?

Speaker: Certainly not sweet vermouth, right? maybe Maybe like a dry vermouth for your martinis and things like that. I mean, sweet vermouth, I think the only drink that is really made with it, which is usually subbed, is Manhattan.

Speaker: Yeah, I sub it all the time. Yeah, most people use a little bit of maraschino, little bit of ah just like actual maraschino juice, like just out of the jar. yeah um There are a lot of things that people sub out for the vermouth in that.

Speaker: um And at home, as you know you know the the for the home bartenders out there, vermouth goes bad really fast. Like, really fast. like um If you open your red vermouth, sweet vermouth, it'll be dead within a week.

Speaker: You can maybe get that i you can maybe get for three weeks. Yeah, maybe be more like four days, five days. um Well, at its peak. I mean, if you really care about that flavor profile, yeah, you can run it for three weeks and it'll be fine. But again, that's... But only if you're putting it in the fridge.

Speaker: Right. And even then, like, you know, it's... I've always wished... to See, the problem with red vermouth... Man, you've got me on another tangent where I'm complaining about stuff again. Dude, we need it. The world needs this. They need to hear what you have to say, baby. Give me... I a lot to say. 50 milliliter bottles, just airplane bottles of red vermouth, man.

Speaker: Like... I only, i don't drink seven Manhattans a week. Sometimes I'm drinking two. I just want to be able to make a Manhattan or two and then not think about buying vermouth the next time I want a Manhattan.

Speaker: Because every time I want a Manhattan, I got to buy a whole bottle of vermouth and then 95% of that bottle gets dumped because it's it goes bad before I can use it. All right.

Speaker: Hear me out. And I'm going to say this on air because if anyone goes out and does it, It happened here first and we will take royalties and be part of this project. Hear me out now. Lunchables, except instead of a Lunchable with meats and cheeses and things, you get in your cocktail kit, you provide your own spirit, which is fair, right?

Speaker: Your cocktail kit comes in maybe a little can, probably probably this size of like a seltzer palate cleanser, just clean seltzer water, mineral water maybe. And then everything else is something specific to you know to your cocktail. Now, there's a company, I forget their name, that does, oh, Tripp, you know the name, that does the cherries.

Speaker: They do Luxardo cherries, but they do them in a a single cocktail, like two cherries in a little package, like the mozzarella balls. I don't know about this. This is the first I've ever heard.

Speaker: Yes. I, I, I, I was somewhere and I bought this thing and it came with these, um, it was like a cocktail and it came with these two cherries from this company. Uh, and it was packaged exactly like those little mozzarella pearls you get in that plastic little single use thing. So, Hey, maybe we'll do something like that.

Speaker: Um, that might be the only way you can make a Luxardo cherry more expensive than it already is. Uh, yeah, well, um, I didn't even really talk about the Negroni.

Speaker: Yeah, sorry. We got way sidetracked. Go for it. Tell us all about it. I'll shut Let's go back to Florence, Italy. Circa, what was it, 1919? Somewhere around there. 1920, 1919, roughly.

Speaker: um Originating from Cafe Cassone in Florence. Now, there was a cat over there. Mr. I don't know, Mr. her It's a count, I should say. Count Camillo Negroni. He was an aristocrat in Italy back in the day.

Speaker: loved his strong drinks, and one day he said, hey, take this Americano, take the soda water out of it, put some gin in there, give me an orange peel instead of a lemon. Bada bing, bada boom, he ended up with what became eventually this modern day Negroni. And Count Negroni is one of the people Now, I mean, I say one of the people, he's the originator, but really he started a revolution because the Negroni has become this thing that is unto itself, where you have these rifts that are really cool. Cocktail culture changed over the years, but the Negroni never changed. And the Negroni survived going from the 20s all through the wars, all into the 80s, which was all blender season for the world.

Speaker: into the resurgence of like, hey, Scotch is back, it's 1996, we're doing Scotch again, cool. It survived all this stuff. It's still relevant today, which is wonderful. um I think what a lot of people call this is the cosmopolitanism of post-World War II that fed into, oh we're gonna sit down, we have a drink, it's really bitter, it's really interesting. If you can't handle it, you really you're not really classy enough. It was that kind of connotation back then.

Speaker: And, you know, it became this sort of, if you're an Italian and you're sitting down and you're having a Negroni, or if you're an Italian, you're sitting down and drinking Campari, you're like a cool cat. You're kind of classy. And we're seeing this come back in popular culture now with this, what gen what what is this generation called?

Speaker: Alpha Centauri, what are they called? Gen Z? Gen Alpha? Gen 5, whatever called, Cellennial? That one? Nope, nope, nope, nothing millennials, because they the millennials are older. but But anyway, this new generation of people coming in and who are saying, hey, we're not going to drink as much, right? There have been a lot of reports about this new generation not really being as heavy into alcohol as our generation was, our generation you know generations before.

Speaker: Generations that were certainly involved in a lot a lot of wars and a lot of difficult change with industrialism and things like that. So... They're not really drinking as much, but because they're not drinking as much, they're ah very careful about what they are drinking.

Speaker: And the Negroni has somehow found its way into the deep depths of whatever this new generation is. And once again, solidified itself as something that, listen, you sit down, you can drink a Negroni with something fatty, salty, umami. It's perfect with so many different foods and it's perfect by itself.

Speaker: ah Yeah, I mean, I think... If you've never had an agroni, please go drink one. it's It is a truly, like... To use the language of the kids, it's an S-tier cocktail.

Speaker: A what? It is... The fuck is that? when you When you put things in a tier list, you have S, A. this like a I got kids, I got young friends. How does s how do you start with S?

Speaker: Because it's, like, special. s S is above A in this ranking for some reason. Single action, double action is the only thing I know with S, A.

Speaker: Well, it is a top tier. Like, absolute, like, Negroni is hands down one of the best cocktails, in my opinion. You know, do you know how good it is? Is that it's so good that Ian Fleming's James Bond, in For Your Eyes Only, actually ordered Negroni instead of a martini.

Speaker: Wow. um And... You know, it's also so good, is it has its own weakness. Oh, yeah. Negroni Week is is a naoneni reg is a huge deal promoted by Campari, um which has gained a lot of traction. It's very cool because if you live somewhere... So when I was in Portland, they did Negroni Week every year, of course.

Speaker: And there would be 30 bars that post up about their Negroni. And a lot of them do. We're doing ours on Tuesday. um Come on Tuesday. And so you kind of have a bunch of different places to go throughout the week that have their own twist on a Negroni that is always trying to keep it still very like grounded, or original Negroni style, but add a little something different. It's awesome.

Speaker: it's It's really cool. Negroni Week really was was brought up by Campari. I think it was probably 2013 they came up with this thing as a big charity event around the world promoting, let's do charity, but also let's take the Negroni to the next level. And...

Speaker: um Anthony Bourdain, famously, his favorite cocktail, perfect for any time of day, breakfast even, is the Negroni. Is it really? I never knew that. he Yes, he he has as always talked about Negronis. He's been such a huge super fan of the Negroni.

Speaker: um And it's wonderful. and then you look at stuff like, look at where we are now. Boulevardiers, right? It's it's a Negroni adjacent. Bourbon for gin, you got a Boulevardier. um You can do rye if you want to do like an old pal. You can do white Negroni, you can do a Spagliato.

Speaker: You can even fatwash the gin and go real dirty. Make a real dirty soft Negroni with like a bacon fatwashed gin.

Speaker: Oh, that sounds interesting. Also, Tripp, I think for you, and this is going be my last point, um... I think for you, if you really miss being able to order Negroni readily, I think the next trip you need to take is to Japan. Because the Negroni, in addition to the highball, these are the two biggest, single biggest cocktails anywhere you go, anywhere in Japan.

Speaker: It's going to be fantastic. I didn't know Negronis were big there. That's awesome. they are there They are super fans of Negronis to a degree that you cannot possibly imagine. Where you can be you can be in a hole in the wall and you can say Negroni and they go like, hold on, I know a guy, I don't have the stuff, I will get it for you. I'll come back.

Speaker: And they will send a guy to run down the street to get the stuff to come back and make the Negroni because it is it's just become so ingrained in the culture because of the the intensity, of the umaminess of it, the complexity of it is very cool anyway i mean i think that's what i love so much about in a negroni is like it's got bitter it's got sweet it's got a little bit of sour it's got just like a lot going on and it's it's great yeah all right so we'll stop waxing on about it yes sir all right tequila coralejo um i've mostly finished my glass here

Speaker: There's a sip left. um It's going really well with this cigar. I think that medium bodiness of this cigar along with the... um You know, spending only four months in barrels.

Speaker: ah This is a very approachable tequila. It doesn't have that typical like... Tequila sourness. I feel like tequila always has like a sourness in the the major brands.

Speaker: um And this one doesn't have that. It's very... light and approachable um with a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of that barrel influence, um but a really well-rounded flavor that gets a little bit earthy. it's To me, it's it's almost like a mezcal on the less smoky side, but calmed down a little bit.

Speaker: just to Just turn the volume down a little bit compared to a mezcal. But it has more mezcal flavors than I feel like I'm used to in tequila flavors. You know?

Speaker: So, Scott, you're saying that that in a sense, it's a little bit... you know when i When I compare mezcals and tequilas, even lighter-bodied mezcals, I find that some of the similarities are there, sure, but then you have this distinctive difference where the mezcal has... it's ah It's a lot toothier.

Speaker: on the palate as compared to a tequila. And the tooth is not always in the mouthfeel. Sometimes it's in the minerality of the actual itself. Yeah, this has a little bit more of that kind of minerality.

Speaker: That's cool, man. I feel like, to me, a lot of tequilas are very sweet, very sour. um And this, both of those are dialed way, way back. And it's really more about that minerality, that little bit of of oakiness influence.

Speaker: um It's really very good, and it works really well with how, like, medium-bodied those lighter flavors. You know, this cigar, for me now, it's got a lot of, like, graham crackery kind of flavor.

Speaker: um I'm getting a little bit more minerality, like that flavor. licking a rock kind of flavor from the cigar. baby I'm getting exactly the same thing. A little bit more black pepper. Black pepper and the kind of baking spice flavors have turned up a little bit.

Speaker: um That sort of lemon peel kind of note is still there for me. um And all of those flavors are just working really well with this Gila. So I'm going to move on to my next one. But first, tell us about your your second pairing of the evening and how it went.

Speaker: That Negroni. It's lovely. I only have one thing to say, and this is a personal preference. Going back to... Going back to the viscosity of this thing. It is... You probably won't be able to tell.

Speaker: um It's like kind of syrupy? It is more syrupy than I hoped it would be. It's it's certainly a lot sweeter than I generally like. For me, i i I expect the gin to cut through a lot of the sweetness that you get from a Campari and certainly from a sweet vermouth. And I understand this part of the reason why I go with like a Dubonnet that has, it's certainly more fortified. There's more alcohol in it. It's it's fortified. it's a lot thinner and has its own bite.

Speaker: And so I wish, not that this this doesn't have a bite, but I kind of wish it was less sweet. It's the only thing I'll say. But it makes the Negroni approachable for somebody that's never had a Negroni before. So,

Speaker: I get it. I understand certain things had changed to make it a mass market product. You're still getting the essence of a Negroni. And i think maybe to be fair, having this version of a Negroni for your first one, you're likely to come back and order one at a bar.

Speaker: Yeah. And a lot of times something like that can really help for something you're, you're not, you know, uh, if you go somewhere and order in a Negroni and it's like a real cocktail nerd kind of place where instead of going one, one, one, they go,

Speaker: one half one with the sweet vermouth, you may find that you hate it and you think that's what Negronis tastes like. um You know, and and the other thing I should have mentioned to be fair about the airline business is a it's tough. It's tough to take a cocktail and to make something that's packaged, that's ready to drink and taste good at altitude because our palates change at those altitudes.

Speaker: The way we smell and taste things is completely different in altitude than it is anywhere on the ground regardless of you know sea level or not wherever you are when you're in a plane and you're flying around things taste different So I suspect that the additional sugar is is kind of to help that out as well.

Speaker: It actually makes sense I forgot about that effect. I don't always make sense but when I do it's once in a while but

Speaker: All right, let's move on to our last pairing. Before do, Sam is drinking a Blue Ice Vodka Cosmopolitan. Drinking like... Blue Ice? Blue Ice Vodka is the vodka brand, and he is drinking and know look that a Cosmopolitan made with it. I'm assuming it's made with it and not a pre-package, but it could be. Listen, i let me let let me just say a real quick thing.

Speaker: Cosmopolitan... unfortunately got a hugely bad rap for a lot of different reasons. Mostly sex in the city. 90% of it was sex in the city. It's mostly sex in the city, and then it's also the resurgence of like, everything has to be some kind of a shot. Green tea shot, lemon drop shot, this kind of shot.

Speaker: Cosmo shot. All this shit, but if you go into a like a proper classic cocktail bar and you say, I would like a Cosmopolitan, number one, you're not gonna get laugh at Number two, you're probably gonna have the best Cosmopolitan of your life. And it is a great cocktail.

Speaker: it is It just tastes good. It's very nice. And people shit on it. So it's nice to see other people also appreciating kind of the magic of a Cosmopolitan because it it is quite good.

Speaker: It's a classic cocktail for sure. yeah um that Yeah. It landed in the pop culture and became the number one seller on every barb every Applebee's in the country.

Speaker: Oh, Tripp, I gotta to say one more thing. I just looked up this vodka. okay hot damn Hot damn. this Idaho potato vodka. And you know me, I'm a huge fan of potato vodkas.

Speaker: I love, love, love potato vodka and I think it's such an awesome vodka. yeah Listen, people go vodka doesn't taste like anything. Well, hold on. If you have a good vodka, it's supposed to taste like something.

Speaker: doesn't taste like nothing. And when you have a potato vodka versus another kind of vodka, grains or something else, it's distinctly different. And I love the mouthfeel of potato vodkas. They're great for cocktails. So that's my rant.

Speaker: Tell us about your last pairing. All right. Last up, I have what is affectionately known as Bunny. Bunahabin 12. Oh, the bunny's good. One of my favorite go-to scotches. This is also in that... Actually, both of these are in that little box down there that I need to mail you this week, hopefully.

Speaker: I keep saying that. What is? what i have You put bunny in the box? A little bit of bunny. couple different versions. Yeah. Oh, that's sweet, man. Thank you. yeah I just, I wanted to give you a taste of all this stuff that I've been having on the show for months and years.

Speaker: And I don't know if you've ever tasted, so I just have a whole bunch of stuff in there If I could lick the walls in that room, I bet they would taste like snozzberries. They definitely taste like Bunahab. And Polito Cubano.

Speaker: Yes, and Polito Cubano. All right, Bunahab. I love talking about this distillery, man. They're founded in 1881, right near the turn of the century in the northeast corner of the island of Isla. Is this the right corner? door the Yeah, you got the right corner. Northeast, yeah, left hand. i I get confused because I have my background non-reversed.

Speaker: Stage left, yeah. so like first I can't tell what way things are sometimes. i think Oh yeah, mine mine is definitely reversed. So when I hold up my right hand, it looks like my left hand's going up in a mirror. You know, it it can be it can mess with my brain.

Speaker: So they're in the northeast corner of Isle of Isla, um near the Isle of Jura, which, you know, there's a couple distilleries over there now as well, on the other side of the water. Plenty of Jura. Okay.

Speaker: Yeah. Mostly Isla. They are, they, well, they were at the time and always have been the most remote distillery on Isla, which the closest distillery to them is Kauela, which is four miles away. Isla is not a gigantic Island.

Speaker: So it's not like they're way, way, way out in the middle of nowhere. um But, you know, four miles from a road is still a long way to walk, right? Like, it's it's not exactly close. And when it was built, um that's kind of how you got there.

Speaker: You had to hike up. You had to have horse-drawn carriages and stuff like that that that couldn't really, you know, you couldn't bring a load of stuff up. You could ride a horse up there. You couldn't bring a carriage because it was too rough um because it was kind of up in the hills.

Speaker: Uh, so eventually i couldn't figure out exactly when, but at some point shortly after they're probably around the turn of the century, the village of Buna Haban was founded as a home for distillery workers because, you know, for, for decades, decades, um, they were um many decades, almost half a century, no more than half a century. They were only, they were only supplied by ship until they built a road 1960.

Speaker: um So they existed for 80 years. That distillery was there for 80 years. Four generations of workers worked there before there was a way to get there. Other than, you know, by horse or walking or i don't even know, like driving, you know, think of the difference between driving on a dirt road and driving on a highway.

Speaker: um And this was in the backwoods dirt roads of Isla. Do you do you realize the significance of... of what you said about the hills and the fact that it was really hard to get up there.

Speaker: If you think about it for a second, classically throughout the entire history of humanity, things that have been on hills, castles, right? Monasteries, churches, and distilleries.

Speaker: and prisons. Well, i'm okay, fine, fine. All right, all right, all right. I only say that because one of my other fun facts about Bonahabin is that locals ah have have, like, since it was built, said that it was, or since since it was finished they in the early 1900s, have said that it was originally designed to be a prison.

Speaker: um And that the the architect who designed it actually designed all the prisons in Scotland, um but it actually was supposed to be designed to mimic a French chateau, you know, with with the big big towers at the corners and a big ah courtyard. Courtyard.

Speaker: um But they everybody thought that looked more like the yard at a prison. ah So for a long time, that's always been a rumor. It was the first building on the island to have electric lights in 1894, which wild. Yeah, which is fucking nuts, man. It's also fucking crazy that they had lights 50 years before they had a road.

Speaker: Yes. ah Wild. But I think it's probably because my guess is that Jura got lights first, and, you know, they... plumbed it over across the, you know, it's like a half a mile or so between the islands. It's not a long way.

Speaker: i don't know if they had overwater lines or underwater lines or what, but ah they had power. Since the 1950s, the distillery has been using only spring water.

Speaker: They probably used it before that, but I couldn't find anything before the fifty s um And they're they're the only distillery currently on Isla that uses only spring water in their whiskey. Everybody else is using, you know, filtered water, stuff like that, tap water.

Speaker: um They're known for their unpeated whiskeys, of which this is one. This is Bunahabin 12, aged 12 years in sherry, bourbon, and whisy whiskey casks, which probably means, ah you know,

Speaker: second use scott Scottish whiskey Scotch. i don't know why i said that so weird. ah Barrels. ah I'm losing it, man. ah It has a great color. I believe, if I remember correctly, this is uncolored and non-chill filtered.

Speaker: it looks It's a little more yellow than it looks on camera, but I assure you it's wow it is it's got some good color. It's pretty dark on on camera. yeah it looks It looks like ah very sherry.

Speaker: It looks like Abanad on camera, but it's really more like a little darker than something like Laphroaig.

Speaker: um Definitely darker than something like Ardbeg, which you know they have those those barely toasted barrels that they use, so it's almost clear. Thanks for reminding me. need to buy another bottle of Abanad.

Speaker: I always need a bottle of Abanad. It's been a while. i need to find some. All right. um They bottle almost all their whiskeys at 46.3% ABV.

Speaker: um which is, I think, a really good middle ground between the typical 40% that we see on so many scotches, but 40% to me is just a little too watered down in most cases. Some scotches, um I mean, I mentioned Ardbeg and Lafrog, they're both 43. 46.3, I think, is like, it's kind of a nice middle ground between cask strength and bottle strength, typical bottle strength.

Speaker: You get that extra 2% of flavor or whatever um that that makes a difference. So I'm going take a couple sips of this. but you ah Tell us what you're drinking up last tonight. Is it another canned cocktail?

Speaker: Curious. It is not. No, I'm going back to the old classics. Let me just ah get on the cigar for a second. Yeah, while you do that, I forgot to mention it on canned cocktails. One of the interesting things about canned cocktails is that they're not available everywhere.

Speaker: Correct. Still. Because of state liquor laws, New York is one of the more relaxed states where there are stores like that one in Penn Station that can sell liquor and don't have to be like, you know, in a lot of states they have to be freestanding buildings. That's how it was in Connecticut, or at least parts of Connecticut.

Speaker: Yeah, and New York's always been kind of good with the alcohol thing. You can you can ship alcohol, you can you can buy stuff online and ship it in. It's it's pretty good. i think Jersey, to a degree, is... You know, they're fairly decent. I've ordered wine to Jersey. I don't think you can anymore.

Speaker: ah But I still order my Malort. Ain't nobody got a problem Malort. Because they're like, probably when they when it hits the border, they're like, nobody's going to drink this shit. Yeah, nobody's going to drink it. This is just a lamp anyway. so we don't have to We don't have to worry about Malort.

Speaker: um And similarly to cigars, kind of what I used to do is is do you know trade cigars ah um and send cigars over the line to Canada, you know back and forth. And I would always put scented candles.

Speaker: Yeah. Technically not wrong. It's true. They are. But let me tell you about my final pairing of the evening. damn it is Before you do, Sam is getting down tonight.

Speaker: Oh, was Sam down? he had a cocktail we've never heard of. the The cranberry juice and whiskey. the One of the classics that has been maligned by time.

Speaker: Cosmopolitan. And third up, Salted Caramel Mocha Monster.

Speaker: Salted Caramel Mocha Monster. You know what? It doesn't sound bad. i think it'd go great with the cigar. it is I know Sam has to get up early in the morning, so it must be like me where he can drink some caffeine and then just go right to sleep. like It doesn't keep me up.

Speaker: Unfortunately. same It doesn't work at all for It allows me to function, but it doesn't stop me from sleeping. like i can ah It's gotten better, but i have ah I have a I don't know if it's narcolepsy or what, but a sleeping problem.

Speaker: You have sleep apnea? You and I have the same problem. No, i I did a sleep apnea test. I have it, but not bad enough that they want me to treat it at all. So anyway, ah they don't think that's the cause for my sleepiness.

Speaker: So you're a narco then. it It could be. But anyway, um I can like pound any energy drink, any coffee you put in front of me.

Speaker: the ah We recently got a Dutch Bros. I think I talked about it last week that yeah ah is near us. And my wife, I get the... ah What is it called there? The Atomic whatever heart attack. Yeah, I think it's called the 911. Oh yeah, it is 911.

Speaker: um And it is six shots with... Milk and ah Irish cream. And every time my wife orders it, the people are like, wow, you must have somebody who's very tired. no She's like, nope, just my husband.

Speaker: It's just like I can literally wake up in the morning, drink one of those, and then an hour later, I'm like, all right, I need 20-minute nap. Maybe an hour nap. God, I miss working from home. God damn No, that doesn't happen often. You know how busy I've been the last couple months. know I know. i know I'm lucky if i if I get to take a lunch break these days.

Speaker: um Anyway, that keeps sidetracking us. Back to your final pairing of the night. What you got?

Speaker: As I'm chewing on my... hu By the way, we talked with cigar. I am almost done with this thing. You were worried with this Churchill that we would overrun and have too much cigar at the end. And hot damn, I'm almost done with this thing. Yeah, I think being a 47 instead of like... You know, some Churchills these days are like 54. 7 54. I...

Speaker: seven by fifty four I've seen fifty four ss I think there was a 56 that was, I forget who who made it. It was probably two years ago, so I ran across the 56. I smoked and really liked it, but I think a 47 is a really great, really great size. Oh, it's the size. 47 or 49 are the size for a Churchill.

Speaker: They're the proper size. I prefer 47. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan, man. um Speaking of big fan, you're a big fan of my final pairing, as am i And this is the thing that, you know when you really like something and you go out in public and you order something, you order that thing you really like and somebody turns to you and goes, hey, what's that?

Speaker: That's interesting looking. What is that? And then you just, you have that like kind of almost half sadistic smile where you turn to them and- let me tell you the story. I was there when the book was written kind of thing, right? Let me tell you about this.

Speaker: Um, and so for me, and I think to a degree for you, what we both love and love the lore of is for net Bronco. Yes. i knew that's what was coming. You did. yeah You picked it up. Um,

Speaker: um Love this bottle. i just it's It's something for me. I look for this everywhere I go. And the thing that I've been done dumbfounded by, now that I'm back in New York City and I've been working back in in an office full time since late July,

Speaker: And now when I go into a bar or a restaurant, anywhere I go, they have Fernet, which is wild. Like I walk into a dive bar, Fernet. I walked into the Double Down Saloon in New York.

Speaker: And I asked, hey, do you have any Fernet? And she said, actually, we have it on tap. Let me go get some for you. Nice. And they have a deal with Fernet that they send this little like super mini baby keg of Fernet.

Speaker: Probably like a five gallon or something like a little guy. Yeah. Yeah, so it's a little... I mean, five five gallons is still quite a bit, but but yeah, it's it's a little... I mean, for a keg, five gallons small. yeah Two and a half gallons is about as small as it's ever going to get.

Speaker: For a keg for a bar, that's probably... you know You're looking at homebrewing level keg. They have that, and they have their own tap system for it. ah It's wonderful. it's ah It's such a very exciting, wonderful thing now, so I love Fernet. I mean, it's cool, but it's not like it's carbonated. On tap doesn't really make it that special.

Speaker: It's still pretty cool. No, You know, I kind of like the untapped thing because you don't have an open bottle sitting around. That's true. That's true. That's appreciate about it. Fernet does have oxidation problems.

Speaker: And so i kind of I kind of appreciate that. And now it's also served similarly to Jaeger. It is served quite cold. Not ice cold, not like in the Jaeger sense where it's like really frosty when you get it. But it's served chilled, slightly chilled.

Speaker: I don't think I've ever had it anything other than room temperature. Or on ice. Like, you know, on ice I've had it, but... Yeah, it's almost like and on ice. It's not particularly cold. It's just sort of chilly, if you will.

Speaker: um Now, let me give you a little deep dive into the bitter truth of Frenette Branca because, goddamn, it is a weird thing if you've never had it.

Speaker: ah Now, this is what's known as an Amaro. Which is a digestivo. Classic digestive bitter. was that dance? I just love Amaro's, man. Oh, fuck yeah. Amaro's great.

Speaker: um Some will say that the Frenet is essentially the most bitter and aggressive sub-style of Amari. Amari are the digestive bitters, and Frenet is considered the most intense. Like the granddaddy, you would call it the malort of Amari. Really?

Speaker: Really? that I think I've had more intense ones. So have I. vi But again, i think, we you know, when what when I say Frenette, what I'm saying specifically is this is... Frenette, the the ah style. Not Frenette Branca, which is a brand.

Speaker: Correct. Exactly. So the style Frenette is different than, you know, the brand, which is Frenette Branca. Um... I had one other Frenette in my life and that Frenette was from Vermont.

Speaker: I remember that one. This this this cool cat called Vexia that had a ton of chamomile and it was such a different vibe. was really exciting. So the one we're talking about tonight is made by Fratelli Branca Distillery and they started in 1845, which is quite a while ago. The fact that they're still around. Been a minute? For all the things.

Speaker: It's been a minute. It comes in at officially 39%, but really it depends on the country that you're in. The bottle that I have in the U.S. is... Oh, that's weird.

Speaker: Somehow I got a 39 bottle instead of a 40. Interesting. um Maybe they switched maybe they all they switched all production to 39. And some countries even have a 35 as well, depending on the laws of the country.

Speaker: Because of the classification of the spirit, it's not a classic distilled spirit. It has other things in it, you know stuff that's macerated in. So they kind of have to do a 35%. Now, I mentioned Italy.

Speaker: Origin is in Milan. And damn, this cigar is... Hold on, I think my cigar is going out. Mine has gone out a couple times, which yeah you know loses a couple points. But I mean, I'm enjoying the cigar, so I don't care that much So this cool cat, Bernardino Branca in Milan in 1845, started this.

Speaker: And, you know, it's still family owned after all these generations. i think it five generations. It's still family owned. This recipe is exactly like what you would imagine, guarded in the same way that the recipe for the Big Mac sauces, the ah the spice recipe for and the The Coca-Cola pepsi recipe the cocaco and Pepsi Pepsi.

Speaker: You know, it's known only to one person at any given time. but You know, it's just kind of wild and cool and a little bit crazy. Frenet, by the way, is also aged. You probably knew this as well because I think you and I are both the kind of super nerds about this stuff. But it's aged in Slavonian oak barrels.

Speaker: Which is very cool. So they take this stuff, they age in oak barrels, which funkifies it. It gives it that sort of resinous dryness, that bone-dry resiny quality that's really cool. And makes it very unique, of course.

Speaker: Now, what was I going to say? Lost my train of thought there. Oh, so, you know, Fernet Classically has been consumed as a digestive bitter to be consumed after a meal to help settle the stomach, generally serve neat at room temperature. You're not sitting there. They have those little—my father-in-law loves it. Not like this, but— very thin stemmed ah shot glass and like very thin victorian looking kind of glass yeah similar to underberg actually if you've seen the underberg glasses

Speaker: Essentially, it's the same thing, which, by the way, shout out to Underberg. They just released a coffee. I want to buy No way. Yeah, they just roasted a coffee. It's very um anyway For anyone unfamiliar, Underberg is in the same

Speaker: it's in the same category as for now. Yeah, it's kind of close. It's a little milder, I think. A little less aggressive in most ways. a little bit heavier on the um the star anise licorice kind of flavor, but a little less ah unpleasant for most people who who aren't who are the for the unfamiliar, I think.

Speaker: A little bit more approachable than Fernet, but in the same in the same vein. and It comes in these dope little bottles wrapped in paper. that get at most liquor stores these days, which is awesome.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. And I order mine online because I i order in Balkan. It sounds crazy, but I order mine in Balkan. I hand them out. When i go up I go out somewhere and I'm out with friends or work people or somebody else, inevitably I'm the guy that if we're having a meal, at the end of the meal, I'm just going to shake. kindnna Let me shake your hand. I'm going to give you a little little bit. Just take it. It's for you. it's for And they have no idea what the hell I'm giving them. like It's very confusing.

Speaker: um And I love that. I love that little it's paper wrapped. Anyway, different product. Let's get back to Fernet. Let me tell you a little bit more about this. um Just about, well, they say 27 plus. I think it's probably 29 actual botanicals that go into Fernet.

Speaker: Not all of them are available or public knowledge. I know about a handful of them. But they source botanicals from four separate continents. Like, it's wild.

Speaker: They get botanicals from so many different places. They're getting saffron, which really not that far away. Like, Spain. There's a lot of saffron in Spain. But then they're also getting things like aloe, pherox. Like, a very specific type of aloe from South Africa, which is really cool. They're getting myrrh.

Speaker: Myrrh? Myrrh? don't know. Myrrh. Myrrh. Okay. Yeah, it's always a weird thing to say. So they're getting myrrh from East Africa, rhubarb root from China, chamomile, gentian root, which almost always, if you see an amari or eat any kind of really digestive bitter, you're almost always going to have gentian and chamomile. Those are your two kind of big, big things. Semen and clove, those woody spices are going to be in there as well.

Speaker: And that's because at at the root of it, These were meant as a, like you digestive bitter. They're meant to be almost medicine, but not really.

Speaker: um It's an excuse to drink more alcohol, for sure. um But the idea behind it is that a little bit of all these different herbs and spices are good for your body. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: It is the fortification of the spirit. It's also, again, to your point, never meant to be consumed in large quantities. You're consuming this just... You'll have one, maybe two, just to kind of cap off if your stomach is funky or if you had a really big meal.

Speaker: Or just to end the night. You'd have just a little bit. And it's not really enough alcohol to kind of knock you out. it's they really It really does work wonders. Especially if, ah as we've experienced, you have a long night of drinking.

Speaker: You have one for net at the end of the night. And it helps, right? like so It just helps your body feel better. I almost always close my bar tabs. I always kind of, when I come into a bar and I think, okay, if I see Frenette on the shelf, generally I'll start with a Frenette.

Speaker: I'll have a Frenette to start while I'm thinking with, if there was an extensive menu, I want to look through it. If it's like a cocktail bar, I go, just get me a Frenette and a club soda on the side.

Speaker: you know little minerality on the side. It's very nice. And as I look through the menu, but then at the end, I'll always leave a little bit of room for a just a quick, you know, short pour of Frenet. And, you know, the consumption of this thing, the lore behind this thing...

Speaker: Forget about the U.S. In the U.S., we've kind of gamified this because we have the bartender's handshake, which somehow in the early 2000s, this like became a thing in San Francisco and exploded across the U.S. where it was a At the end of your shift, the you know the staff would sit down they would they would have a finette shot.

Speaker: Or if you work from another bar and you needed to kind of prove your credentials, you would say... you're going to an industry bar, you are... An industry bar, right. You'd you'd say, I'll take a Frenet. Let's do a Frenet shot. On industry night, they always have like three, $5 Frenet shots. Yeah.

Speaker: They're wonderful. You know, now then that that has turned into the thing with the coin, which is really cool. there's a coin that you can get that's given to you Listen, I think you probably buy them online, but... You definitely 100% can. am not buying one, but want one back. i ah can't I want one really bad, and the people, usually the distributors, people in the industry that are are kind of pushing Frenet will, if you know somebody, if you've done something cool, maybe they'll kind of give you a coin.

Speaker: You earn these coins, like challenge coins. But then you take your coin, and you can drop your coin on a bar and challenge a bartender when you order your Frenet. And if they don't have their coin to put on the table, that Frenet's free, baby.

Speaker: And, you know, people trade them, and it's it's a super cool thing. I really love that. And then, weird fact, let's go to Argentina. You know all about this.

Speaker: Argentina is the number one consumer of Frenet Branca in the world, even outselling Italy. Also, it's ah it's made, ah now it's made in Argentina as well because they consume so much of it.

Speaker: So they consume over, to give you some perspective, over 75% of the entire global production of Frenet Branca. Argentina does. Which wild. Absolutely wild.

Speaker: but And so, you know, sometimes i'll I'll see a bartender and I'll see the Frenet and I'll go, ah let me get a Frenet and Coke. And most of the time, nobody really says anything. They're like, oh, that's weird. Okay, sure. but That seems odd. Once in a while, I'll get that slow smile.

Speaker: That like, you know, my man. All right. yeah I know what you're about. I got you. ah I want to i wanna to make it real nice for you. um And so that's another special thing. So there's this community behind Frenette, which is really cool. There's the lore behind it.

Speaker: Now, how does it work with cigars? I think it's not for everybody. I think you and I really love Frenette, and we also love cigars that tend to be on the much fuller side of the house, certainly compared to this one.

Speaker: I think Frenette actually really works well with, like, an intense Connecticut Broadleaf cigar. Liga Pravada, the Cro-Magnon, stuff like that. Like...

Speaker: Frenette can work really well with those super intense cigars. Even like, you know, something like and for me, like Umba Gag and Frenette is a, is a, it's a thing that I've enjoyed for so long that I never really even thought about it because for whatever reason, without even thinking about it, I'd kind of go grab the cigar and then somehow end up grabbing Frenette. And I eventually I made that connection. Holy shit. I really like Frenette with the cigar because it keeps happening.

Speaker: Uh, So now, again, disclaimer, Frenette is not for everybody. It is wildly intense. um Certainly one of those things you're either going love or you're going hate it, much like Malort and others you know similar Amari.

Speaker: Now, Frenette is not like the Amari, like a Montenegro. It's not like that. You know, those are a lot sweeter. it's It's closer to Jägermeister for people who are more familiar with that.

Speaker: um it's not Jagermeister at all. They're very different, but they are again in kind of the same wheelhouse. Yeah. So did you know, it's one of those things. I never recommend somebody go buy a bottle of Fernet because like you said, not for everybody.

Speaker: um But if you're interested in trying it, almost any decent bar, and well, literally any decent bar and almost any other bar will have Fernet.

Speaker: You just order a shot. It'll probably be five bucks. Like, you generally speaking, ah bartenders know that mostly other bartenders order Fernet, so they make it cheap. um So, try shelf this is a fact you probably don't know about Fernet Branca.

Speaker: Can't wait. Frenette Branca is purposely built in a way that makes it incredibly difficult to counterfeit. Do you know how they do this?

Speaker: No. Saffron. So because saffron is such a huge part of the Frenette recipe, and you have to use real saffron, you can't just, there's no such thing as like artificial s saffron. You can't get it.

Speaker: Because they use so much actual real saffron that it makes no sense to counterfeit it because you're not going any money back. too expensive.

Speaker: they have out They have outfucked everybody in their in their kind of recipe design, and so that's another reason why I really love Fernet Bronco. I respect that. I respect that. How's your last pairing going for you, Ben? um It's going great.

Speaker: um The Buna Haban is like, man, it's like no other scotch. Got a little bit of everything other than pee. Um... Like, it's got a little bit of that almost honey floral kind of sweetness with a woodsiness. And, man, there was another flavor I was just thinking of that I already forgot what it was.

Speaker: Saltiness. Like, a little bit of that kind of ocean thing going on. um So the Isla vibe. Yeah, it's definitely got the Isla vibe, but without the intense peat. So if you don't like peat, if you've been turned off by the Ardbegs, the Laphroigs, the Lagavulans of the world, um give Muna Hobbit a try.

Speaker: At least the 12 or 14, I think it is. um They're unpeated offerings. don't Don't splurge on any of the single bottlings. or the single barrel stuff, because a lot of that is peated.

Speaker: um But their their kind of classic line is not peated. um So it might be right up your alley. it's It's a very different scotch. It's very aggressive, but very ah approachable at the same time. It's exciting in a different way. I love Buna Haban.

Speaker: I can't believe I i had never had Buna Haban before a year and a half or two years ago. And now it's it's one of my go-tos. Unfortunately, i don't think i have ever left i umt I don't think I've ever seen it at a bar, which is interesting. um I'm sure it exists at some bars, but I've never seen it. Yeah, I've seen a couple bottles in the last few months. and Actually, now that i now that I think about it, I think they might have had it at Corona Cigar, but that that bar is an exception. That is no that's that's an exception that is no moral bar That does not count.

Speaker: um But yeah, it's working really well with the cigar. um I have already gone back through my pairings, and I'm giving it to Tequila Corralejo for my pairing the night because it just it just matched the vibe of the cigar so well. Like, the balance on both of these was really well-matched.

Speaker: The Buna Haban kind of has so much flavor that it overpowers the cigar a little bit. Same goes for the Lemur Cigar. ah barrel aged sour from frame with all the berries, um, that those berry flavors are just a little too intense for the cigar. It works, but a cigar gets overpowered a little bit.

Speaker: He'll a Corraleo. um surprising to me goes really really well with this cigar what about you how'd your last pairing go and then also shout out to Bear for for bringing that up as a tequila that was really exciting and worth trying and and like hey guys you you you would love this yeah I'm glad I did glad I tried it how's your your final pairing going how's Furnette work with this cigar I feel like Furnette might be a little too intense for this cigar as well hmm Yes, well, considering my cigar is now finally dead.

Speaker: Dead, dead. um I think it is too intense. So for my for my second pairing, or so so sorry, for my final pairing of the night, um I'm going to go back to my second pairing. I think the Negroni is something that once again has come up as I think this works really well.

Speaker: And it can work with a cigar that's on the milder side of the house, a nice medium. But also, it'll stand up to, I think, even the Liga Provada. Nice. All right. And ah just to close out the circuit, Sam, ah we said his last pairing of the night was the salted caramel monster. He said he's drinking it because he's staying up to watch bear.

Speaker: Good for you. Everybody, anybody else watching live, go watch bear on El Oso Fumar tonight. I haven't looked at who his guest is. I can't remember top of my head, but it'll be a good show either way. I'm certain.

Speaker: But Sam says is the show his pairing of the night, his other cocktails were better. ah by themselves but the salted caramel monster just worked better with that cigar which is the story we see all the time ah the best drink you're having is not always the best pairing um because the best pairing is is what you know what works that magic together um and sometimes they bring out flavors in each other sometimes like mine they just really balance each other out in ah in a great way um yeah

Speaker: right. I guess that brings us to the end. Go check out the... ah I think we were both very impressed by the green jacket from Cavalier Inner Circle. Like... i did I didn't know what to expect from the cigar. The wrapper made me think it was going to be kind of Connecticut-y.

Speaker: But it's a little bit more ah aggressive than that while not being overly aggressive at all. A very medium bodied, very approachable, a little high on the price point. But this is definitely a a go try one cigar for me.

Speaker: What do you think? Yes. Yeah. Oh, same, same. I think, you know, um I really want to try another one. just to, I want to give another chance. i want i wanna to smoke it again. I really liked a lot of those flavors.

Speaker: That gingerbread for me was awesome. I loved the retrohale. I loved the size. it it it It speaks to me in a lot of ways that this a cigar that I would like to smoke pretty regularly.

Speaker: Certainly, I would like to keep the cigar in my humidor as is an option. And so I'm going to go out and find some more, smoke a couple, and then kind of make my final decision on you know where I'm going to go.

Speaker: Well, get them while they're hot because this cigar, I believe, came out in May and it is a limited edition. So if there are any more out there, probably still get them. um i would think i would think you could. i don't know.

Speaker: um But if not, you only have to wait until next May, until the next version comes out. And we'll ah we'll be talking to Sebastian, of course, at the PCA coming up in April or March.

Speaker: March or april April. Sometime around that. I think it's April. April 17th, I believe. That sounds right. I know that Hoop has now booked the house. the media The media compound is booked. Same place we were last year.

Speaker: It was great. Dennis, you're going love it. They'll probably stick you in the attic where denni where Aaron was very unhappy. um but why we like It has like slanty ceilings. it's It's a lot like your office, honestly. It had slanted ceilings and like...

Speaker: He said that when you get in the shower, there's a slant in the shower that he hit his head on. He's like I mean, yeah. Aaron's a big boy. Tall boy, should say. Yeah, he's like You what? Let me tell something.

Speaker: you know what let me tell you some If you boys need me to be the golem of the family, I'll be the golem of the family. and'll go up into the attic. No, I think um i i was in a room that had two beds.

Speaker: No, we should put Ben in there. I think that would be fucking hilarious. Just Ben, like, lumbering around. ah he would be waking us up all night just lumbering around in there knocking shit over.

Speaker: good there's a There's a ghost in the attic. It's amazing. Oh, it's just Ben. Farting all night. as we all By the way, as we all do, it's I think it's fine. you know i'm i love i For me, whenever we have a media house, we hang out together, we're doing our thing, we're all kind of like in a house, regardless of how big that house is, it ends up feeling like like this. It's a mix between frat house and summer camp.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. We're we're all just... Kind of weirdly savage, but also familiar with one another, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, we know each other well enough that, like, at this point, you could say whatever.

Speaker: ah yeah It's good. And it's and you know it's something that I really look forward to. Similarly, I look really look forward to DEF CON every year, Hacker Summer Camp, essentially. um It's good to see people, man. It's good it's it's just good to be somewhere with with with a group of people that you really care about, doing a thing you really love. And so for me, finally getting out there, you know New Orleans for the first time in general, but also for PCA, I think that's going be really cool.

Speaker: Yeah, it's going blast. All right. That brings us to the end where we talk about our one for the road, a piece of media we've consumed in the last couple of weeks that ah we want people to go check out. I say that hesitantly because I don't know.

Speaker: Everybody's probably checked this thing out. i'm probably the last person alive, but ah you want to go first? You want me to? um I can go first. i Go for it. Take it away. mine Mine is not that crazy, and not that wild necessarily. Neither is mine. i'm just I'm just getting into it.

Speaker: i you know I picked up a book on pre-order that just came out. I believe it was published on December 15th of this year. ah Right? December 15th? Absolutely brand brand new.

Speaker: I had it on pre-order. It hit my door like A couple days ago, basically. hit my Yeah, a couple days ago, i hit my door. And it's just such a fascinating thing. So this book is called Dig Me a Grave by Dick Harpootlian.

Speaker: I don't know if you're familiar with this. You might be a little bit. I'm not. Oh, you're not? Oh, shit. Okay. So this is a really interesting... This is a book by someone who is very closely involved with the prosecution of Donald Peewee Gaskins.

Speaker: ah Mr. Gaskins himself, Dick Harpootlian is a former Southern Carolina solicitor, which essentially just is a piece of prosecutor. Eventually he became a U.S. Senator in South Carolina.

Speaker: And he was involved on that case, defending Pee Wee Gaskins. And the stuff that's in here, in this book, is really interesting, unique, because it came directly from Gaskins. It came directly from Gaskins' diary. It came from his testimony in court and outside of court.

Speaker: And the information has been also completely vetted and verified. Whatever has been said is legitimate. And the other thing is, it's really cool that Harbulian actually had access to a series of a series of documents like letters and things that Gaskins wrote that ah don't exist anymore. like oh he had a He had a copy of them and the originals just got thrown out because they were like cleaning house and they're like, oh we don't need this anymore. Fine, we threw it out. yeah when ah you know When a 25-year-old finds their great-grandparents' papers, they're not always like, oh, these are historical relics.

Speaker: Sometimes they're like, nobody needs this anymore. Yeah, so they threw all this stuff out, and he ended up having the only copy. And this copy is essentially what informed a lot of the book, but also you know his experience with Gaskins, like sitting with Gaskins, talking to him, personally confronting this guy who essentially constantly described how much he enjoyed killing people.

Speaker: um And Gaskins himself was kind of a really interesting character because he was... I mean, obviously, you know, it's kind of a vile, awful man came up, you know, because of a broken household, as many do.

Speaker: That's kind of the common trope. um A variety of different things that he's done, but one of the most famous things that he did, do you remember, it you know much about Gaskins? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. hey Okay, so so the the c four situation where he, like, somehow smuggled C4 into death row. Yep.

Speaker: And killed another prisoner. who actually took a long time to die, ah sadly. Well, you know, sadly, not sadly, but people are people. We have to care about people, right?

Speaker: So it's kind of a shitty situation. It's unfortunate. But ah he kind of recounts all these experiences that he had that he had with this guy, and things like Gaskins would say, listen, I'll tell you i'll tell you where the bodies are.

Speaker: If you give me some McDonald's, couple cigarettes, and maybe talk to me for a little bit. And i'll I'll tell you. I'll tell you where to go. Wow. I'll help you find the graves. I'll help you do all these things. he was electric He was executed by electrocution, by electric chair.

Speaker: And he was one of the last executions in South Carolina before the reforms came in. I think now they have you know what year he was executed? um i just don't remember. ah Yes, I have it in my notes.

Speaker: Hold on. I have a lot of notes about this fucking guy. um Please hold We need music for like these moments.

Speaker: September 6th. ahead. That was my old music. September 1991. Gaskins was born on March 13th, 1933. Wow. um september six nineteen ninety one gaskins was born on march thirteen nineteen thirty three wow His nickname was Pee Wee, but ironically, he was incredibly small. He was just super violent.

Speaker: um He's had eight confirmed victims. He's confessed to another 13-plus, probably 14 really full murders he's confessed to. But he's actually considered, believe it or not, now, like serial killer syndromes all over the country.

Speaker: It's like, you know, sexy now, right? Like the the whole serial... serial killer thing. yeah Gaskins is still considered one of the most sadistic killers in the United States.

Speaker: and It wasn't the body count. I think it was his methodology that was really particularly sadistic. and You look at like the toy box killer, similarly sadistic, but lower body count. um Anyway, I can wax poetic about serial killer lore and all these things.

Speaker: ah Check out the book, man. It is, it is a I think, a really well-written book. I think Harpoulian does a great job of just bringing you into the situation that he found himself in, which wasn't necessarily by choice. He was, he kind of fell into the situation. And as a prosecutor, you you know, you have to be, you have to be fair regardless of what the situation is. You have to treat it as fairly as you possibly can. So there was an interview with him, a podcast interview where he talked about his experience a little bit. And he does a lot more of that in the book.

Speaker: And so I think it's a really great source for really what happened, the kind of person this man was, but also on the other side of the fence, kind of how the state and how the country reacted to what was going on and the aftermath of, you know, once he was executed, what what do we do now?

Speaker: How do we handle this going forward if this happens again? What do we do for these types of people in this kind of situation? And I think, you know, from a legal standpoint, I think Harpoon really set a couple of very important precedents for, you know, what what that process should look like.

Speaker: All right. I got to check this book out. Cool fucking book. Real snazzy. Not expensive on Amazon. I think it's probably like 25 bucks or something like that. 20 bucks. Good stuff. Um, all right. My, my one for the road is a very old one for the road, but one that took me, how many years is it? 18 years to finally come around to 17 years, uh, which is mad men.

Speaker: Finally started watching mad men this week. hell no. I still can't do it. Um, yeah so baby I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty good. It's like, uh,

Speaker: I'm not sure i understood I understand what made it such a craze. Because it's not like um a lot of shows that I love, your Breaking Bads,

Speaker: ah your The Wire, The Sopranos, Like, those are some of the greatest shows of all time for me. um And they're about a story, right?

Speaker: Mad Men isn't so much about a story as it is just watching people live their lives in the 60s. um And, like, I think there probably is an overarching story, but I've almost finished the first season and there hasn't been any real overarching story other than one little storyline um that feels like it wants to be more significant than it actually is.

Speaker: I would argue that the popularity of Mad Men was not because of, to your point, like, generally we like stories, we like something to hold on to. I think Mad Men got really popular because it was that open-ended where it kind of brought you into a world that you don't know a lot about. and Yeah, I think you're right. To think about yourself in that world. it's It's really more, at least so far, more of a character study, which is still interesting and still good.

Speaker: um But it's like, you know, it's just... ah you know, these characters that just learning more about the people in this, in the show. um I mean, it's, it's, it's very good and interesting, but I'm, I'm not sure what made it like one of the, one of the biggest shows on TV so far, but maybe it's like, ah you know, the there's a lot of shows.

Speaker: um The ones I just mentioned, Sopranos, ah Breaking Bad and The Wire. The Wire was wild, but they all don't really get that good until season two.

Speaker: Like, ah until you finish the seat the first season, you're kind of like, okay, where's this going? And then you finish the season and you're like, right, I'm in. I'm in.

Speaker: Give me whatever you got. What was that show with with the, um, fuck, the alcoholic dad and the kids?

Speaker: Alcoholic dad with the kids. There's a lot of those. They're like kind of poor and they all hustle around. They had so many seasons. Oh, Shameless. shame i I loved Shameless so much. The British version's great, too.

Speaker: It's a remake of a British show. yeah And both versions are fantastic. yeah i the The British version of IT t Crowd was significantly better. i mean, we only got one episode of the American version. It was hot garbage. That's why. it was awful.

Speaker: I watched the IT Crowd. i don't think the American version even made it to TV. I've only ever seen the American version on YouTube. ah You might be right, actually. IT Crowd's great, though. That's one of my favorite shows. The is good stuff. I've watched that show probably 20 times.

Speaker: It's the original IT Crowd.

Speaker: It's us. It was us growing up in our careers, basically. all right Sam Finnell says his his one for the road is Grizzly Man. His summary is man goes out to study bears and ends up eaten by one.

Speaker: that is That is what it is. um But more interesting to me, it is Werner Herzog movie who, you know... Werner Herzog is a character. in Exactly. Werner Herzog is one of the weirdest human beings to ever live.

Speaker: And he's incredible. He's like Crispin Glover's uncle, essentially. If you want to talk about weird, like I think that's the corollary that I can put together. um and and he's like One of the awesome things about Werner Herzog is like he will he'll act in an A-list movie and TV show, and then he'll direct a documentary about a weirdo, and then he'll make a nonsensical movie, and he just he's all over the map, dude.

Speaker: um like some of some of his his Some of the things that come to mind is i was blown away when we started watching The Mandalorian.

Speaker: And in The Mandalorian, I think it's in episode one, like part of the part of the whole... ah part of the setup for the entire show is that Werner Herzog is is hiring The Mandalorian for the job.

Speaker: And like I was like... That can't be Werner Herzog in a Star Wars. Was he really there? yeah Was Werner Herzog? Oh, shit. i One of a line that I quote almost every day.

Speaker: God. I would like to see the baby. It's so good. I'm going to look it up after this. You have to see that that line read of, i would like to see the baby.

Speaker: It's so good. Werner Herzog's everywhere. I saw him in, believe it was... um Must have been at a restaurant or a bar or something. But I saw him on a commercial the other day, which I believe was a commercial for Fortnite.

Speaker: And it it was Fortnite or Call of Duty. And it was Werner Herzog talking about it. And I was like, Werner Herzog doing this? um But he's like, Werner Herzog's really interesting because he has been working since the 60s.

Speaker: in film and he is he is a true artist um like he he just does whatever he wants if he reads the script and feels like it's worth his time he'll do it no matter what it is no matter what the pay is no matter what the schedule is like no matter who else is in it he'll just do it because he likes the script Or he will tell you to die in a fire because he doesn't want anything to do with the crap that you think is art.

Speaker: And like to Werner Herzog, there's no middle ground and it's fantastic. I love Werner Herzog. I love Grizzly Man. Great recommendation. ah Sam, um thanks for giving me a reason to talk about Werner Herzog.

Speaker: I'm a big fan. All right. That brings us to the end of the show. ah Coop did text me to say sorry about the cracked cigars. I told him we're just busting his balls. Cigars crack. It's not big deal. No, Coop, it's it's totally fine, man. i Thank you. And again, thank you for the cigars because i if not, we wouldn't have had a chance to try them out.

Speaker: we Yeah, we wouldn't have been able to try this one. We're we're were fans of this one. Even with the crack, I think this this was a really... it's a It's a very good cigar that's very different from a lot of what I'm used to smoking, and i like i like it, man.

Speaker: like it. it was I think it was refreshing. I would say refreshing for my palate because I'm generally, to your point, um it's not something that I normally go for, and i i kind of it opened my perspective a little bit to, hey, this is kind of cool. I might really like this again. I want to try another one, and...

Speaker: Even with the crack, it still smoked great. All in all, it was still just you know a fantastic cigar in terms of the the you know the smoke and the construction. Yeah. So once again, check out the Green Jacket. Inner Circle Green Jacket by Cavalier Cigars.

Speaker: we're We're both fans. worth Worth trying. um Also check out Grizzly Man. What was the book you mentioned? The the title? Dig Me a Grave. Dig Me a Grave.

Speaker: And I guess check out Madman if you haven't already watched it like everybody else on the planet except for me. um But I've been enjoying it, so figured I'd highlight that.

Speaker: um Have a great week, everybody. Merry Christmas. It's almost here. Hope you got all your shopping done because it's too late now. ah Well, almost too Is it too late for the Turbo Man?

Speaker: oh No. No, if you're Arnold or Ice Cube, you can go for it. yeah That was Sinbad. Oh, Sinbad, you're right. Wasn't Ice Cube in the sequel?

Speaker: there's a I feel like Ice Cube was the star of Jingle All the Way 2, unless that didn't even happen. There was a sequel? What? No, Ice Cube was was... Okay, let's go down the rabbit hole real quick. Oh, okay, Jingle All the Way 2 was Larry the Cable Guy. My bad.

Speaker: Ghost of Mars... Ice Cube was in Ghosts of Mars. Ice Cube played the character who was supposed to be Snake Plissken, played by Kurt Russell, because it was supposed to be Escape from the World.

Speaker: It was supposed to be the last John Carpenter escape movie, and it turned into Ghosts of Mars because Kurt Russell was filming another movie. You're kidding. I never knew that. I shit you not, which is why he wears the same camel pants as Snake Plissken from all the other films.

Speaker: I saw that movie, unlike a lot of people, I saw that movie in the theater on opening weekend. That's a scary movie. it's It was really, fucked me up. I saw it with a high school girlfriend. It was terrifying. The part where, youre you know, at all time being a high, no, no, not at all. I was, I was very serious about watching movies. I always have.

Speaker: ah We were holding hands as you do in, in early high school. And I remember there's a scene where like, they're going into a bunker.

Speaker: or something, and they like open the door and a body flops down in front of them. Oh, yeah. And i remember her hand, it was like she was raising her hand in in math class. She went, well And just stuck her hand straight up in the air. It was like, wait, what am I doing?

Speaker: and it was It's a a moment that lives in my mind. I don't remember a single conversation I had with that that young lady. Now you know that movie was supposed to be the final film of...

Speaker: The Snake Plissken story with Escape from New York and L.A. and all these things. It was supposed to be the end. And it never got made officially. And they had to rename the whole thing and change the story a little bit.

Speaker: I'm not certain whether it would have been a better movie or a worse movie. but that Probably better movie. It was pretty bad. I'm glad. i'm Knowing what I know now, I'm glad they did what they did. It's fine. I think it was...

Speaker: It was a good film on its own. We all want more of something, and sometimes you have to say goodbye before you get another thing, right? Before it gets adulterated and turned into shit. So I'm okay with that. It's like Indiana Jones. Should have stopped after three. All right, guys. that's Merry Christmas, everybody. Shout out to John Carpenter and Werner Herzog, two the greatest directors still alive today.

Speaker: Love them both. um We'll talk to you guys on the next one. Everybody have a a great Christmas, and we'll be back next week to wish you a Happy New Year. um Yeah, Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase. Let's get out of here.

Speaker: Hey, man. Hey, Merry Christmas, everybody. And remember, em we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.