Good Morning and happy Friday! I am thrilled to announce that this week is the first of many newsletters to feature interviews with professionals in many different positions within the bar/restaurant/spirits industry. We hope to highlight the triumphs and struggles within our community in order to connect more deeply with one another. It has been incredible to network with people from all corners of the hospitality industry and be reassured that the overwhelming majority of us truly just want to see everyone do well. Our goal is always to help build up our community whether that is by praising the good news or acknowledging the bad.

We will be launching a form in the next few weeks for anyone interested to connect and chat with me (Shayne) and possibly be featured in a future newsletter. It doesn’t matter where in the industry you may fit, we want to represent the people who read and love what we put out. Keep an eye out for when we make the “Industry Spotlight” form active but if there is anything you want to mention or reach out about before then, we have an active contact us form on our website.

Without further delay, here is your weekly update!

Affordable, High Quality, Additive Free, and Recently Acclaimed

I had the absolute pleasure of meeting the CEO of Lighthouse Brands, Sarah Santerian, at the Goodjuice X Ember & Alma tequila festival last month. She was there pouring a tequila I had not yet heard of but absolutely wanted to know more about. Before we talk about the tequila she was pouring let me tell you a little about Sarah herself. Sarah is the perfect blend of bright, friendly, and badass. Positioned in the corner, at the center of the tequila tasting, she was the only woman pouring samples that night, all the other tequila reps were men. She managed to blend her creativity with her drive and marketing capabilities (she double majored in arts and marketing in college) to work her way from the Redbull truck to ever-higher positions in a number of well-known spirits companies. From there she worked her way to the position of CEO in a company she helped establish. She casually threw in toward the end of our official interview that she created Bee’s Knees Week, you know, the one that Barr Hill Gin started in 2017 and you see almost everywhere. It also is a program designed to give back to the environment and bolster pollinator habitats. In retrospect, that’s part of the reason why her description of the brand she was there to represent - Zumbador Tequila - caught my attention so fully. The artwork on the bottle has three hummingbirds, a direct thank you to the pollinators that help enable agave farming, and a representation of the family legacy behind the brand itself.

So what makes Zumbador great other than the eye catching label and talented curators presenting it? Well for starters it tastes great. Zumbador’s Master Tequilero Roberto Lopez Anaya is a fourth generation agave grower who has a hand in every aspect of the tequila making process. Their agave is entirely estate grown (and owned) so each meticulous measure, in the agave fields and the distillation process, is taken with care. This thoughtfulness includes the community and culture it is born from. Efforts like these are precisely why Roberto and his distillery are getting recognized for all the right reasons. Data collected from Agave Matchmaker has determined that the NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) responsible for Zumbador (NOM 1643) also known as Destileria El Sabino, S.A. de C.V., is the 4th best in the world. The judging body of these metrics are tequila and agave spirits enthusiasts themselves, which is a testament to the excellence and approachability of the products.

There also couldn’t be a better time to seek it out, at the time of this newsletter posting Zumbador will have released its newest offering. Their añejo, which comes in at 40% ABV, is aged for 14 months in ex-Jack Daniels barrels. Although I have not yet had the pleasure of tasting it myself the description is as follows: nose: citrus, floral, cinnamon; taste: honey, butter, caramel; finish: oily, brown spice. As the añejo rolls out to all active sales locations, it can be found wherever their blanco and reposado already are. You can find them at Total Wine and a number of other smaller liquor stores around the country. They don’t have an active map on their website yet but you can purchase directly through their site or you can send them an email to find out where to grab a bottle in person. With prices at about $25 for the blanco and $30 for the reposado this is just about the best quality for price in existence. As a bonus teaser Sarah also let me know that early next year Zumbador will be releasing an overproof blanco. We of course will be the first to let you know when the release date is available for that.

In the Ever-Changing Spirits Landscape How Can Anyone Keep Up?

As we continue to see a rise in spirit-free alternatives or “sober-ish” beverages does that mean that traditional spirits are a lost cause? We continue to talk about what this trend means for bars, restaurants, and liquor stores/distributors but there really isn’t a definitive direction. The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the way that the majority of people consumed alcohol and many of those changes weren’t immediately reversed by the lifting of restrictions. In the conversations that I continue to have with professionals in the current spirits market the overarching perspective is that despite the downward trend marked by polls and reporting online there is a promising uptick in interest for purveyors that prioritize quality in their ingredients. In essence the same thing that happened to chain restaurants is also happening in spirits.

Consumers continue to become more educated in what they use their purchasing power for; within the alcohol industry this is a little slower to come to fruition (maybe because we have aways known that alcohol isn’t the best for you) but it has shown a brief dip in the overall market and recently (at least anecdotally) a noticeable increase in sales for more health-conscious and additive-free brands. This is where being knowledgeable and up to date is key.

I have to include a separate link here for my favorite print from this artist if only to make you look at his shop.

In my discussion with Sarah this week we both noted how it is a truly unique time to be coming of age in the legal drinking culture of the nation. We both grew up in a time when tequila was largely regarded as “only a shooter” and the only exposure we had was to certain “gold” varieties (until luxury brands came into popular culture in the late 00’s) and anything outside of that was simply not within the budget of a college student or recent grad.

Despite the lower average in “drinkers” within the gen Z population the market doesn’t look completely replete of interested consumers. If anything, the people I’ve had the honor of speaking to in the spirits industry all hold one common thought: alcohol consumption might seem to be down but it might just be regarding the “anything goes” types of spirits. Brands and purveyors of spirits that hold themselves to standards that consumers value such as low or no additives, haven’t felt the decline quite as acutely as those who have less stringent standards.

As if I couldn’t admire Sarah enough, she helped announce on Zumbador’s official instagram account the release of their anejo to their current portfolio. I consider myself fairly athletic for a mom of two over 30 but I don’t think I could pull this pose off. I also can’t wear heels to save my life but I digress…

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