Tony Sachs: Outstanding Spirits Writer and All-Around Mensch

August 23, 2019 1 Comment

From Songs to Spirits

I have become totally fascinated by, and admire, the spirits writers who have come to play an important role in the booze business. When I started in the industry, and for much of the 1990s, there were not as many as there are today and I believe the spirits industry is better for their presence.

I enjoy reading and aspiring to write as well as people like Noah Rothbaum, Fred Minnick, Lew Bryson, Rosie Schaap, Dave Wondrich, Amanda Schuster, and others. With their willingness, I hope to write about them as I have in the past with Paul Pacult and Gaz Regan. So, consider this the first in a series about people who influence the business from behind their computer.

Tony’s Story

Simply put, I love reading what he writes and, for me, he was a top choice to focus on. I can tell you why in a long-winded manner, but I thought why not ask a mutual friend in the industry about Tony, someone who knows him personally and professionally. I turned to Joe Magliocco, President Chatham Imports, Inc. who said this:

“Tony Sachs is a terrific spirits writer. He asks thoughtful and insightful questions, and writes with a very engaging style. His articles are always interesting. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of spirits, especially whiskeys, and an extremely sophisticated palate.”

Beyond his writing, Tony is very down to earth, an affable and fun guy to hang out with and have a few. I follow him on Facebook and love his posts about him and his family and especially the exotic trips and dinners with spirits suppliers. (Often as I read about these journeys, I’m reminded of the adage from back in the day — “You won’t become a millionaire working at Seagram but you’ll sure live like one.”)

Tony is a lifelong New Yorker with the gift of writing in his DNA. Both his parents were, as he puts it, Mad Men era type copywriters and he has a BA in journalism from NYU. Despite this, Tony had always been obsessed with music and, foregoing law school, opened a record shop in the Upper Westside of NYC. The store had a pretty good run of 12 years from 1993 to 2005. A business can flourish but if the environment for that business changes, it faces an uphill battle.

As the music business was traveling south around 2005, Tony set his sights on another passion he had, one which was growing at the time — the return of the cocktail culture.

He first became interested in the history of cocktails while running his store and read William Grimes‘ “Straight Up Or On The Rocks: The Story Of The American Cocktail.”

As he explained it to me:

“A customer of mine dealt in rare books, and I built up a nice collection of vintage bar/cocktail books from him, long before most folks knew or cared about them. I also got to know about whiskey because one of the friends of the store worked at Union Square Wine and Spirits. He’d bring my partner terrific bottles, like Sazerac 18 YO or Rittenhouse 21, and my partner actually didn’t like them! So, he’d either give them to me or I’d trade him other stuff from my collection. It was a great education! Anyway, by 2005 I knew more about booze than your average consumer, even if I was still at beginner-level standards compared to titans like Gaz Regan or David Wondrich.”

Writing About Spirits

So, Tony knew about writing, knew about booze, but didn’t know about booze writing. The seminal moment came when he took a wine and spirits course from the legendary Harriet Lembeck. As he put it, “I found the wine part pretty uninteresting, but the spirits part really grabbed me.”

What followed was an immersion in the NYC burgeoning cocktail scene, getting to meet people like Gaz Regan, Jill and Dale DeGroff, and others, and some “toe in the water” articles for Huffington Post. An article on vermouth. Then an article on bourbon. Next thing he knew, PR folks were inviting him to tastings and he got a writing gig for The Liquid Muse. The rest is history.

His articles

Tony’s articles have appeared in the Robb Report, Esquire, Serious Eats, Liquor.com, Whiskey Advocate, Whiskey Wash, among others. Here are some that you might enjoy reading.

“Do the TTB’s Proposed New Regulations Leave Craft Distillers Over a Barrel?” This is a very recent article in Whiskey Advocate on an important subject for craft producers.
“New York In The ‘90s, Drunkenly.” A fun and interesting nostalgic read about the concoctions that passed for cocktails. Written for medium.com.
And, of course, a fun article that you would expect from a spirit’s writer who loves music — “Ten Classic Drinking Songs Recorded by Women,” which appeared in Thirsty.

Putting him to the test

In addition to the fun topics above, Tony is widely known for his spot-on product reviews. So, while we were talking about his career, I invited him over to taste the Mister Sam Whiskey I recently received. I had saved opening it for just this occasion. (See my reference to the brand earlier this summer.)

It was fun watching him work and he saw something I had missed — the AbV is 66.9%. His review is in Whisk(e)y of the Week, which appeared recently in Liquor.com. Here is an excerpt:

Sazerac’s master blender, Drew Mayville, has his artistry on full display here. Dark fruit, most noticeably plums and cherries, mingle with brown sugar, gingerbread and baking spices, along with a fair amount of oak and rye spice. The finish is long and a little hot without water, but much more palatable than the high ABV would lead you to believe. A few drops of water turn down the heat and turns up the fruity and oaky notes without diluting the flavor in the least.

Actually, truth be told, his review depressed me a bit … There is no way I could write a review like that. All I tasted and smelled was whiskey. I guess I’ll just stick to stories.

Oh, and by the way, here’s part of the blurb about Tony that accompanied the story in Liquor.com:

Stay-at-home dad, 20th century music enthusiast, eater of dumplings. Opinionated but generally pleasant about it.

I told you he was a mensch.

Is there anything gaz regan wouldn’t do to get attention?

July 29, 2019 No Comments

Would getting lung cancer, and getting rid of it while Tales was going on sound like him?

Gaz and I have known each other and been friends since the 1990s. More recently, we have become business associates in matters pertaining to the role of bartenders in brand building and business development. Together we launched Worldwide Bartender Database

We speak often and a short while ago he told me that during the course of a medical exam, the doctors found a spot on his lung that needed to be removed.

I freaked out. But he was particularly and unusually calm about the matter.

Got me to thinking… was this real? Was he pulling my leg? Or was he up to his old, attention getting tricks.

Now, before you think me cold and heartless, let’s examine Mr. Regan’s shenanigans:

In 2001 he started Cocktails in the Country, a bartending course believed to be the only bartending program in NY that used real spirits, as opposed to colored water.

By 2007 Jim Meehan, Dave Kaplan, Don Lee, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Jacques Bezuidenhout, Jamie Boudreau, Jared Brown, Anistatia Miller, Joaquin Simo, Jonathan Pogash, Naren Young, Philip Ward, Robert Hess, Sammy Ross, Toby Cecchini, Toby Maloney, and Willy Shine, among many others had all taken the CitC course.

In 2008 he started wearing eye-liner. (That’s right… among other reasons, he claimed it helped him make the point with bartenders that eye-contact with customers across the bar was an important element of ‘mindful bartending.’)

In 2009 he changed his name so he, like Prince, could be known as “The Bartender Formally Known as . . .”

In 2010 he started the Finger-Stirred Negroni Craze, which captured the world’s attention. Not long after, he had his finger cast in stainless steel and made into a stirrer.

And now, in order to create a buzz, gaz didn’t go to Tales of the Cocktail this year. Choosing instead to have half of his left lung ripped out.

So, you’ll forgive me if I was a tad skeptical.

“Well, in all truth” says gaz, “I didn’t have much of a choice in this one cos, according to my doctors I had a tiny pea-size lump of very aggressive cancer in there, but I couldn’t help but make a big deal of it, cos I’m known for never missing a chance to shock the world.”

Truth of the matter is that, after his operation, tests were performed, and gaz has been declared to be totally cancer free, and he’ll be out on the road again after he spends a couple of weeks being spoiled rotten by Amy his wife.

“I have to get back out there to make the money I missed out on by pulling this particular stunt,” says gaz, “So, if you doubt, for a second, that a two-time cancer survivor with hardly a tooth in his head, only half of a tongue and half of one of his lungs is up to the task, get in touch with me at The Worldwide Bartender Database and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

In truth folks, gaz has been laid up and concerned but now that he’s in the clear, this blog post was his inspiration. It’s his way of… well… back to being gaz regan.

All I can say is: Twasn’t my fault, Mum… He put me up to it.

So, forgive us if we had a bit of fun at f**ken cancer’s expense.

“Hey, there’s wood in my bottle.”

July 17, 2019 No Comments

Wood takes an innovative journey

Who can argue that wood plays a vital role in the taste of your favorite whisk(e)y. In fact, in a Vinepair article it’s estimated that “wood is responsible for 60 to 75 percent of the taste of a finished whiskey.”

More than that, wood is the star of whiskey making with various types of oak, casks that previously held other spirits (even wine), different toasting techniques, even double barrel resting. Maker’s Mark 46 goes one step further and adds wood staves to the barrels. Described as follows: “The innovative wood-stave-finishing process starts with fully matured Maker’s Mark at cask strength. We then insert 10 seared virgin French oak staves into the barrel and finish it for nine weeks in our limestone cellar.”

A new and unique approach

The Sanctified Spirits Company, a startup in Texas, which owns the Oak & Eden brand of bourbon and rye whiskeys, uses a spiral piece of wood (referred to as a spire) inserted into the bottle. This patent pending technique, which they call in-bottle finished whiskey, consists of a 5-inch spiral cut piece of wood from the same species of wood as the barrel. They rest the product for 6 weeks and sell the whiskey with the spire in it.

While I am not a whiskey taster/reviewer, I’m an avid American Whiskey fan, so I tried it to see what it tastes like. The one I tried was Bourbon & Spire (“Bourbon Whiskey finished with a toasted oak spiral”). I loved it.

Here’s how Brad Neathery, Co-Founder and CMO, describes the process:

“The technique allows us the ability to create millions of combinations of whiskey expressions through the selection of the base spirit (bourbon, rye, wheated bourbon, single malt, etc.), the wood type of the spire (American Oak, French Oak, Cherry, Ash, etc.), the fire level we expose the spire to (light toast, medium toast, char, etc.), and the spice or liquid we can infuse the spire with (wine, coffee, rum, beer, etc.).”

About the company

The company was founded by Joe Giildenzopf (CEO), his brother Jamie Giildenzopf (Co-Founder) and Brad Neathery (CMO) in 2017.

When I got a bottle and while doing my research for this article, I noticed the references to God, Christianity and Creation. For example, on the back label it says, “The name pays a gracious homage to both the perfection of the creator who breathes his unique spirit into us, and the wood that infuses our other favorite spirit, and it’s complex flavors.” So, I asked Joe and Brad about this aspect of the company.

“We are Christians. That being said, this is not a Christian whiskey. We’re not attempting to proselytize with this whiskey. We do however, because of our faith and our understanding of Scripture, see the world through that lens, including the production of whiskey. When He turned His attention to making mankind, he did not speak us into existence, he instead used his hands. Taking the elements of the earth and forming a being… breath(ed) into us, which is translated in Hebrew (as) ‘inspire.’ … We call the whiskey Oak & Eden, in-bottle finished, inspired whiskey. And because that great creation story began with God in the garden, we named our product Oak & Eden. Oak is emblematic of wood in the bottle. Eden is the perfection of God’s creation.”

I mentioned these references as religious overtones. Joe corrected me — “I see them as a perspective on the world.”

Makes sense to me. These folks are passionate in what they do, spiritual in how they approach business and it comes together in an innovative, great tasting product.

The products

The current line up consists of Bourbon & Spire, Toasted Oak; Rye & Spire, Charred Oak; Rye and Rumba, Rum Soaked Oak; Bourbon & Vine, Cabernet Steeped Oak.

There’s an excellent review of the brands and tasting notes in this Forbes article.

Brad told me about their newest efforts:

“By the time that you’ve written it, we will have released a collaboration project with Rahr and Sons Brewing, in Texas. They’re a beer company. We want to have two products, a rye infused with their IPA, and a bourbon infused with their Scottish ale.”

The products are all 45% AbV (90°) and sell for $40 for the Bourbon and Rye. Oak & Eden buy their whiskeys from a number of sources, including Midwest Grain Products (MGP). They curate, buy the whiskey, blend, bottle, and finish it in-bottle with the spire.

They launched in May of last year and Oak & Eden is available in TX, CO, KY, MI, OK, and LA. This year they anticipating being in GA, KY, IN, GA, NY, IL. They expect to be national by the end of 2020.

They sold 3,200 (6-pack) cases in eight months in Texas, among the top selling new items in the state. They have a national contract with RNDC (Republic National Distributing Company).

Oak & Eden has three patents, according to Joe:

“We have an exclusive license to the patent for the manufacturing of the spire. We don’t own that, but our cooper does and we have that exclusive license through the life of that patent. We also have a patent on in-bottle finishing, which is the technique of finishing the spirit in a closed glass container with a spiral cut piece of wood. And, then we have a design patent on the bottle and the way in which the spire rests in the bottle. So yeah, we’ve got pretty good IP wrapped around it.”

I asked about their interest in making this innovation available to others. Their answer is they talk about it but have not as yet come to any conclusions, much less a strategy.

The marketing approach

Speaking of strategy, one thing I did not ask about but has since occurred to me, is why they launched so many line extensions from the outset. If it were me, I might have opted to launch with two then gradually roll out the others over time or with selected markets. I would be concerned about stretching the resources too thin.

But I suppose it makes sense. There’s a need to show the range of products using this new technology, an account doesn’t need to purchase all of them, and perhaps they have the financial and other resources to “blast” in rather than “soak” in.

The article cited above in Forbes, raised an important question that I am sure is on the mind of many of you — legitimate innovation or marketing gimmick? The writer’s conclusion:

“I think this is a legitimate innovation and one to get excited about … As a finishing technique, the spire offers a lot more flexibility for finishing whiskeys and dramatically expands the options for different finishes beyond the usual approach of barrels that previously held another liquid.”

I tend to agree. But, the verdict is up to the consumer.