Hoarding Alert: Miguel Torres Chile Pisco El Gobernador

First spotted in Oshawa, the coveted Curacao finally made its way to Toronto this week, with the first nine bottles hitting the Bloor/Ossington store. That was a real pleasant surprise for west-enders, since we’re pretty much used to that store specializing in a good range of Colt 45.

So, when the rain let up, I took a little stroll to get my fair share of the bounty and, while there, discovered that the new pisco, Miguel Torres Chile Pisco El Gobernador (363978), was also available in Bloorcourt. So I bought that, too, despite it’s being from Chile, which is usually a deal-breaker for me.

I think many of my readers will know that pisco is the focus of a longstanding dispute between Chile and Peru. Each claims it as their national drink, each claims it makes a better product. Generally speaking, I side with Peru, especially since Johnny Schuler, antique map collector and master distiller at Pisco Portón (located in Ica, Peru) told me the Peruvian port town called Pisco goes back to at least the 17th century. And he has the maps to prove it.

Mainly, though, of the piscos I’ve sampled, the standouts have been from Peru. Then again, I haven’t sampled many Chilean ones—only those that have made their way through the LCBO in the past and haven’t been great.

Times have changed. El Gobernador blows away the LCBO’s current Peruvian offerings—Pancho Fierro, which has an industrial taste and Soldeica, a Vintages product, but a flat, one-note pisco. By comparison, El Gobernador is light and lively with a sweet, aromatic, almost minty introduction and a tingly, herbal finish. No question in my mind that, at present (I’d still like to see premium Peruvian piscos like Portón and Encanto here), this is, by far, is the best on-shelf pisco in Ontario. And it’s just about exactly the same price as the others. It appears cheaper at $28.30, but it’s only a 700 ml bottle, so it’s fraction of a cent more expensive per ml than Pancho Fierro.

Go, Chile!

One more little detail. Somebody’s blacked out (like, with marker) the “40% alc/vol” on each individual label. Looks to me as if LCBO testing determined it was a little over (41.2 per cent, to be precise) and somebody had to spend an afternoon with a sharpie and umpteen cases of pisco.

Because we’ve often been faced with absolutely no pisco in Ontario, whatsoever, I’m going to call this hoard-able, even though it appears to be general list.

Hoarding Alert: Dry Curacao

Sometimes, I think I know what it feels like to have Stockholm Syndrome, ‘cause I often have mixed feelings about my captor. This would be the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

On good days, I think it’s a benevolent entity, trying to do good by providing a better-than-decent selection and large sums of cash to the provincial government. And I like health care. Sure, I understand that conflating the LCBO and health care is a logical fallacy and that health care is by no means covered by liquor taxes and profits. At the same time, however, I don’t really believe that turning over the enterprise’s profits to private enterprise can help the provincial coffers.

I also think we should direct all our energy towards dismantling the Beer Store, instead of the LCBO. It, after all, is a privately-owned monopoly which, frankly, is a travesty. And, unlike the LCBO, which does outreach to licensees to find out how it can do better, the Beer Store is a monolith that gouges licensees, demonizes small business people and edges out small beer producers.

At other times, however, I feel that the LCBO is a slow-moving, bureaucratic beast that is almost always a few years behind drink trends. I am bothered by the fact that they trade in second-rate products, including shelf after shelf of flavoured spirits and other alco-pops. It bothers me when it botches small releases, like it did in December with the Buffalo Trace Heritage Collection, which ought to have been released through an on-line lottery system but, instead, saw bottles released earlier than the advertised date and had people lined up at three o’clock in the morning on one of the coldest nights of the year.

But I have my own bottle of George T. Stagg, thank you very much, which I got in South Carolina. Making use of foreign liquor stores is part of my strategy for coping with the LCBO. The other part involves liquor hoarding. When a great product is coming in, I make sure to get there early. And I buy as much as I think I need for at least a year.

Over the years, a network has come together to share information about what’s coming soon, which products are available in American border stores, what special releases are in stores now, what’s easy to make on your own and what’s about to be de-listed—essentially what to hoard now. It is this network that has helped the cocktail and spirit enthusiast community make it through the Lillet Blanc dry spells, the dearth of rye whiskey and the perennial vermouth shortages. Being involved in this network is the upside of dealing with the provincial authority. It’s how I learned to stop worrying and love the LCBO.

I hope this blog can be a part of that network. I want people to be able to find notices of new products and post their own findings, so we can make the most of the LCBO which, I’d like to point out, has enough to placate most connoisseurs and is ever so much better than it used to be. Remember, we used to have only four bourbons to choose from. If you remember the really bad days, it’ll help you get through the vaguely annoying ones.

For this blog’s inaugural Hoarding Alert, I call everybody’s attention to Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao (LCBO 363911), which will set you back $37.95—about 10 bucks more than it would be in the United States, which is par for the course. The cocktail community will need no introduction to this product, since it is widely regarded as a complex alternative to the standard orange liqueurs, making it a perfect sweetener in a range of cocktails. And it, in fact, is the perfect example of how the LCBO is trying to make amends with the cocktail crew that sometimes refers to the entity as “Let’s Create Bartender Obstacles,” since this orange liqueur is one of many products in its “Barkeep’s Pantry” portfolio. The first 10 bottles of Pierre Ferrand just made their way to a store in Oshawa, meaning that the rest of the province’s stores will have product on shelf any day now and are possibly even stocking them as we speak.

This highly-anticipated dry curacao is a one-off limited supply purchase. It won’t be here long, so get hoarding.