One Last Excuse to Drink.

It's a sad day for me: After three years, The Grid has folded. And I'm not the only one who is sad - the outpouring on Twitter and Facebook has been amazing.

The news, however, that there were ten bottles of Eagle Rare at the Bloor-Ossington LCBO took the sting out - a little. At the same time, though, it was also a sad reminder of what the past three years have been about. It made it clear to me why I was so gutted by the news. After all, The Grid must mean a lot more to the dynamic team of staffers that worked on it full-time (often til the wee hours of the morning) than it did to me. I was just the drinks contributor. But The Grid was the first Toronto publication (that I know of, at least) to really profile bartenders and to showcase their creations. It was one of the first publications anywhere, I believe, that photographed the bartenders instead of the drinks as a regular feature. The Grid didn't just cover openings and "it spots." Over the years, we wrote about Lee's Palace, Boston Pizza and drinking at the Skydome. We tried to avoid $22 cocktails and bottles of whiskey over $50. We always tried to get at the personalities and not just the cocktails. I think we played a small role in helping the cocktail community grow; if nothing else, as a result of the Bar Stars column, we could recognize people's faces and know a little something about them.

The other thing The Grid did was to take a chance on bizarre little items. I know David Sax, who wrote about food trends for the mag, thanked The Grid for letting him such a wide berth. I agree. When I pitched the Hoarding Alert - an online column about what to get at the LCBO - I didn't hold out a lot of hope. But, despite the fact that it could only ever appeal to a small niche market that would largely consist of bartenders and cocktail geeks, they took it and ran it for over a year, right up until the first round of cuts meant the slashing of most of the on-line content.

It was probably good timing, since the Hoarding Alert was already less of a necessity. The LCBO has really responded to the demands of the growing cocktail community with well-stocked shelves and, on the whole, ample quantities of niche products. I'd still like more vermouth choices, but, overall, the things that are still worthy of Hoarding Alerts are often the things for which we get small allocations - Stagg, Sazerac and Blanton's Gold, for example. And I'm not trying to say that The Grid was responsible for all of these changes - of course cocktails were on the rise and the community was already forming and the LCBO was getting better before we launched. I just think we were a small part of the snowballing growth. And I think that's why there are so many people from a wide range of communities who have expressed sadness about the demise of The Grid today. Every section tried its best to represent what was going on in the communities it covered. What an honour that I got to be a part of that. Thanks for having me.

And to anybody still reading, let's have a toast to the Bar Stars with a shot of Eagle Rare today. Although I'd probably rather drink Booker's, it's still a good value at $49.95. The bottles seem to be trickling in - ten at the Bloor-Ossington LCBO today, a store which, I remind you, used to only stock Jim Beam and Wild Turkey (not that there's anything wrong with that) back when this column began. Cheers.

Hoarding Alert: St. Rémy Réserve Privée

Mid-way through cooking a lobster risotto the other night, I discovered I was fresh out of brandy.

Although I had to use pricey cognac in my rice, I now consider the entire incident a happy accident. Pollyanna? Not much. The reason is that it got me searching the LCBO site for brandy, only to discover that St. Rémy Réserve Privée has returned. And not only that, it’s on sale ($5 off) ‘til May 25.

While it’s been here a couple of times before, it’s often unavailable and, in fact, I was under the (likely) mistaken impression that it was a seasonal item. I do know that when I looked for it for a friend in early May there were only a couple of bottles in the entire province.

Assuming that it won’t be reliably available for long, I’m issuing a yellow-level hoarding alert, since it’s not often you get a crack at a brandy that I might even choose over a cognac. It’s rich, raisin-y and sweet, with a finish that almost tastes like a really great cola. Although best enjoyed on its own, it’d make a hell of an Alexander or Stinger.

And it’s $34.95 for the next 10 days. Get while the going’s good. LCBO 313288

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.