Inventory for October 29th, 2017

Welcome, friends! It’s almost All Hallows’ Eve but that doesn’t mean we’ll be entertaining you with blood orange drinks or grape eyeballs (maybe though!). Instead, here’s some news: Food and Wine took it upon itself to take a deeper look into “Europe’s” Jägermeister culture, Nico de Soto tried visiting all of the World’s 50 Best Bars, an all female Irish Whiskey team launched their first product, and SevenFiftyDaily took a look at maternity leave in the spirits industry. Cheers!

Most of you will have heard of the devastating wildfires currently running rampage across Northern California and what a horrible impact they’re having on the grapes grown there. Punch author Jon Bonné took a closer look and last week wrote an article on “California’s wildfires and the complexities of wine in America.” It’s an article well worth a read that takes apart the economic disparities of many of the “wine country” towns and looks at what the wine industry in the States really looks like.

Europe’s Underground Jägermeister Drinking Culture Is Spectacular

Gotta love how Americans continue to lump all of Europe’s 50 countries into one big pile. This week, Food & Wine’s Jenn Rice researched how “Europe” uses Jägermeister. Prague’s Black Angel’s Bar, for example, makes Jägermeister the centerpiece of its tiki cocktails while, when visiting Vienna’s Tür 7, you might encounter Jägermeister mixed with rye whisky, mustard, ketchup, lime juice, apricot juice, and beer. Rice also speaks to Nils Boese, “Jägermeister’s unofficial brand ambassador,” who says that “Everyone knows Jäger as a shot. The brand is very renowned but no one knows what it actually tastes like. It’s not about mixability; it’s about versatility.”

Visiting All of the World’s 50 Best Bars

Nico de Soto almost managed to visit all of the 2016 list by the time the 2017 was announced a few weeks ago. Almost. This year, he’s sure he can manage them all. In early October, de Soto spoke to SevenFiftyDaily about his plans. According to him, Singapore’s Manhattan Bar offers the best service, while Mexico City’s Limantour is the most fun. London’s Dandelyan and Athens’s The Clumsies offered him the most memorable cocktails. His personal top five bars are as follows: Manhattan Bar, Mabel, Operation Dagger, Dandelyan, 69 Colebrooke Row. An interesting opinion from a bartender who’s seen a lot of bars.

All Female Irish Whisky Team Launches First Product

The Spirits Business reports that “Chapel Gate Irish Whiskey Co, the first modern whiskey bonder in Ireland and the country’s only all-female Irish whiskey company, has launched its first product.” Founded in 2016 by Louise McGuane this is the world’s first and only all-female whiskey company. McGuane says “Bonding Irish whiskey was a lost art and business model which we have brought back to life. We are the first whiskey bonder in Ireland in 50 years and are proud to have brought this way of making Irish whiskey back.”

The first product is the J.J. Corry The Gael, a blend of 5% 26-year-old single malt, 27.5% 11-year-old single malt, 27.5% 15-year-old single malt and 40% is seven-year-old single grain whiskey which will be bottled at 46% abv and available online in 500ml (£60) and 750ml (£80).

Navigating Pregnancy and Maternity Leave in the Drinks Industry

Booze and babies don’t really mix, and many companies seem to have adopted that policy. Last week, SevenFiftyDaily dove into the practice in and around maternity leave in the industry. Brown-Forman, for example, has a parental leave policy that’s very parent-friendly: twelve weeks of paid leave for the mother and six weeks of paid leave for the non-birth parent. To Europeans, that might sound crazy – most new birth-parents take up to a year off in Germany – but apparently Brown-Forman has the best parental leave in the industry in the US.

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2016 National Compensation Survey, the leisure/hospitality sector has among the lowest rates – 6 percent – of access to paid family leave. (That category includes restaurants and hotels, though not bars.) The only category to fare worse was the construction industry. Manufacturing, which includes companies that make alcoholic beverages, was slightly higher, at 10 percent.” Of course, the restaurant and bar industry as a whole isn’t particularly flexible and doesn’t look kindly upon employees “dropping out” for months at a time. Bottom line, the industry (but also the United States as a country) needs to do better. People have children, that is literally the only way this whole human race thing is going to survive. So start accommodating that.