An Introduction to The Distilled Dossier

For years I’ve been passionate and borderline obsessed with the history of spirits, cocktails, and how booze has shaped the world.  It all started when I took a 6-part cocktail class hosted by a local craft cocktail bar here in Austin, Tx. Each week for 6 weeks we dove into a different spirit and focused on the history of it, how it spread across the globe, how it helped to shape history, and how it became an ingredient in cocktails.  After every class I found myself wanting to learn more and more. I quickly started looking for books, magazines, and websites to help quench my thirst for knowledge. While I found amazing things, there was a lot lacking. The books were an amazing resource for cocktail creations and to discover the history of a given spirit.  Most of the websites and magazines were half baked garbage, coupled with biased reviews, and a million ads.  

After my cocktail classes ended I still found myself looking like a lost puppy at the liquor store.  Taking suggestions from the clerks and hoping for the best. I spent way too much money trying bottles that fell flat or were built on marketing buzz.  I knew there had to be a better way than trying random things and hoping for the best. I decided to start taking tasting notes and keeping extensive data on all the spirits that I tasted.  Fast forward to a few years later, I had amassed a collection of spirits taking space up in cabinets, pantries, and closets, all with distinct tasting and profile notes I’d taken. Once I had collected enough I knew it was time to put that data to work.  

As a data analyst in my professional life I decided to take all the data points I had collected and put them together.  I wanted to take all the work I’ve done over the last few years and use it to help people feel a little less lost when they wander down the liquor store aisle. 

I’m not here to give biased reviews, I’m not here to try and get advertisers or promote things I don’t believe in.  I’m here to give you the data you need to become an expert in everything spirits. I hope you learn a thing or two while here but most of all I hope you are filling a glass with something you enjoy.  If you are doing both, then I’ve done my job. Cheers!