This is one beautiful state. I have been working this week with my sales guy who handles Montana and Northern Idaho. I flew into Spokane on Monday and we drove to Kooskia, Idaho to visit one of our dealers. Then we headed over to Missoula Montana. What a beautiful drive that was. From Missoula we headed to Helena, and then Great Falls and then finally ended up in Bozeman. If any of you ever have a chance to visit Montana, make sure you visit Western Montana. A great trip would be to start in Kalispell at the top of Western Montana and then drive South and end up in Yellowstone. You will never see anything more majestic than that trip.
Liquor in Montana is controlled by the state, as it is in most of the states in the Northwest. They only have state controlled stores to buy hard liquor. You can buy beer and wine in the grocery stores. But even with state controlled stores, the variety of miniatures you can find, varies from store to store and city to city. You have to visit as many as you can to find different brands, even though all purchases are made through one state office in Helena and then shipped to warehouses where each store places their orders. I visited four stores on my trip and finally at the last one, I found the Yazi Ginger glass bottle. I had not seen it in any other store. I bought 6 of them as they are hard to find in glass. I also found out that there are two vodkas that are distilled and bottled in Montana, Flathead vodka and Vigilante vodka. Unfortunately, neither one is currently being made in a miniature. Micro distilleries are popping up all over the place just like micro breweries. I try to visit as many of them as I can on my travels. It is always interesting to me to hear from the owners how they got into the micro distilling business and what is special about their vodka. Many of them say that they were vodka drinkers and could never find a vodka that suited them so they decided to make their own. Then they tell me how their process is different from any other because of something that they do. Sometimes it is the water. Sometimes it is the grain or other product they use to distill their spirits. For instance, Flathead vodka is made from sugar beets. That is the first time I have heard about sugar beets being used to distill the spirit. I know that Ciroc says that they make their vodka from sugar but they don;t say sugar beets.
The distillers that don;t make miniatures tell me it is because it is too expensive and time consuming. They have to tear down their line to make it over to miniature bottling and then back again for their big bottles. Others say they can;t find a supply of miniature bottles. I think they just don;t want to be bothered. Many of the ones who do make mini's understand the value of mini's in promoting their product. Then tend to come from a background that exposed them to sales and or marketing. Most of the ones who do not make mini's seem to come from a more disciplined background like science or engineering.
Some of the more interesting brands of micro distillers that do make mini vodka bottles are Goathead and Zebra out of Colorado, Dry Fly out of Washington, Cold River out of Maine and Cascade out of Oregon. They all make unique glass bottle miniature vodkas that would look good in any collection.
Well, I'm headed home today and am looking forward to any packages of mini's I might have received this week while I was gone.
See you next time.
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