The 4 Best Alcohol Gifts for Cocktail Lovers

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One of my favorite things about wine and spirits–particularly when considering gifting a bottle for the holidays—is their ability to tell a story. Behind every glass is a story about the place, the people, and the production methods that brought it to life. This “sense of place” expressed in liquid form is often described in the wine world as “terroir."

Terroir is a somewhat ambiguous (and often controversial) term that originated in France and is traditionally used in the world of wine to describe the distinct elements of soil, micro-climate, and winemaking methods in high-quality wines.

However, the term has increasingly been applied to distilled spirits. Craft distilleries often use it as a marketing term, whereas enthusiastic drinkers cite the term when describing spirits that seem to uniquely express the essence of their origins or creators.

But can spirits express terroir in the same way wine does? To answer that question, we must first try to accurately describe “terroir."

Wine writer Matt Kramer describes terroir with the all-encompassing term “somewhereness.” He writes in his book, Making Sense of Wine, “Great wines taste like they come from somewhere. Lesser wines are interchangeable; they could come from anywhere."

Advocates of the terroir concept emphasize that while it is inherently connected to physical aspects of location such as soil and climate, it is also derived from intangible elements that can’t be described or codified by natural science. According to author Hugh Johnson, even spiritual elements, like “the soul of the vigneron," must be considered.

In their book, The Sommelier's Atlas of Taste, winemaker Rajat Parr and journalist Jordan Mackay sum up the vague complexity inherent to the idea of terroir: “We’re believers in terroir and see its expression in wine as an emergence of factors too complex to be measured and explained by contemporary science.”

With a definition that even the experts admit is vague and difficult to pin down, who’s to say the concept of terroir can’t be applied to the world of distilled spirits too? The interpretation of terroir, after all, varies with perspective. Here, I present four bottles made by distillers and blenders who in my opinion express terroir with their use of ingredients—whether it be grains, agave or even hand-foraged botanicals—sourced from distinct locales and through production methods result in a detectable in the final product.

Although these spirits may not wholly satisfy every facet of "terroir" as per a purist's definition, each one conveys a unique "somewhereness"—borrowing Kramer's term—and that is worth seeking out this holiday season.

Loco Tequila Ambar

There is perhaps no spirit better situated to fully express terroir than tequila. Distilled from blue agave grown in five specific regions in Mexico, tequila is inherently tied to land and farming.

However, the prevalence of additives and the excessive use of oak have increasingly become standard to mask imperfections caused by shorter production times and the use of underripe agave, all to meet the increasing market demands for tequila.

Loco Tequila, a recently launched ultra-premium brand, enters this delicate period in the industry as an exciting outlier. They embrace many of the traditional cornerstones of terroir, focusing primarily on their growing location and farming practices while embracing old-school, slow-paced production methods.

Loco exclusively uses their estate-owned agave plants from the El Arenal sub-region of Jalisco. According to Maestro Tequilero Alberto Navarro, the area has a micro-climate that contains soils with more earthy and herbaceous influences than the surrounding Altos de Jalisco region. Then, they utilize uber-traditional farming and production methods, such as circular planting, selective harvesting, double-shaving, slow cooking, fermenting with a 100-year-old yeast strain, and double-distilling in small stills. This direct oversight of the entire tequila production process, from planting to distillation, allows Loco to have complete control of their products, and create tequilas that express the distinct terroir of El Arenal.

“Our interpretation of terroir starts with a municipality (El Arenal) that has the same soil, weather conditions, and water conditions throughout," says Navarro. “We then consider our agronomical practices – how we take care of the fields, what we use for nutrition, how close we plant the agave plants to each other, etc. Controlling the quality of your own fields is so important for achieving terroir.”

The results in subtle, delicate, and agave-forward tequilas that truly stand out from the crowd.

The Loco Blanco exhibits delicate and fresh agave characteristics like eucalyptus, mint, and bell pepper, followed by a subtle finish of sweet molasses and salinity. The Loco Ambar reposado tequila—created from a blend of their distillate aged in a mix of port, whiskey, Pedro Ximenez, and Roble Frances barrels—exhibits sweeter notes of hazelnut and almond over a backbone of minerality and wet forest floor. The important thing here is the fresh and herbaceous agave is still the dominating characteristic of this tequila even with the addition of oak. These are exquisite sipping tequilas that would make perfect gifts for anyone with a taste and appreciation for premium spirits.

Wonderbird Spirits Gin

Wonderbird Spirits is a small craft distillery in Taylor, Mississippi that takes an entirely novel approach to producing gin. Instead of using wheat or barley like most gins, the base distillate for Wonderbird’s flagship product, Gin No. 61, is made from Mississippi Delta-grown jasmine rice.

This direct link to the local region doesn’t merely check off a “terroir” box for Wonderbird’s bio. On the contrary, this is a case where the “somewhereness” of the unique local ingredient is acutely apparent on the nose and palate when tasting.

“The rice imparts this magnificent mouthfeel with a viscosity that is so unusual,” says Wonderbird founder Rob Forster. "The nose and the mouthfeel of this gin are very uncharacteristic, and that’s one of the things that make it really special.”

Wonderbird’s non-traditional base distillate is only half of their terroir story. They layer in 10 distinct botanicals, several of which are hand-foraged from their distillery grounds, including pine needles and red clover. This results in a gin with a complex botanical flavor profile that could truly only come from the terroir of its north Mississippi origins.

Wonderbird Gin’s rich mouthfeel and bold botanicals make it ideal for use in cocktails, and therefore a perfect gift for the budding bartender in your family.

“This was built as a martini gin,” Forster explains. “The chewiness and big weighty mouthfeel work so well in a martini. There’s also an earthiness to the botanicals in our gin that works really well in a white Negroni.”

Redbreast Tawny Port Edition Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey

Redbreast blenders Billy Leighton and Dave McCabe make no specific claims to producing whiskeys that express terroir, but their unique series of Irish Whiskeys have direct ties to specific winemakers and winegrowing regions in Spain and Portugal.

Redbreast’s latest release in their “Iberian Series” of whiskeys is aged in port wine barrels from the Douro Valley in Portugal, a result of decades-long relationships that Leighton and McCabe have forged with the winemakers and coopers in the region.

Similar to the other producers on this list, Leighton and McCabe oversee the entire cycle of production, from creating the base distillate to working directly with local Douro Valley coopers to make bespoke casks. They then collaborate with winemakers to monitor the tawny port aging process and then hand-select which casks will be sent to Ireland to be filled with whiskey. This approach to whiskey production embraces a spiritual definition of terroir, in which the “somewhereness” represented inside the bottle is linked to people and friendships.

The influence of the port wine casks on this whiskey is instantly detectable with notes of dried figs, almonds, and confectionary sugar, all of which are trademark characteristics of tawny port wine.

“For me, the flavor derived from finishing our whiskey, links us to the place, and the place is linked to the terroir of that area," says McCabe. “So when you’re using certain casks from certain regions, the terroir influences the wine in those casks, and we can see it in true form in our whiskey.”

“The terroir influence for me,” adds Leighton, “is whenever I actually have a glass of it, and it immediately transports me back to the Douro, standing at a viewpoint looking down over the vines and the river below.”

The magical alchemy of connection between place and people that’s represented in a spirit like this makes it a perfect gift for anyone with a shared interest in wine and whiskey.

Martingale Cognac

Martingale, another premium spirit brand relatively new to the market, distinguishes itself from the wider cognac market in interesting ways.

Owned and run by the 4th generation of the region’s revered Thomas family, Martingale Cognac is made with grapes from family-owned vineyards across the top four crus of the Cognac-denominated area.

“Our process for making Martingale spans grape to glass, making us rare among Cognac producers," says co-founder and master blender Aumury Thomas. “Having complete control of the entire process from the vineyards to the final liquid is a unique asset. It means we don’t need to standardize the liquid with additives like boisé.”

The use of estate-owned grapes and the control of the process from start to finish allows the Thomas family to express terroir in ways that most Cognac brands are unable to. The majority of Cognac brands currently in the market are sourced from multiple distilleries and tend to focus on a single cru for the sake of consistency. Martingale, on the other hand, creates a blend from four of Cognac’s crus, fine-tuning it to create a light and fragrant spirit that expresses the unique terroir of each cru on the nose and palate.

The sweet fruit notes of the Borderies cru are present on the nose, as are the richer dried fruit characteristics of Grande Champagne’s chalk soils. On the palate, the spice notes of the clay-dominated Petite Champagne cru come to the front, balanced by the acidic green apple and minerality of Fins Bois and its limestone soils. These four appellations are blended in a way that results in a light, balanced, and rounded style Cognac, but in which the distinct characteristics of each cru are not lost.

The detailed attention that Aumury and the rest of the Thomas family have paid to capturing the diverse characteristics of their vineyard sites and cru appellations make this a uniquely terroir-driven Cognac, that any spirit lover–but especially cognac and whiskey drinkers–will get a lot out of.

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