Trader Joes and BevMo Trip Report

 Made a quick trip to Trader Joes and BevMo the other day.  A couple notes, Trader Joes is quickly becoming a scotch powerhouse.  I think what they do is purchase excess stock from leading scotch manufacturers, and then sell it as the cross-branded Trader Joes scotch. 

It’s a pretty good idea, because they get instant street cred from the cross branding, and they don’t have to actually take the time to cask this stuff for 18 years.

The top bottle to the left is a Glenlivet/TJs 15 year old.

Below that to the left is an 18yr old Bowmore/TJ, and to the right you have a blended TJ, which is not co-branded (I looked at the label and it seemed generic, couldn’t match up the bottler with anyone I could recognize), and a 10 year old Glen Grant/TJ bottle.

Finally to the left you have a 12 year old Maccallan/TJs co-branded bottle.  I had previously bought an 11 yr old Maccallan/TJs co-branded bottle, but I guess they were out of those.  In any case, really good selection at TJs. 

The prices were decent, and you get a big discount off of the name branded scotches.  From my experience you don’t really take any hit in terms of quality, although as mentioned the only bottle I did try was an 11 maccallan/TJs. 

One thing that is interesting tho, is that TJs has really invested heavily in this co-branding model, and I think it makes a lot of sense.  I mean, they started it off to some extent with Charles Shaw, buying off excess wine from a bunch of wineries, but this scotch model is even more interesting.  I bet they have deals with these major distilleries to purchase excess stock, then they leverage their established sales channel, which is very strong in this regionin particular, to sell the stuff.  Seems like a win/win, but I do think the TJs co-branded  scotches are taking some share away from the single branded offerings.  In any case, TJs is probably not a huge channel for these guys anyway.

The other half of the trip was spent at BevMo.  I really love christmas because BevMo gets all these awesome christmas gift packages.  I guess you’re supposed to give these away, but really I just like to buy them for myself because they often have some really cool extras, are always reasonably priced, and in my opinion really make for a generic gift. 

 

Some of the better ones I saw were this tequila monstrosity (above), with four shot glasses, a salt and pepper shaker shaped like cacti, and pepper infused tequila.

You have the Effen Set here, with a couple of pretty nice glasses with a rubbery effen logo.  I actually got this one.

The Johnnie Walker set with glasses is always a good deal, but I have so many of these glasses I can’t really buy any more of these.

Cutty Sark had a pretty nice looking poker set, including chips and cards.  But really, you have, what, like $100 bucks in chips there?   Is everyone supposed to bring their own Cutty Sark gift set to the game?

This was another cool new product I saw at BevMo, although its not really christmas gift set related.  It’s a Bloody Mary in a box, and as you can see on the front of the package, ‘Alcohol is in it!’  Which, if you think about it, is kind of a funny phrase to have plastered on your box of bloody mary mix, but i guess it makes sense since there are so many mixes without alcohol out there.  But really, who drinks that much bloody mary that you need to have it premixed in a box?

My purchases:  I got Titos and Moskovska…… from TJs.  Titos is really my favorite vodka right now.  I bet nine out of ten times, the average consumer would not be able to differentiate between titos and grey goose.  The only problem you have is when you have company and you have to convince people that the vodka in the tito’s bottle with the plastic cap and label that looks like it came out of an ink-jet is actually legit.  And really, people will still think you’re a cheap ass for serving it.  I mean, it costs $17, so its on par with a stoli and maybe ketel on sale, but still, the bottle looks pretty ghetto.  But the vodka itself is solid – hardly any hangover, really clean.  try it, trust me.

Speaking of cheap ass, then you have this moskova…i’m going to call it green russian vodka.  SA and I analyzed the bottle, and believe that it is either a really good knock off of stoli, or some off-brand stoli that they use to get rid of extra stock.  The design of the bottle looks pretty much exactly like stoli – down to the four medallions on the label, except its green.  It even says ‘made in russia’.  Plus its cheap, only 8 bucks at TJs, so I use this for my bloody marys.

I got that Effen set too, it looked really nice and I’ve heard good things about Effen.  Haven’t tried it yet, so we’ll see.

I also got a couple of bloody mary mixes.  Major peters is just one of those cheap watered down brands that a lot of liquor stores have.  But the ‘Stirrings’ on the right, that one was like $9 per bottle, but it looked really good.  For one, you can see the pieces of horseraddish and stuff floating around, so you know it’s not just all watered down.  It tastes overall very good.  a little on the spicy side, but again you really get to taste all these different ingredients and spices and stuff, because they seem to use real ingredients instead of mass produced stuff.  Only, $9 for a bloody mary mix is pretty stiff – I mean, I could have got the bloody mary box for $12, and that includes the alcohol.