In late 2012, a few guys named Simon Ford, Dushan Zaric, and Jason Kosmas launched a booze line under the banner 86 Company Spirits. For those of you who don’t know, 86 is restaurant slang for either we’ve run out (“86 lobster, we’re subbing shrimp”) or we threw someone out (“Guy on 22 was drooling like a basset hound and tried to pay in nickels, so we 86’d him.”)

All three of these guys come from the bar, and wanted to create a spirits company specifically accommodating to bartenders. So in this case, the 86 refers to “86 the bullshit.” As in, we are going to tell you exactly what is in our products, exactly how we made it, in what proportions and in what amount of time. No apocryphal yellowing recipes, no arbitrary ties to great men of history, no juju magic. Here is what we make, here is how, here is why.

That why is important. The transparency alone would be enough, but the fact that each of these products has a why — a real reason to exist — is what makes them so special.

There are way too many craft distillers making vodka and gin and shitty white whiskey and 9 month old bourbon just to do it, and their products neither taste better, nor are meaningfully different, than what is already abundantly available. This is why so many of them attempt to tie themselves to Napoleon or Hemingway for no reason at all, and why so many of them claim that their recipe dates to the 18th century, even though they’ve only been making it for 9 fucking months. And this is why the 86 Co. products are so refreshing. Each stands on its own merits, and each one (save, of course, for the vodka) is made to satisfy a cocktail need that had, up until now, been unmet.

If you’ve ever stood within earshot of the cyclonic bloviations of liquor marketing you’ll know that almost everyone says their products are designed “specifically for cocktails,” but in this case, it is fundamentally true: when creating them, the Ford and Zaric let the needs of the cocktail shape the spirit, not the other way around.

I’m not going to write everything about them. They have been extensively reviewed all over the web, to say nothing of fact that every production detail about them can be found on the website, or, handily, on the labels themselves. But a couple weeks ago, Dushan himself came to Kettner Exchange to give us a little training on their wonderful line, and there are a few interesting things that are worthy of special note.

Caña Brava Rum

First things first: daiquiris (rum + lime juice + sugar) are amazing. In the desperate yearning heart of every 2oz of rum is the unspoken desire to be turned into a daiquiri. Yes, rum is mixed with other stuff sometimes, but it never really wants to be. It wants to be a daiquiri. Because daiquiris are amazing.

So, the goal with Caña Brava was to create an authentic, prohibition-era Cuban style light rum, a robust, dry spirit bottled at higher proof so to shine in daiquiris. They went to Don Poncho Fernandez, who was the master blender of Havana Club for decades and is now in Panama (making him, let’s just say, a Panamaniac), and together created Caña Brava. Apparently Dushan showed up to the distillery with sacks of limes and boxes of sugar, and made daiquiris with each rum sample until they nailed it.

It is extremely dry, allowing you to manage your own sweetness. It’s bottled at 43% instead of the standard 40%, providing cocktail infrastructure, and it has a mid-palate explosion, the point in the tasting experience where most drinks suffer. It makes a brilliant daiquiri, and is, therefore, an enormous success.

Note: Loyal readers will recall I once wrote something similar about Banks 5 Rum, and indeed, these two products aspire to the same thing. The difference, then, is in how they try to get there: Banks blends in Indonesian Arrack for a dynamic and wholly original flavor profile, while Caña Brava aims at recreating the Cuban style straight through distillation. They’re almost too different to compare, but I can say that the two products make daiquiris that taste nothing alike and yet are both enormously tasty.

Ford’s Gin

Made at the Thames distillery in London, Ford’s aims to be the ultimate cocktail gin: to be good for Tom Collins’, good for Negronis, good for Martinis, and to work with both lemon and lime. I admit, this education was the first I’d ever heard of this lemon vs. lime business — apparently some gins work better with lemon and some with lime, which through some deficit of palate or experience, I’ve never encountered (it’s also always possible that’s not a real thing, but honestly, I’m inclined to trust Dushan’s palate over my own).

In any event, they experimented with oil extraction and botanical steep time until they got it just right, at 15hrs. Its viscosity and balance is ideal for martinis (it was the best London Dry Gin in the Great Martini Experiements). Like the rum, it has a mid-palate explosion of flavor. Because gin is all about specific tastes at specific strengths, much of it falls to personal preference. What I will say is that it can stand shoulder to shoulder with its legendary peers, which is, for a London Dry Gin, the biggest compliment I have to give.

Tequila Cabeza

The tequila is bottled at 43% instead of the standard 40%, which in and of itself gives it broad shoulders. But more than that, they wanted a tequila that could present a bold agave flavor even when mixed. The agave is the most delicate flavor and the first to get drowned out, Dushan complained, and too often you’ll have a margarita that has all the pepper and vegetal notes and creaminess of the tequila, but no agave.

They went to El Ranchito distillery in the highlands, NOM1414, and worked with the distiller to craft the product. They found the tequila can only be made in the winter, interestingly, when the temperature is lower and fermentation can happen more slowly, because only a long fermentation can give the flavors they wanted. So after about 10 days of fermentation, it’s distilled to industry standard 55%, cut back to 43%, and bottled.

Taken neat, it’s a bit rougher than it’s peers, probably because of those proof points. But those are what makes it pop in cocktails, with a giant mid-palate agave sweetness, a bit of bitterness from the extra booze, and a nice creamy texture. Very cool, utterly unique.

Aylesbury Duck Vodka

… is vodka. I don’t know. It’s good vodka. It’s well priced and well made and it’s not hurting anyone. Plus, the label is funny.

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Trivia: I had always assumed the term 86 was some antiquated computer code or something, but apparently it’s at least 70 years old and no one actually knows how it came about. There are several competing theories, and they are all equally unsatisfying.

More Trivia: I wrote “juju magic” up there because it felt right in the sentence, then got nervous because I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of slur.  In the process of looking into that, my googling took me to The Racial Slur Database, an organization that for some bizarre reason categorizes these things. They have a search bar, or you can just browse by ethnic group. They have a homepage feature, “Racial Slur of the Day.” In the submission section, they take pains to remind you that only racial slurs will be accepted, and gender and sexuality slurs are strictly prohibited.

I have nothing more to report on this, just that it exists and I find that fact endlessly amusing.