Looking to buy the perfect bottle to celebrate the holidays? We asked the experts at three bottle shops around the Bay Area for their recommendations.
You may find a few blended spirits here, but the majority of Barrel Shoppe’s bourbons, ryes, whiskeys and tequilas are single barrel and single source — and nearly every bottle is unique.
“We wanted a store where we handpicked everything in there,” says founder Matthew Hagel, who opened the shop in March after 30 years as a distributor. “Everything has a story behind it. When someone buys a bottle we want someone to be able to take it to their poker game or as a gift and say why they bought it, something personal about the bottle, instead of just, ‘It was on sale.’”
The exact same ingredients put into a bourbon’s mash bill will have dramatically different flavors depending on the specific barrel it’s aged in. New Riff Bourbon Barrel No. 24496, for example, has a lot of sweetness to it, while No. 23463 skews more traditional oak.
“The exact mash bill, distilled the same way, put in the barrel at the same proof, everything’s the same except one might be higher in the rickhouse and one might be lower,” says Barrel Shoppe expert Carter Krznaric. “That’s what gives each barrel its unique quality.”
Recommendations: For beginners dabbling in the bourbon world, Krznaric recommends New Riff No. 24496 ($60) for a sweeter taste with a lighter price point than some. One of the most popular sellers is the Smokeye Hill Barrel Proof Straight Bourbon Whiskey ($80), which won Best Small Batch Bourbon honors at the 2024 ASCOT Awards. On the higher end, he suggests the Hillrock Bourbon Solera Aged Cask 1 ($170), which is exclusive to the store.
Details: Barrel Shoppe is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday at 3430 Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette; barrelshoppe.com.
Cask Store originated from a simple idea: If you’re at a cocktail bar and discover something tasty and new, made from liquors and ingredients you’ve never heard of, this is the place to find those items for yourself.
“When you want to make an Old Fashioned, but also want something on the rocks to taste the nuances, we’ll have a bottle to fill that void. Or if you want that rare, esoteric thing, we’re able to get our hands on that,” says manager Chris Banks.
The flagship Cask debuted in San Francisco in 2008 under the ownership of Future Bars, a nightlife-concept group behind upscale haunts like the city’s Bourbon & Branch and Berkeley’s Tupper & Reed. Since then, it has opened a second store in Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood, with a taproom serving limited-edition beers and wines and shelves stacked high with bottles of every hue of the booze rainbow.
In the Elmwood location, there’s a good spread in every spirit category, from international and domestic whiskeys to gins and absinthes rums, brandies, vermouths and amaros. There are treasures from far-off locales, including “Clairin rums from Haiti, which are all about terroir and are produced by single farmers growing their own sugar cane,” says Banks.
A heavy reliance on local producers is evident in selections like Home Base Bourbon, made by two sisters in the East Bay, and apple brandy from Petaluma’s Barber Lee Spirits. Western gins, in particular, seem sourced from a magical realm, with a Freeland Spirits Forest Gin made with Oregon chanterelles and Douglas fir tips and a Suncliffe botanical gin with juniper berries that (according to the producer) are “shaken from the twisted trees of Sedona — a slice of high desert beloved by mystics and adventurers — then sun-dried in a landscape marked by energy vortexes, soaring cliffs and the endless Arizona sky.”
The tiny taproom has a speakeasy feel and is invariably bustling with locals enjoying rare pours and the shuffleboard table. Free weekly tastings bring in even more folks, with recent events featuring Nikka Japanese whiskeys, Sirene Italian spirits and canned cocktails from New York’s famed cocktail bar, Death & Co.
Recommendations: Connoisseurs of brown spirits will enjoy Johnny Drum Private Stock from Kentucky’s Willett Distillery ($55 for 750 mL), whose caramel-and-marzipan palate stands up to bourbons twice the price.
For something a little more esoteric, Banks recommends the Siembra Azul tequila from the highlands of Jalisco, Mexico ($77 for 750 mL). Fun fact from Cask’s staff: “During the fermentation of the agave, they play Vivaldi and Mozart to the yeast. Not sure what the effect is, but this is a delicious product, so we won’t argue!”
Details: The Berkeley bottle shop is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and until 7 p.m. Sunday at 3185 College Ave. The taproom is open from 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; caskstore.com.
This cozy artisanal wine and sake shop has operated in downtown Millbrae since 1999, specializing in small-scale production wines made with minimal intervention. But you’ll need to get here soon. The bottle shop will be closing in a few months, freeing up Bernardo’s time for his soon-to-open sake cafe and listening bar — Japanese tea by day, sake in the evenings — on San Francisco’s Nob Hill.
Recommendations: At Vineyard Gate, Bernardo recommends wines ($35-$65) from La Onda. a small Point Richmond winery run by Dani Rozman, whose vineyard is in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Also worth a peek — and a taste — are wines from Domaine Antoine Lienhardt in France and Envinate in Spain.
Details: Open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, until 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday at 238 Broadway in Millbrae; vineyardgate.myshopify.com.
