Latest / Kvetch & Release / The 19-Litre Saskatchewan Mickey eclipses Ontario's 3-L Texas Mickey & Alberta's 4-L milk jug vodka
Transcript
- 0:00The key here on am eight hundred CKLW. When I was growing up in
- 0:04first hit drinking age, the largest bottle that I had ever seen was a
- 0:09Texas Mickey available for sale at the LCBO, and it went for an ungodly
- 0:15price of something like one hundred and thirty five to one hundred and fifty bucks,
- 0:18and it was a three leader. Well, we found out last week
- 0:21or so about an Alberta four leader gallon milk jug that was for sale.
- 0:28That prompted some eyebrow raising from the government. Well, those can each step
- 0:34aside, move away, because entering the scene is a little known nineteen Leader
- 0:40Saskatchewan Mickey, which exists joining me right now to discuss, is the author
- 0:46of a column which is so aptly titled four Leader jug of Vodka Not enough
- 0:50the nineteen Leader Saskatchewan Mickey maybe for you. National Post reporter Brian Pasifume joins
- 0:57me right now. How you doing, Brian, Hey, get afternoon?
- 1:00Very well. Thanks. This is uh, you know, it's a funny
- 1:03story right off the bat. How did you how did you end up on
- 1:06this uh large liquor beat. You know. The thing that really kind of
- 1:11amuses me about the story, It just shows how how unevolved Canadians are when
- 1:18it comes to the liquor and alcohol. I mean, you've got a country
- 1:23that legalized pot, you know, literal in so many different ways. But
- 1:26when do you remember when dan akro had tried to sell that vodka that came
- 1:30in a glass skull. People lost their minds. Well, yes, it's
- 1:34you know, and anybody's like me. You grew up in Ontario, like
- 1:37you're just kind of used to the boring stuff you get at the LCBO and
- 1:40you don't realize you move out west, or maybe your listeners across the across
- 1:44the river, you go to Detroit, you realize that you're kind of missing
- 1:47out on a lot of stuff. And one of those things are are nineteen
- 1:49Leader bottles of vodka? Well yeah, yeah, I was just like everyone
- 1:55else that was kind of engrossed in the whole moral panic that went on in
- 1:59albert A few weeks when it came to those four Leaders of vodka being insulted
- 2:02under fifty bucks, which you know, you know, I got the i'
- 2:07bert A government to condemn it. You've got the distiller asking the government for
- 2:12an apology. So yeah, I used to live. I used to live
- 2:15in Saskatchewan, and I remembered seeing these in stores, and I remember reading
- 2:22all the teats and stories about the four Data Drugs com distinctly remember that water
- 2:25cooler jug size of Vodden and turn up they Not only are they still available,
- 2:30I spoke of the distillery. They're in a little town of it now
- 2:34in north of Saskatoon, and they told me they sold nearly two hundred of
- 2:37them last year just alone, starting at a suggested retail price of four ninety
- 2:40nine. You know, not bad there, quite frankly. So this was
- 2:44introduced in twenty sixteen, not really known on the national stage until this has
- 2:49hit right now. I think it does discuss, you know, how how
- 2:52puritanical we really are here, especially in Ontario, but you know, Canada
- 2:55as a whole. As you mentioned, we can go across the border here
- 2:59to Detroit very easily from Windsor and you can go into a costco and buy
- 3:04alcohol in bulk. And it's not at all a shocking and surprising thing,
- 3:07but it does speak to the very you know, differences that we have.
- 3:09Namely, I suppose a public healthcare sector being the first thing exactly, and
- 3:15you need it if you're going to be buying nineteen all the time. It's
- 3:20yeah, that's kind of the biggest. And I lived in Alberta for about
- 3:23a decade and yeah, like the liquor stores out there, you got things
- 3:25you never find here, like like alcoholic whipped cream and just incredible stuff.
- 3:30So yeah, they this like for me, like I always thought that Texas
- 3:34mickey was the biggest you can get, but yeah, I spoke to the
- 3:38distiller would go distilleries, and yeah, they told me that originally this was
- 3:45designed for bars. A lot of bars they noticed were buying bulk vodka and
- 3:49thedustry of transferring the bottles into the larger containers, so they decided to cut
- 3:53of the middleman. And this is strictly a retail only thing until Saskatchewan liquor
- 3:58stores Carla calling him saying, well y coming and asking for the bottles,
- 4:00you know, to send someone away, and it just came from there.
- 4:04People give them away as gifts, people buy them for events and weddings.
- 4:08Some people just buy one at the beginning of the summer, the last sum
- 4:11of the cottage. So yeah, it's it definitely seems to be a lot
- 4:14of interest in people buying commercial quantities of voca as long as you're not going
- 4:17through it in a weekend like on your own. You know, I say,
- 4:19hey, take advantage of the bulk buy. Why not You did reach
- 4:23out to the government about this in Saskatchewan. Yeah, they never go back
- 4:26to me. They did. They did late this morning. I guess they
- 4:30realized. I guess they read the front page of the National Post and so
- 4:35the viralble story is going, and said, i'll crack. Maybe we should
- 4:38have responded. They did a semi reply, just saying things like, you
- 4:43know, we you know, they can do what they want and we have
- 4:45some concerns, but Saskatchewan does not limit retailers and the sizes of of portions
- 4:51they choose to sell. So yeah, it was, Uh, it was
- 4:55interesting to see that you know, it's by Alberta, Saskatchewan that didn't into
- 5:00these mind if it does. And uh what I found to be hilarious as
- 5:03well as you know, of course they've got a lot of different awards and
- 5:06great for them on what they're producing there over at redu Goa Distilleries. But
- 5:11it's also kosher product, Yes it was. They made several several mentions in
- 5:18the social media that this is the Kosher vodk