Behind the Bar, Well Spirits Have Changed

A bar’s well is like an accounting department: sometimes mundane and unremarkable, but essential for success. It exists for the sole purpose of allowing bartenders to quickly crank out unfussy two- or three-ingredient drinks with cost-effective booze. The rat-a-tat, staccato names of most of these drinks — Rum and Coke, Gin & Tonic, Vodka Soda — leave nothing to the imagination. Even simple cocktail classics that rely on well spirits for their base, like an Old Fashioned or a Martini are ubiquitous to most guests. But these drinks can help pay the bills, making it possible for bars to serve up all those fancy drinks with esoteric ingredients and techniques if they’re so inclined. It can also provide a steady stream of sales revenue for any spirit that successfully squeezes into the select space.

 

Even through a quarter-century of formative movements in the industry, including the early-aughts cocktail revival and the respective craft distillery and tequila booms, the endgame of a properly assembled well remains as steady as ever: Make drinks fast with low-cost booze. Bottles can’t be too clunky to handle or too oblong to fit comfortably among their quick-service counterparts. They must work in a cocktail, but they can’t get lost or overpower the other ingredients. They should hit a sweet spot between too cheap and too expensive from a price-per-liter perspective – a range that tends to be higher at a cocktail bar than a dive. There are occasions when the juice is excellent enough to justify the monetary squeeze or even a weird vessel, but these are rare instances.

 

Still, a well is not immune to change. Red-hot brands cool down and fall out of fashion. Reliable labels tweak their formulas and disrupt their own consistency. Deep-pocketed beverage companies throw gobs of cash behind a new or emerging brand. As such, the well in 2024 looks a bit different than it did a decade ago. But what are the elements that have caused the well’s biggest shift?

 

The Spirit Market’s Expansion

 

The basic philosophy behind building a well hasn’t transformed. The tools surrounding it have. To wit: There were fewer than 600 American distilleries in 2014, and there are more than 2,300 American distilleries now. This statistic — which doesn’t cover the growth of non-U.S. markets or the ongoing agave boom — demonstrates a radical shifting of the spirits landscape over the last 10 years. For those who oversee bar programs, the abundance of options to consider has made creating and maintaining a solid well a more complex process, especially when quantity does not always equal quality.

 

“Ten years ago, everyone was using either Rittenhouse or Old Overholt for rye, Plymouth or Beefeater for gin, Dolin for dry vermouth, and Monkey Shoulder for Scotch,” explains Sarah Morrisey, bar manager and assistant general manager at NYC French restaurant Le Veau d’Or. “Del Maguey Vida was in everyone’s well because it was the only workhorse mezcal at the time. But now? Holy sh*t. There is so much noise you have to sift through. There are lots of good bottles out there, but there is also lots of crap.”

 

“We love our community, so if a local brand shows the same or better quality, consistency, and relationship to price point as a non-local brand, we’ll use the local brand.”

 

This is particularly relevant when it comes to agave spirits like tequila and mezcal, thanks to the U.S.’s increased zeal for the category. Now, instead of leaning on the categories’ old standbys, bartenders have turned to smaller brands such as Pueblo Viejo and Olmeca Altos for their well selections. Some bartenders have told VinePair that seeing these bottles in the well is an instant green flag for a bar, tipping them off that they’re at a legit spot.

 

“There’s an agave war going on for well placement, and I’m really not sure who is winning!” explains Stuart Weaver, general manager at cocktail bar Lady Jane in Denver. “We’re still learning more about agave, so there always seems to be a push by brands to use that education to get a new agave bottle in the well. Every brand is fighting, and it seems like a pretty wide spread of agave products across town.”

 

Local Spirits Abound

 

Theoretically, every new bottle that can fit within a well’s parameters poses an existential threat to an expression that’s already earned a spot. It’s a justified crisis. Like other elements of a bar, the well is subject to the ebb and flow of trends, and a banging new bottle can become a bona fide well darling among bar professionals. To that end, local and regional craft options have become major well players in their respective scenes, thanks to the aforementioned craft distillery boom and an increased willingness for bars to highlight their home turf. In Denver, for example, several bars reserve spots in their well for spirits made by local distillery The Family Jones Spirit House. According to Weaver, adding these bottles to the well gives bars an opportunity to do more than just hit traditional well metrics.

 

“All the big players pitch incentives to use their product in the well, and honestly, that’s a good thing. It’s just a commonplace business relationship — you scratch our back, and we scratch yours. But at the end of the day, it has to make sense for both parties.”

 

“We love our community, so if a local brand shows the same or better quality, consistency, and relationship to price point as a non-local brand, we’ll use the local brand,” he says. “The market has some great gins for the well, but nobody is going to touch my bottles of Family Jones.”

 

When a well bottle gets replaced by a local or a national offering, it’s usually a matter of the new juice vibing with a program better than the old juice. But there are occasions where an existing well bottle’s fate is self-inflicted due to ill-begotten changes.

 

“Beefeater used to be a great well gin, then they quietly lowered its ABV,” says Morrissey. “Now, it’s not as great anymore.”

 

Because of this combination of new expressions, locality, and questionable decision-making, no bottle is technically safe from a swap. Still, there are a few bottles that appear to be above reproach, with one brand our sources suggest is particularly dependable.

 

“Rittenhouse Rye is one bottle we’re always pleased to see in a well,” explains George Lahlou, co-owner of Paper Plane in San Jose, Calif. “It’s a great 100-proof rye whiskey for the price. There are cheaper options, but none are a better bang for your-buck.”

 

“Rittenhouse is a green flag for me,” adds Morrissey. “It’s cheap, overproof, and makes the best Manhattan.”

 

Big Brands Playing the Well Game

 

A 750-milliliter spirit bottle can produce about a dozen well drinks with a 2-ounce pour. This means a bar can rip through a bottle quickly on a busy night, which makes it prudent for it to have a decent supply of reserves on hand. This means a consistently copious amount of distributor orders. Beverage giants with expansive brand portfolios — Diageo, Bacardi, and Casa Lumbre, and the like — plan for this, and some make it their mission to own the nation’s wells. Some portfolios strive for this goal more than others, using strategies like price discounts or increased access to highly allocated bottles as incentives to earn their prize. For bar owners and managers, partaking can be advantageous.

 

“If a parent company or brand supports inclusion causes, they have my support. If their actions devalue me, I’ll drop them from my program, let alone drop them from my well.”

 

“All the big players pitch incentives to use their product in the well, and honestly, that’s a good thing,” explains Lahlou. “It’s just a commonplace business relationship — you scratch our back, and we scratch yours. But at the end of the day, it has to make sense for both parties.”

 

In some cases, these relationships can yield closer collaboration. “Big brands have the resources for activations and events,” says Weaver. “If a bar wants to host a fundraising event to support a specific cause, a big brand that has a bottle or two in the well can help a bar put that together.”

 

And then, there’s the flip side: If a brand or portfolio sullies their reputation through a corporate decision or via public discourse, a bar can 86 them from the well and beyond. “The ethos of a company matters to me, especially as a gay man,” says Weaver. “If a parent company or brand supports inclusion causes, they have my support. If their actions devalue me, I’ll drop them from my program, let alone drop them from my well.”

 

Sentiments like Weaver’s carry particular gravitas in the wake of Brown-Forman’s recent decision to suspend their DEI goals after pressures from a far-right provocateur. While the brands within the Brown-Forman portfolio — not to mention their distillers, brand ambassadors, and distributors — may not align with the path their parent company took, they could potentially face some lost well spots.

 

The Well Ahead

 

The nation’s collective well will surely keep changing. New brands will emerge and jockey for well status; a few existing brands will probably redesign their bottles for more efficient handling. We’re still not done learning about agave spirits and all their splendor. But to an extent, the well itself remains constant. As long as people clamor for simple, efficiently made drinks, the well will be crucial to a bar’s profitability. Its purpose is eternal. In some cases, the brands may be, too.

 

“There’s some bars you may go to 10 years from now that have the exact same stuff sitting in their rails that they do now,” says Lahlou. “Old habits can die hard sometimes.”