Wines priced more for every day ($20 and under) are displayed directly outside the entrance to the cellar in both stores.Īnd at the center of the Pasadena store is its wine-tasting bar. The cellar at the Pasadena store can hold up to 10,000 bottles. In both stores, the upper-end of Mission’s wine selection is displayed in a glass-fronted, walk-in, climate-controlled wine cellar. While it focuses on spirits, Mission does not stint on its wine business. Mission customers particularly like sets containing their favorite brands, such as Gray Goose vodka and Casa Noble tequila, and seem to particularly like sets offering mini-bottles of a different product to try along with a full-sized bottle of one of their favorites. ‘We try to keep them in stock throughout the year, even though they are only available during the holidays,’ said Nigoghosian. Nigoghosian estimates that 60% of their sales are in spirits, 30% in wine and the remaining 10% is everything else, mostly beer and cigars.Įach store also devotes an aisle just to branded spirits gift sets. ‘Our stores are like walking into a supermarket.’ The stores’ vodka selection ‘ of roughly 400 brands ‘ takes up an entire aisle in each store. ‘We try to carry every available liquor,’ said Nigoghosian. The original store and its sister location now both carry approximately 2,500 different wines, 500 different beers and a whopping 3,000 different distilled spirits. Vic Mankerian has worked in the family business since the age of 16 and has run the entire operation since 1990, the year his father died.Īnd Mankerian has grown the business over the years. Mission has been owned by the Mankerian family since 1979. The new store is about 3,000 square feet, with three check-out lanes and an 18-door cooler.īetween the two stores, Mission employs 15 people. In November of 2008, Mission opened a second, smaller location in Glendale. The current Pasadena store is 6,200 square feet in size, with four check-out lanes, a 27-door cooler and a marble-topped wine-tasting bar. (After expanding its original location six times in order to keep up with its growth, Mission moved the store to bigger digs just across the parking lot in 2007.) Mission’s Pasadena store has been in the same general area for over 50 years. The two Mission Wine & Spirits stores are well-known landmarks to the area’s aficionados of spirits, wine, beer and cigars. In fact, once the products are sold out and the in-store displays come down, the empty barrels, each of which is also marked with a plaque declaring that its contents were specially bottled for Mission Wine & Spirits, will be added to the four past barrels, which are on display outside the Pasadena store. Mission has done this kind of thing before, but never five barrels at one time. ‘A lot of our customers ‘follow’ the distilleries themselves,’ said Nigoghosian. Mission is advertising the presence of these special bottlings through its regular emails to customers but find there’s also a lot of word-of-mouth going on. ‘These are interesting for the customer, something they don’t see every day.’ ‘We’re always looking for unique things for our customers,’ explained John Nigoghosian, Mission’s general manager. ‘So, rather than just buy a couple of cases of product, which may come from different barrels,’ Pruitt said, ‘Vic chose ones that fit the tastes of his customers and bought the whole barrel.’ In other words, the only place in the world to buy these particular spirits, from these particular barrels, is Mission Wine & Spirits. When it comes to single-barrel products like these, the taste profiles of different barrels vary, explained Jeff Pruitt, account specialist at Young’s Market Company, the wholesaler who accompanied Mankerian on his trip. There is no upcharge for Mission customers. They are, however, priced at their regular retail prices. Bottled at their distilleries, as spirits usually are, these particular bottles have, in addition to their regular labeling, special emblems proclaiming that they were bottled especially for Mission Wine & Spirits.
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