“Knox & Dobson crafts premium, ready-to-drink cocktails expertly designed to be shared and enjoyed anywhere. Their multi-award-winning bottled cocktails are made with an uncompromising commitment to excellence in quality, craftsmanship, and taste, featuring the highest quality ingredients including premium barrel-aged whiskies, Maraska Maraschino Liqueur and authentic Angostura Bitters.”
“Whether you’re a classic Martini drinker, Old Fashioned aficionado, Rye Manhattan enthusiast, or searching for the perfect Improved Whiskey Cocktail, serve Knox & Dobson’s bottled cocktails chilled or over ice and discover the pleasure of true craft cocktails created to simply open, pour, and enjoy. That’s something we can all toast to!”
At the recent San Francisco World Spirits Competition Knox & Dobson’s Improved Whiskey Cocktail was awarded the prestigious Double Gold Medal and their Old Fashioned Cocktail garnered a Gold Medal. Both awards were in the “Ready-to-Drink” category.
Knox & Dobson will be sampling their premium, ready-to-drink cocktails at the upcoming Manhattan Beach Food & Wine Festival the evenings of Friday, October 11th and Saturday, October 12th at Manhattan Village.
Knox & Dobson’s President, Rob Levy, is our guest serving up a taste of Knox & Dobson’s quality libations.
This is Anne-Marie Panerinkin, Culture OC's food columnist. You can follow me online at cultureoc.org. When I want the best in food and dining news outside of Orange County, of course, I tune in to the SoCal Restaurant Show on AMA 30 K L A A. And welcome back. It is the SoCal Restaurant Show and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 AM until 12 noon, right here on AMA 30 K L A A, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. And the halos are home. It's the middle game in a three game set with the Houston Astros, looking to even up the series. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host to the show, and we're proudly presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. We started to talk about an important new food and wine festival that's coming up the evenings of Friday, October 11th, and Saturday, October 12th in Manhattan Beach at Manhattan Village. Again, that is the Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival. I'm happy to say the careers through culinary arts program that you hear a lot about on this show is the charitable beneficiary, and this is going to be a major new food festival coming into the Southern California area. Each night, 25 different prominent chefs from around Southern California and around the country are going to be presenting taste sized samples of their signature items. And again, it's 25 the first night Friday and another 25 Saturday. So this is a big deal. And in addition to that, wine and spirits are going to be sampled, and one of the prime spirits purveyors that is going to be sampling is Knox and Dobson, and we're going to be hearing all about them with their founder, Rob Levy. Rob, good morning, and welcome back to the show. Rob, do we have you? I think we have you. Rob, good morning, and welcome to the show. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, Andy. Indeed you are. Now Rob, you come out of the restaurant business because for many years you had a very prominent fine dining restaurant in Pasadena. Tell us about the transition into spirits. Well, in 2010, we built a bar at the random, called 1886, that was launched right at the beginning of the big craft cocktail craze. And so we got a little bit famous pretty quick, and out of that, we started chatting about the idea of putting a true craft cocktail in a bottle. And at that time, it really hadn't been done. Now you see them everywhere, but at that time, they're just virtually no competition at all. And so after a long, long process of trying to figure out the right way to do it, we finally did. And we launched two years ago, Knox and Dobson, and happy to say we're being received pretty well. Now your partner is your former mixologist from the Raymond 1886, that being Peter Lloyd James. Tell us a little bit about Peter's background and the R&D that he does for Knox and Dobson. Peter is a truly talented mixologist. He was our original bar manager at 1886, and together, I mean, he was really the inspiration for a lot of the cocktail ideas that we rolled out. And so through a lot of experimentation and looking at different techniques and methods because putting a cocktail in a bottle is very different than making it at the bar. And so there was a lot of experimentation and trial and error before we reached where we are today, but he's a big part of our success. Rob, tell me in terms of the decision, canned versus bottled, there are some truly horrible canned cocktails that are out there. I don't think I really tasted one that I think approximates what you get at a bar. Getting it in a bottle, I think, gives you a little bit of an edge because it's just more of an elegant presentation, and of course, glass is neutral in terms of flavor. What were some of those decisions that you had early on in terms of just the whole idea of packaging? Because from a marketing point of view, obviously that's important. What's in the bottle is more important, but how it looks is important too. Yeah, we really feel that I'm learning from the restaurant business that people eat with their eyes first, and so it has to look good before it tastes good, and so there's an expectation of higher quality when they see the time and effort that we put in designing the bottle, and there is some science behind it as well. If you look at our bottle, it's a deep, deep violet purple, and it's an integrated color in the glass, and there's only a few manufacturers in the world that will do that. An integrated color, many of the colored bottles you see are sprayed, and that doesn't do well with high-proof spirits, but the idea is going back to the old apothecary days of protecting the medicine that was in the bottle, and so the dark color and the glass, which is neutral, like you said, protect and maintain the flavor over a long time, and so I think that has been a big part of our success in keeping the flavor profile and the shelf life, which is truly unlimited, they last a very long time. Definitely an advantage when you're putting a shelf-stable product out there. In terms of preserving the quality of the spirit and the cocktail that's in the bottle, what sort of R&D went into that because, boy, that seems like a tricky process. Well, you know, the biggest trick, and this is where we think that we have an edge on our competitors, is that we figured out after a lot of trial and error that in order to put a good cocktail in a bottle, you have to start with good ingredients, and the ingredients that you find in a lot of those cocktails you mention, are based on flavorings, lower quality alcohol or spirits, and we came full circle in our efforts to do this and realized that in order to create a good product that's going to last, you have to start with the best ingredients. So we use actual authentic Angistura spirits, our bidders, we use barrel-aged whiskies. We actually buy our whiskies in a barrel and age it two or four years on bourbon and rye. We use premium gin and vodka, crafted rum for a cocktail that will be coming out soon. So everything starts with the ingredients, and if you start with good ingredients, you are going to add up with your product. Sounds good to me. Now, Rob, at the current time, does Noxon Dobson in the United States have national distribution? We're distributing in California. We ship nationwide from our website, NoxonDobson.com, and so most people everywhere can get our product if they want it, and we're actually running a promotion right now at 20% off on all sales for Labor Day, so I encourage you to visit NoxonDobson.com. And in terms of retail in California, Rob, besides through your website, work on our listeners find the Noxon product craft cocktails. Well, the big ones are total wine and Bristol Farms, but there are literally 100 or more locations throughout the state where you can find us, and if you go to our website, there is a stockings list where you can find all the locations that are carried near you. That's pretty handy, but I would say total wine and spirits and Bristol Farms is probably a pretty good start, wouldn't you say? That covers a pretty good area, yeah. Now before we go out to break and come back and pick up the conversation on the other side and talk about the specific cocktails that are part of the NoxonDobson portfolio, you don't seem to be a Noxor a Dobson, and Peter Lloyd James is not a Noxor Dobson. The name does kind of roll off the tongue, but what is the background of creating that name? I grew up in Chicago, and the corner I grew up on was the corner of Noxon Avenue and Dobson Street, and I was hoping that there would be some great history behind that, but it wasn't all that exciting, but this was an area that the neighborhood kids hung out virtually every day for our lives growing up and with lifelong friends, and it brings back great memories for me and it's where it's all started. Well Rob, it does sound upscale, so sometimes in terms of naming, this can be a very difficult process, and it's nice to find one that it just sort of all came together, a little happenstance, and I think a little serendipity there. Now, before we go out to break, can you give your website one more time and talk about the special promotion that you have carrying over from Labor Day? Yes, it's 20% off, KD20 is the promo code that you'll find on our website, and it's www.noxanddobson.com. Pretty easy. We are speaking with the head of Noxon Dobson and the founder, that being Rob Levy, a former restaurateur that I'm sure was happy to get out when he did, and now is, yes indeed, is in the line of premium cocktails and bottles, I think a much safer space to be in right now. We're going to pick up the conversation on the other side. You are listening to the SoCal restaurant show. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce. Give us a minute, we'll be back. [MUSIC]
