The Met Gala official after party the other night was at a private club inside a private club.
In New York, the very rich are running to places so “exclusive” that Soho House and Casa Cipriani are now for the hoi polloi.
The more unavailbe or hard to get is where it’s at it these days.
Brent Hocking knows that. One of the most successful purveyors of high end liquor, Hocking is the genius who invented DeLeon Tequila, then sold it for zillions to Diageo. (Sean Diddy Combs involvement came later.)
This week, Hocking is embarking on introducing a new Tequila that you have to know about to get. Purisima — which I had sip of last fall on my trip to Toronto — is about to become the drink everyone wants. The only problem is, it’s not in stores. It’s barely in bars. You have to apply to buy a $400 bottle at a stealth website.
I am not kidding.
My little taste of Purisima was so delicious, I was intrigued, so I got Hocking on the phone. (Don’t worry, he’s not sending me a bottle. I might get another taste, though!)
Anyway: four hundred dollars? Not only is the tequila smooth with three o’s, the bottle is a work of art.
So what’s going on here? One thing Hocking isn’t doing is having a celebrity spokesperson. He says that ship has sailed. Purisima is going to build the old fashioned way, by word of mouth, the way he did with original DeLeon. This has already worked for his cultish Virginia Black Whiskey. If you know you know.
So how do you get it? Hocking says he has a waiting list from the people who’ve found him. The website is called For Those Who Know Better. Even when you get there, there’s registration process. He says,”You just request consideration and then we send you a login and your allocation.”
Very few places even have Purisima available. A very high end Brazilian hotel chain called Fassano has been pouring the drink. They just added it to their — uh huh — exclusive Fifth Avenue private residence club. There have been private tastings in Venice Beach, and at a swish spot in Mexico called Nauka that makes the White Lotus look like the Holiday Inn.
The rumor is Purisima’s taste comes from the water Hocking uses, and I don’t mean Poland Spring or even Fuji. The water is sourced on Hocking’s own land in the town of Purisima Del Rincon with their own three spring wells 400 meters deep.
He says, “It means the purest of the corner.” He adds: “It was named after the Immaculate Conception.” (It was, I Googled it.)
Hocking explains:
“So what’s funny is I spent a lot of time with different versions and found a very unique yeast, which I will never say what it is. And, you know, my sugar content on my agave is the highest you can get, no one’s even willing to buy those. And I have my own agave vineyard, I have 70 acres of it. You can’t compromise.”
Can Hocking say anything about Combs aka Diddy? “The truth of the matter is he created that market (with Ciroc)…to his credit, once again, he worked his ass off on Ciroc.” Hocking and Diddy went their separate ways before the latter’s legal problems. Hocking was also involved with Drake on his Virginia Black, but that’s ended now.
As for Purisima, Hocking says: “We just launched, but we’re we’re just quietly out there right now, probably over a thousand bottles have gone already.”
He adds: “When [original DeLeon] fans hear I’m doing something new, it’s got to be the real deal. So we get people hunting it down for that factor, and the people that really loved the original De Leon, which had quite a cult following.”
