Post #416009 by martiki on Tue, Oct 28, 2008 8:12 PM

On 2008-10-25 23:26, tikibars wrote:
Someone at Sam's here in Chicago told me that Zacapa had a new distributor, and that this new distributor jacked the prices up.

To wit: it used to be about $40 for Zacapa 23 in Chicago, and now it is over $50, sometimes close to $60. Youch!

I will investigate further to see if what is currently hitting the shelves here is the "solara" variety.

The "regular" non-"Solara" Zacapa 23 went from the fully wicker-covered bottle to the simple band of straw a while back.

The increase in price was the decision of Diageo's, not the distributor. They are repositioning the brand to make it more hi-end, accompanied by a big marketing push and ads in places like Golf Digest to attract Scotch drinkers and what not.

The formula changed once before with the first bottle transition. "23 years old" became "23 Years", which means something else.

It's Solera, not Solara (which is a Toyota), as in the solera blending system used by sherries and some other spirits, including Zacapa (& Matusalem, incidentally.):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera

IMHO, it's still quite nice.