About Spirit Forage
Spirit Forage is a general liquor retailer built around a single organising idea: strength. Wine, gin, rum, mezcal and single malt all sit in the same store, but the shelves are arranged so the first thing you can compare between two bottles is the number on the label — ABV, and where relevant, proof.
Why we organise by strength
Most liquor lists sort by type, region or price. Those are useful, but they leave out the fact that decides how a bottle actually behaves in a glass. A 40% blended scotch and a 58% cask strength single malt may share a shelf and a style, yet they ask for completely different pouring, dilution and storage habits. One is ready as it is; the other expects you to add water yourself. Sorting by strength makes that difference visible before you order.
It also changes how you read a price. A high-ABV bottle usually delivers more servings per millilitre once you dilute it, and a low-ABV bottle may deliver fewer than its size suggests. Neither is better. They are simply different tools, and the strength figure is what tells them apart.
How the two shelves work
Our Cask Strength shelf holds spirits bottled at the strength they held in the barrel, with no water added at the end. Barrel proof, cask strength and single-barrel designations all point at the same basic fact: what is in the bottle is close to what came out of the wood. Because casks vary, these bottlings often carry a specific number rather than a standard one.
Our Bottled at Strength shelf is a wider tent. It covers spirits the producer deliberately set high — navy strength gin at 57%, mezcal at 45%, overproof rum — without claiming a barrel-to-bottle journey. The common thread is simply that someone chose to bottle above the standard 40% line, and the drink is built to be handled that way.
What you will find on every listing
Each product page states origin, ABV, volume and a suggested serve, and every listing is written from the category rather than from a marketing script. Where a bottle is above the ordinary strength for its type, the description says so and explains what to do about it: how much water, how much ice, how small the measure.
We stock a deliberately short list. Four bottles at a time is enough to demonstrate what strength does to a spirit without turning the shop into a warehouse. When a listing leaves, it is replaced by something that plays the same role at a different number.
Age, ordering and delivery
Everything on this site is sold to adults only. Orders require a date of birth at checkout, and every delivery must be accepted in person by someone aged 21 or over with valid government photo identification. Carriers will not leave alcohol unattended at a door, a lobby or a parcel locker. Details are set out in our age verification policy and shipping restrictions.
We are a retailer, not a producer, so we do not publish production claims about the bottlings we carry, and we do not print awards or scores. The specification lines on each product page are the claims we stand behind, and they are the ones you can check against the bottle when it arrives.
That restraint extends to the buying side too. We would rather list four bottles whose strength figures we can state plainly than forty we cannot describe accurately. If a supplier cannot confirm an ABV, a volume or an origin for a bottling, it does not go on the shelf.
Contact
Questions about a listing, an order or a strength figure are welcome by email at [email protected] or by email. Full contact details, are on our contact page.