I scanned down a couple of pages and had seen no mention of them so I thought I would inquire. Started with a company that has beer and spirits (Willet being one of them) and we just brought on Shelton Brothers.
Does anyone have experience with the range?
So far I’ve tried Prairie, Baird, Jolly Pumpkin and Anchorage, the Anchorage triple fermented sour was the strangest beer I have ever tried…
I never thought of myself as being a beer newbie growing up in Portland and bar hopping with all the great Micro’s and now in Seattle, again with a ton of great Micro’s but I find these styles of beers to be out there. Is this where the Micro movement has gone or are these outliers?
Don’t get me wrong, they certainly are interesting but I think I need to calibrate my palate to truly enjoy them, thought’s?
I just checked out their website to remind myself the producers they represent. You can stay conservative in their book if you look at Coniston, Ridgeway, Timothy Taylor, Fantome, assuming some level of comfort with bitter, saisons, and ales. They definitely carry their share of European brewers who are making ‘lost’ styles of beer that have no counterpart in the US. Some of these I enjoy more than others. Ones I do like are De Ranke, Freigeist, Drie Fonteinin, and Prairie Ales (US).
Some of their producers are extremely small, and their beers may only be available in 3-5 case lots to each state. If getting each label registered in your state is difficult, the more unique stuff won’t come in because of the cost/legwork required. When they first got started, I was the only one in VA that had heard of them (got Dan Shelton’s business card info from Jean-Pierre Van Roy at Cantillon right when they first picked them up) and we had 6-8 Cantillon labels and up to 8 Fantomes at one point. Now we’re lucky to see more than 2-3 cases of anything from either brewery, and only a few Mikkeller offerings. Mostly just Kulmbacher, the occasional Mahr’s Brau, a Nogne-O or two, and Bluebird Bitter. All the limited stuff for our area ends up in DC.
There was a big fight between Shelton Bros and their local distributor here. Still see some old stuff on shelves (mostly Old Mikkeller), but it is few and far between. They have to sit out of the market for five years unless some shenanigans happen.
A terrific house, well liked by their breweries (they are very good about paying on time etc) with a really wonderful catalog. Management from the top is quite screwy, and I guess the brothers don’t get along too well, but the seem to be rolling along.
I believe they are trying to open their own wholesale houses across the nation, but many markets that are “franchise” law controlled will take time. Pretty sure they have opened their own house in Missouri now.
And as John has noted - they are not well liked in their industry.
‘Influenced’-yes
‘Championed’-absolutely
‘Pioneered’-not so much in my opinion
Other importers before the Sheltons brought in Gueuze, lambics, and Berliner Weiss for well over a decade before they picked up Cantillon. And other importers like B. United brought in more than a few sours in the last decade plus, including the original Gose from Leipzig. What helped Shelton Brothers was the onset of the Beer Advocate/Ratebeer era and having been ahead of the curve to sign breweries that were helped enormously by consumer rating buzz (Mikkeller, Fantome). They also did a very good job of expanding their focus to support domestic breweries that focused on Belgian styles and worked to develop their nationwide market just as aggressively as their imports. 12% Imports is following that same model as well.
It’s their way or the highway, but this is a good thing because they protect the freshness of their product. Definitely the best East Coast importer, distribution issues tend to be related more to the limited qty of the sought after beers than functional issues.
They have what is unquestionably one of the best portfolios in the country, and I might go so far as to say the best (at least for what I’ve seen). There’s everything from classic, widely appealing styles to super weird, obscure stuff, and of course some really tightly allocated and sought after beers. You’ll need to taste a lot more than you have to grasp the breadth of their offerings.
i’m grateful for the sheltons, otherwise we’d never get a chance to try so many of the small artisanal brewers they import - many brands are often difficult to find even in their native countries.
but with all due respect, “freshness” isn’t a principle i identify with them. not that they aren’t capable of it, but their successes in bringing fresh product ironically highlight their failures even more. so many ipas, often w/o production dates or batch codes (and even with such info, often nearly impossible to decipher) that are past their prime. not to mention fruit lambics and kellerbiers, etc that really ought to be consumed much fresher than by the time they’re usually available on the shelf. cantillon fou foune when within the first year of bottling date is leaps and bounds better than the usually year+ age you get when it hits distribution.
maybe it’s a distributor issue. can’t rule that out. but there is room for improvement.