Specialty whisky and spirits shop and lounge coming to downtown Tacoma

South Sounders on a quest for rare Scotch whiskey and other boutique spirits will soon have a destination to buy bottles for their home collections.

Glen and Maxine McCallum will open McCallum & Sons Whisky in the former Watermark Gifts space at 1115 A St. The couple bought the building from Karen McGrath, who closed the beloved gift shop last year after nearly a half-century in downtown Tacoma.

“I want it to be a destination,” Glen McCallum told The News Tribune in a phone call recently. “I want whiskey aficionados to drive down here from Seattle or Portland to find a really special bottle that they can’t find anywhere else.”

Of course, the shop will cater heavily to locals, who at the moment live in an area almost entirely devoid of such a specialty spirits shop. The options for wine and fortified wines like sherry and vermouth grew last year with the opening of Field Bar, Amitie Wine Co., Old Town Wine Skins and Browne Family Vineyards. (McCallum said Rob and Kelly Richards of Tacoma Wine Merchants in the Stadium District have mentored them through the process of opening their own shop.) Meanwhile, bottle shops overflow with craft beer and cider, but liquor stores tucked into shopping plazas carry limited, often basic bottles that mirror the shelves at big-box stores.

McCallum hopes to fill that void with more limited bottles of Scotch, bourbon and rye, as well as Japanese and other international whiskies, gins and brandies including Cognac and Armagnac.

“That’s the kind of stuff I want to introduce to people,” he said. “People can walk into my store and just be blown away — find a Scotch whiskey that they’ve never seen. Maybe they don’t buy it, but this is a serious place and I’m serious about this product and this juice. Come hang out, be a client at my store, and not a customer at Costco.”

The retail store, open to the public, will comprise the north side of the ground floor and should open later this year, pending construction and permitting, said McCallum. The other side will house a tasting room, bar and lounge, but he and his wife — who is leading the design, which will feature dark woods and lighting under the bottles — are still working out the details of how that will play out. It will likely include lockers for members to store bottles for on-site sipping at their leisure and tastings with distillery brand ambassadors.

The opening of McCallum & Sons fulfills a longtime small business dream of McCallum, a New Jersey native who served a decade in the U.S. Army, retiring in May 2021. He met Maxine — who is in the midst of opening an equestrian facility, The Iron Horse Farm, in the Summit-Waller neighborhood — in Germany. After being stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, they “fell in love with the area,” said McCallum, “and we didn’t wanna leave.”

When the Watermark building hit the market, they felt now was the time.

Inspired by travels throughout Europe, as he tells it, “I got hooked on wine; that evolved into whisky. I had a very basic understanding of whisky, where you just drink Jack and Coke or Maker’s Mark in college, and that’s what you think whisky is.”

Then he visited “really amazing bars and cocktail lounges across the continent,” discovering great spirits along the way. He dove into books and magazines and online forums to learn about the production and the breadth of styles — and expanded his personal collection and his palate.

The moment of whisky transcendence, he said, arrived with a sip of Glenmoragnie Signet, gifted by Maxine’s uncle.

“It was just an incredible bottle. I still remember opening it for the first time,” he recalled, describing the weight of the glass, the long metal cap and its black-and-gold gift box.

He also fondly remembers his first taste of Macallan 18, another Highland whisky featured in a James Bond film. Those sweeter, maltier profiles opened his eyes to the wide world of whisky, and he hopes to pass on that affection.

“When people get introduced to Scotch, they have something that’s really smoky like Laphgroaig or Lagavulin, and they think all Scotch is like that,” he said. “There are some really complex, delicious, sweeter whiskies.”

He noted the lack of an ‘e’ in the company’s name. As the adage goes, countries with an ‘e’ in the name spell the aged spirit as whiskey — United States, England, Ireland — and those without, as in Scotland and Canada, don’t.

Either way, you’ll find them all at McCallum & Sons when it opens, hopefully just in time for the holidays.

MCCALLUM & SONS WHISKY

▪ 1115 A St., Tacoma, instagram.com/mccallumandsonswhisky

▪ Details: specialty whisky and spirits shop targeting late 2021 opening; lounge to follow in Spring/Summer 2022; follow on Instagram for updates

This story was originally published July 31, 2021 at 5:00 AM.