whiskey

i wonder if my liking it so much is due to the very cheap bottle i just finished before buying it, so it seems great by comparison, or if my palate isn't that sophisticated. i love the original Stagg but it certainly isn't subtle to my tongue, and i figure a younger version would have much the same virtues.

the ppl who didn't like it probably weren't used to barrel-proof whiskey or didn't cut it or something dumb.

It is, as they say, a big whiskey.

http://www.state-journal.com/local%20news/2013/10/16/more-than-26k-in-rare-bourbon-stolen-from-buffalo-trace-distillery

Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye is aged for 13 years and is worth about $25 a bottle.

???

Josh in Chicago taking matters into his own hands, I see!

lol

how much does reserve rye retail for?

a couple years ago i got a bottle of black maple hill at astor wine & spirits in nyc
they've never had it whenever i go back
and in another store i went to last time i was in nyc the clerk told me it was now as hard to get as PVW?
anyone ever see this biz?

― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 10:14 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

astor never seems to have good stuff anymore

Ha, I saw that Pappy theft story a couple of days ago, but I didn't see confirmation. That's like stealing bearer bonds, which leads me to only one suspect.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120506183328/diehard/images/1/13/Hans_Gruber.png

how much does reserve rye retail for?

― 乒乓, Thursday, October 17, 2013 9:22 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

$80-90

Supposedly/ironically the hardest to find of the PVW line, too.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-milk-honey-distillery

You can expect an Israeli four year old to be more like a Scottish ten year old.

hmmm ok guys

i was in tennessee this weekend and got to drink a glass of hirsch 25-year old rye. this is supposedly the same as (one of) the ryes that makes up van winkle rye but aged a bit longer.

Got a George T. Stagg today and a Thomas Hardy rye! Feel very lucky.

Also, hearing more murmurs of a major Buffalo Trace shortage imminent. The distillery itself first warned about this back in May, but apparently some stores have recently been notified of anticipated shortages of Eagle Rare, Buffalo Trace, Blantons, Elmer T Lee, and (obv.) Van Winkle specifically, for supposedly up to 3 years. This is based on BTs 2009 projections and, as per our discussion(s) above, how quickly demand has outpaced supply. It seems fishy that so much of this stuff would become scarce, but between the death of Elmer T Lee and the stories I hear of Weller 12 being hard to find in some states, who knows? If enough of these rumors spread, there could at the least be a perceived shortage, as people stock the bunker.

there's been rumors abt etl and eagle rare for years. if it happens it happens, i guess.

nice job getting some btac. i think i missed the new hampshire state system drop by a couple days but i have a guy up there trying to order me a saz 18.

The silver lining of being out of work: Drinking whiskey (Old Granddad, 100 proof) without having to think about reporting to work tomorrow. Should I try the 114 proof expression next?

sure! the 100 is my fav tho.

i had given up hope but there is a bottle of saz 18 waiting for me today!

jealous of the BTAC acquisitions. i'd be more excited to find that somewhere than PVW.

It didn't seem that hard, tbh, with a little bit of legwork. It depends on what state you're in, though, and where you are in that state, and how attentive you are to when stock comes in (ie give your fave store a call now and then). I've managed by now to get two Stagg and one of the rest of them, though I know I could have gotten more; I was on a Binny's waiting list, and was surprised to get a call the other day, but I told them to let someone else have a shot (so to speak). Some places still have it online, but only for in-state pickup. A big help was getting in early on the PA state-store sale. My folks are still out there, and since I'm visiting in December, I had a couple of bottles shipped there for me to pack up and take home. Hopefully my Pappy luck holds up, though prices are getting too high for me to make a habit of this. The nice thing about the PA sale was that the bottles were up for MSRP. Binny's mark-up was a relatively modest $10, I want to say.

Me? I'm looking for a bottle of Four Roses 2013 Limited Small Batch. Any leads? :)

Some trivia: apparently this year's Eagle Rare 17 is actually 19!

oh man the 2012 Four Roses Limited Small Batch is one of my favorite bourbons ever. i didnt know it was out for this year already. another one to look for!

Man, this year's came and went like lightning, afaict.

oh man the 2012 Four Roses Limited Small Batch is one of my favorite bourbons ever.

― ryan, Wednesday, October 30, 2013 12:58 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like my most anticipated unopened bottle.

That bottle of Stagg I bought was a good idea

That bottle of Beam Devil's Cut I drank half of in one evening, less so.

so is Four Roses Limited Small Batch different than the normal Single Barrel and the regular Small Batch? cause I can get those...

yes, it is different

I've never had a Four Roses special bottling that I didn't love, especially the single barrel uncut (comes in around 123 proof)

just reserved a midleton very rare 2013 for collection on saturday

I'm hardly a grabby-grabby greedy type guy, but through a bit of diligence and patience I've managed a bottle of each of the BTAC and (unrelated) a Nexus 5 (I've needed a new phone for six months). So I'm feeling lucky on the Pappy front. I'm gunning for a 20-year, but part of me wants to try for the 23, too, not just to finish my "collection" but mostly so that some other asshole doesn't get it just to flip it for 10x.

http://www.2020wines.com/pappy-van-winkles-family-reserve-bourbon-23-years-old-750.html

We're in the weeks before a move, so all my bottles have been going into storage anyway, but once we settle there's going to be one hell of a housewarming, an ounce at a time. Damned if I'll be the dick who doesn't share the wealth with my friends.

I've managed a bottle of each of the BTAC

wow, it is like a life goal of mine to do that one year.

i keep hoping the bourbon "fad" will fade and people will move on to something else, but that's perhaps wishful thinking.

please tell me you are moving to philadelphia xxp

It's got a few years left in it at least. I think the catch is it just takes time for these bottles to age, but since these distilleries have to keep moving product, they have by design fewer old barrels sitting around while the rest gets bottled into younger expressions. So the question is whether any of these limited bottles (only 7000 cases of Pappy, which is, what, 84,000 bottles?) will ever be less limited, and I guess that depends on whether the distilleries are housing more barrels specifically to answer demand. I'm not sure, though. Certainly Holy Grail bottles have been so hyped and so revered that I'm not sure what will ever knock them off their hard to reach perch.

Oh snap:

http://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2013/10/buffalo-trace-is-about-100000-barrels-short-of-where-it-needs-to-be/

Ok, anecdotal data points are all adding up. I think the Buffalo Trace apocalypse is real. A friend who owns a high end whiskey bar was just told by a bt rep to essentially buy whatever he can from the extended Weller family.

last night's poker game turned into a bring-yr-own tasting

midleton 2013
connemara 12
glenmorangie 10
green spot
aberlour 12
jack daniels single barrel

happy days

I was pretty sure I would snag a bottle of Pappy or two via the PA online sale, but I was wrong. I knew it would go live at 10am, was on there in a flash at the right time, got a couple of bottles in my cart within seconds, then made it to the last of the five checkout steps before it essentially buckled under the weight of all the people hammering the site and timed me out, empty handed. So really I should have been successful, but no, fate intervened. Probably ultimately for the better, since this bottle chasing stuff is madness. I settled for going to the store for a bottle of Four Roses Small Batch and Elmer T. Lee, two awesome everyday bourbons at a fraction of the price that won't freeze me into bunkering the bottle forever for fear of never getting a replacement, which may be the fate of my Pappy 15 from last year.

I just had a buffalo trace old-fashioned the other night and was thinking "Man, I need to buy myself a bottle of this." Damnit. It's not surprising though, because the name comes up over and over again as a best value whiskey, and I guess word travels.

hurting, lotsa buffalo trace at astor wines and liquors. I was just standing in there and checking in on this thread.

Buffalo Trace is ample and abundant. Though maybe that is a bourbon that's all over the place here but harder to come by elsewhere? Can't believe it, though.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BY-vrklCYAAan2O.jpg

Ugh that sucks, looked better previously.

https://twitter.com/4RosesBourbon/status/400732055165599744

I was in the right place at the right time and was essentially offered a bottle each of the entire Van Winkle line (minus the elusive rye). Counted my money, processed my wife's reaction, and flashed back to "Ghostbusters:"

"When somebody asks you if you are a god, you say YES."

So I feel very lucky this year. I found a couple of extra bottles of 12, even, that I'm selling to friends, though there was a bit of a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" thing going on, in that I absolutely wanted to make sure they went to folks I knew would drink and/or share, and not some jackasses flipping it in the secondary market. Because goddam, this is what it looks like literally the next day:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/search/sss/chc?query=pappy+van+winkle&zoomToPosting=&minAsk=&maxAsk=

People who do this are like the assholes who buy up all the hot kids toys each season to sell to the highest bidder.

josh - do you have exceptionally strong relationships with local shops? i'm curious, because on the west coast, your only option for a bottle of pappy et al is to get in a raffle, and most stores only have a couple bottles to raffle off to 5,000 entrants. the idea of being able to buy one outright or to have the whole set offered to you at MSRP is unheard of.

Different shops handle things differently. Some do lottos, some jack the price up, some have long waiting lists. The lamest bundle bottles of Pappy with other purchases. Like, if you bought two other bottles of Buffalo Trace product, you get to buy a bottle of 10 year. Three bottles gets you a chance to buy a bottle of 12, etc. There was some sorta local place that has such a long waiting list they're thinking of adding another hurdle, making customers buy into a whiskey tasting night to get a shot at a single bottle.

If you called the big Binny's here, they would put you on a giant waiting list with hundreds, and who knows if there was any tomfoolery beyond that. But leave the city and none of the Binny's I spoke to said they were running a waiting list at all, that it was strictly first come, first served. Probably because it's a huge operation, mark-ups were negligible, like maybe $10 on top of MSRP. After that, keep an eye on twitter or message boards. The person I know most in the loop, professionally, texted me a heads up only after I was already out the door, so few people really know the exact date and time in advance.

The way I put it to someone else recently was the better your relationship with the shop - special orders, relatively consistent face time - the more transparent the process gets, so that even though it remains first come, first served, and no holds, it does get a tiny bit easier. They see you making an effort without making an ass out of yourself, so they're perhaps more likely to help with your quest. Which, honestly, usually means just being, well, honest. They might give you a heads up that shipments are coming soon rather than, say, lie outright that the shipment of three bottles came and went weeks ago, to throw you off the trail (which happened to me somewhere!) Etc.. One reason I'm a known quantity at my local place, I think, is that just two years ago I owned literally not a single bottle of liquor, but I took a cocktail course and since then have been steadily building my (home) bar, one conspicuous bottle at a time, plus regular restocks of things we go through a lot, like whiskey and gin.

Which is a long way of saying that if you know the name of the manager, and they know your name, you're probably better off than most. But it's still a bit of a mystery to me: If the manager got a sense I was going to flip them would he have sold them to me? If the manager did not know me, would he have sold me what he sold me even had I been there when I was, right after they were delivered? Would he have happily sold them to someone else had they got there before me? I dunno.

wow. that's an interesting market snapshot. it's partic amazing because honestly, what i do when i want a bottle of whiskey is i go to binny's, look for something on sale that i remember the name of, maybe if i see that they are all > $30 i wuss out and just get some old overholt and call it a day. this wrangling is completely unfamiliar! and complicated! so interesting that there are so many eager customers that they have to keep adding hurdles.