As a son of the south, whiskey has always been part of my culture. Growing up, it was watching my Dad bring a small flask filled with J&B blended scotch to restaurants in our small North Carolina town that held fast to a law banning “liquor by the drink.” That odd law didn’t allow restaurants to serve cocktails – beer and wine were fine – but did permit someone to bring their own bottle of liquor to a restaurant where the restaurant would provide a set up and mixers where the patron could serve themselves as much as they wanted. My Dad usually kept it to one, but I never understood how someone pouring from their own bottle was a better alternative to a bartender controlling the flow. Needless to say, eventually that law went the way of the South Carolina airplane bottle law (look it up).
My time observing my Dad – I never asked for a sip and he never offered – progressed to my actual consumption of Jim Beam and Cokes during college, which occasionally fell back to Early Times and Old Crow during dire times (and we probably ventured into Jack Daniels and Rebel Yell every now and then). Yes, pretty much a means to an end, but we did drink bourbon and not vodka or gin along with our beer.
I don’t remember branching out much in the whiskey category during law school, but a golf trip to Scotland afterwards left me exploring scotch for a brief period. Maybe it was my Dad’s influence, but I brought back several bottles in an effort to proclaim myself a burgeoning scotch aficionado. Another overseas golf trip a year later, this time to Ireland, kept me in the overseas whiskey/whisky category for a few more years, but this all begin to change a few years later in the early morning hours on a front porch in North Carolina.
Charlotte
It started with a rainy drive down from Washington after work on a Friday where the typical I-95 south traffic kept me bottled up in northern Virginia for several hours. And as luck would have it, as soon as traffic looked to break free it begin to jam up suddenly again. I noticed this a few seconds too late and ended up bumping the car in front of me. While there was no noticeable damage and the other driver let it slide, it unnerved me and I remained on the edge for the rest of the long trip south to the Queen City.
Several hours later, I finally got to Charlotte. I was heading there for an engagement party for a childhood friend, and I arrived at his house sometime after 2am. While I’d told him when to expect me, it was still a surprise to pull up and see him sitting outside on his porch. I will note that this was the early 2000s and what allows me to now say with pride and not embarrassment what he handed me that night got me much more interested in bourbon.
While most have been greeted with the comment of “you need a drink,” on this night my friend said, “Looks like you need a bourbon. Ever had this?” He handed me a slender bottle, and I rotated it around in my hand as he also handed me a glass for the pour. He added, “Check out the pic on the back with the dog as a caddy.” I laughed at the photo as I read the caption and commented how I’d never heard of it before. I handed him back the bottle and he poured some into my glass. I’m sure I asked about ice and was quickly dismissed. And so, in the early 2000’s on a Charlotte porch, I had my first taste of Pappy Van Winkle…neat.
I do remember that I was impressed and commented on how it was much better than the bourbon I usually drank. And while it was Pappy, if it had been something else of decent quality, it might have resonated just as much given the occasion and the opportunity to enjoy a drink on a North Carolina porch in the early morning hours after an exhausting drive. But it was Pappy. And that night and that particular brand did spur me forward in my bourbon adventure.
From pretty much then on, I would look to bourbon instead of scotch (I still have bottles gathering dust from that 2000 Scotland trip). Over the next few years, I was able to get Pappy 20 or 15 or Old Rip Van Winkle off of the shelf at decent prices, so there was usually a bottle in my cabinet. But even then I tried to save it for special occasions as I made Maker’s or Woodford my regular pours. As the years passed, though, Van Winkle bottles became harder to find and then lotteries started to sprout. Maybe because interest had not yet shot through the roof, but for a few years my number was called, and I ended up with bottles from these lotteries. It wasn’t always a Van Winkle, but did include others from the coveted Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, so I wasn’t complaining.
At some point though, that all changed. I don’t remember the exact year but I think it was around 2014 or 2015 when my luck in these lotteries dried up. Since then, I have come up completely empty in procuring “allocated” bottles of bourbon through lotteries held by my county (Montgomery County, Maryland – where the county still owns and runs the liquor stores). Fortunately, though, I still have been able to find and buy good bourbon – I have not let the fact that the hyped bourbons are never really available translate into assuming that good bourbon is not readily available. Because it is – all you have to do is look, taste and decide what you like. I would wager that there’s nobody who can’t find a bourbon at a reasonable price that fits their taste profile. My speed slot into bourbon did start in the early morning hours with Pappy Van Winkle, but my enjoyment of it has by no means ended because of the fact that I can no longer readily access that brand.
Going Forward
I want to set a few things straight as I begin my amateur efforts to write about bourbon. First, I have never paid secondary prices for any bottle of bourbon and never will. I laugh each time I go into stores in nearby Washington, DC where the inflated prices on most rare bottles exceed the prices of a weekend golf trip to Pebble Beach. I assume these stores think that at some point someone will close a deal or win a case and pay their exorbitant mark-ups, but most of the time it does look like they’re operating a bourbon museum (most bottles don’t move) instead of a bourbon store. I would love it if everyone did the same and just treated these stores as museums – nice to go in and see these bottles but go somewhere else to buy.
Second, I live in a county where I am able to get bottles at retail throughout the year that might be allocated elsewhere (Montgomery County doesn’t inflate prices). Let’s call these second tier bourbons – not the limited annual releases, but products that are released at different times throughout the year but also have become harder to find. And even this has become a complete crapshoot over the past year. I remember in late 2019 when I was able to go into a store after work and still find a bottle of something like Stagg Jr. on the shelf. But now, people wait in line on certain days of the week because they know those days are when stores get deliveries of these limited-release bourbons. So unless you’re in the line or get there soon after the stores open, you’re out of luck.
And it is here where I meekly raise my hand as being guilty for recently being a part of these lineups. Working from home this past year allowed me from time to time to take a “coffee” break just before the store opened on days when deliveries where expected (and it didn’t hurt that stores also went to limited hours and opened at noon instead of 10am). Starbucks in hand, I still tried to hide myself while in line in case someone I knew happened to go by (face masks helped), and I never got there more than 10-15 minutes before the store opened. But I still felt…odd. It isn’t normal to have several middle-aged men walk briskly through a store to a counter (they now put even these limited releases behind the counter) once they unlock the doors to see what bourbons came in that day. But I’ve joined in from time to time, and it’s only because if I didn’t, I likely wouldn’t be able to enjoy even the occasional E.H. Taylor or Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel at retail prices.
But that’s unfortunately where we still find ourselves – bourbon is still popular and there are many that command secondary prices that are similar to mortgage payments. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind bourbon being popular – it’s great to see new brands and new distilleries as well as watch the legacy brands continue to innovate – but it is unfortunate that even a daily pour such as Buffalo Trace’s Eagle Rare can be considered allocated. So while I still have a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 20 in my cabinet, I know that could very well be the last one I’ll ever own, and instead would prefer to focus on bourbon that most folks can procure.
And that’s the main point of the bourbon part of this blog.
Going forward, I plan to talk about bourbon that should be available to most. Yes, even these may not be available everywhere, but I will never wax poetic about this year’s George T. Stagg or Michter’s 20. There are plenty of bourbon “porn” sites that do just that – it’s awesome that some get to compare one annual release to another, but that’s not where most of us are. Maybe we’ll get one unicorn from time to time, but we’re usually left to sift through what’s generally available, not what comes and goes or comes and then shows up at 100x MSRP.
My point is that bourbon is meant to be enjoyed with friends and family, and I hope to help get it back to this and make sure it stays that way – by talking about it as something accessible and available to all, instead of putting it or some versions of it on a pedestal that is only accessible to a very few. So help me take bourbon back to being nothing more than an enjoyable drink, however you consume it. Back to completing a round with man’s best friend on the golf course (but we wouldn’t make him pull the cart these days). Back to a drink with friends after a long day or night. Back to a drink on a porch after a trip. Back to quite simply, bourbon.
Join me, and let’s make Buck proud.
