It started innocently enough. A nice bottle of Rum from an island after a holiday getaway. A signed bottle from a master distiller as a present. Sam Adams was releasing some crazy concoction that tasted terrible; I should grab a bottle and showcase it. I’ve collected coins, comic books, stamps, baseball cards, cameras… when I’m interested in something, I grab it. Sometimes I grab all of them. When I get bored, or tired, I move my focus to new interests. This interest… collecting bottles… this has been different. For nearly twenty years I have been searching for interesting and potentially hard-to-find bottles. Some I taste regularly. Some, I will never open.
I find the laws ridiculous in the United States, and frankly internationally. There was a time I was able to order Blanton’s from the EU. When a certain entity purchased my supplier and halted shipments out of the country I was livid. As were many whom left very negative comments on their website (since revoked; commenting). I think it is preposterous I can’t send my father a gift bottle because his state won’t allow it. I’ve read the laws, state by state, and discovered a few in shocking horror (are you aware you can’t purchase spirits in certain TX counties on Sunday? Bars open? Yup. Liquor stores? Hell no! WHAT?!?!?). But I digress.
The actual “hoarding” started out of necessity. And, I was living in TX at the time. I wasn’t going to be low or out of stock in my own home, so I started grabbing one additional bottle while at the liquor store. The bottles started pilling up. I’d get to them at some point. I was travelling (travel, that’s funny, a thing of the past thanks to COVID) nearly every other week. Stupidly, I wasn’t visiting other liquor stores at the time, checking their inventory. When I was home, I started noticing my brands were getting lighter and lighter. Whereas there had been a shelf full of Willett, now there were only 5. Boxes of Blanton’s were getting fewer and fewer. When I moved out of TX I hauled a rather large amount of bottles. My wife gave me a hard time, but I had no idea if I would be able to find these bottles in my new region. As it turns out, I was not, so good on me.
Yes, I’ve flipped a bottle or two. Yes, I’ve marked up prices to “market” levels. Yes, I’ve made a couple bucks over the years by simply being the guy at the store at the time who could buy them. Did I think Henry McKenna 10y would become a hit overnight and therefore bottles would become impossible to find? No. Did I have a couple in my collection BEFORE it exploded? Yes. Do I have more now? Maybe. Have I bought a bottle that both the store owner and I knew was price-gouging? Yes. Why? Because I wanted the bottle. Have I chastised stores I’ve gone to for YEARS for not keeping an allocated bottle for me? Yes. Have store managers been shocked at the amount I am purchasing, ask me to wait, walk to their back room and return with a handful of bottles asking me if I want those too? Yes. Did I buy them? Of fucking course I did! This has all evolved into a game. I just happened to start playing when very few were. NOW, I do not remember a time when Pappy’s was simply sitting on the shelves, as many do, but I do remember the good old days when I could walk into a liquor store, fill up my cart with 4 bottles of Blanton’s and the store associate says:
“Sir? Would you like me to go in back and just grab you a sealed case?”
God bless you young lady. God bless you. Those days are GONE. Just like air travel. I can tell my grandchildren about the good old days when rare bourbon was flowing like a river, and no one was stopping to dip their toes. Or, like all things, Bourbon will bust and fall out of favor, and all of this will have been for not.
So, am I scum? Maybe. Do I have a collection my wife hates? Absolutely. Is it growing? A little. Not as much as I would like. Look, the end game is everything is paid off, work is a distant memory, I have no neighbors with glaring spotlights shining on my back porch, I’m sitting outside at dusk looking at some kind of water feature (pool, river, ocean, lake, creek, pond, tsunami) and I’m slowly working my way through my collection with friends, which I do not have.
Does it give me joy when I look at it? Yes. Is it obnoxious? Yes. Do I flaunt it to people I don’t really know? Yes. Am I hurting anyone with it (other than my wife)? No, no I am not.
