Favorite Whiskey?

I will say....it appears Minnick has some issues, lol.

 

wait. you're back!

 

were you the one that sent me the stellum rye sample?

 

I’ve never had Bombergers. Is it worth the price of admission? Thanks.

 

Yep, that was me. Love that stuff for the $$

 

I hope so. I just committed to buying one today.

 

That was me!

 

I shop at my liquor store because the owner takes care of his customers. I like that. Beats standing in line at Costco sometimes.

 

Yep, apparently I was naughty and recieved a 30 day bench. I'll keep my bourbon stuff in the forefront.

 

Might have to go to Costco more often haha

 

Elijah Craig 18 is good

 

It’s a really good bottle in general, and the 2024 release is said to be one of the better releases.

 

As you alluded to, 2023 was a relatively poor year for Stagg, 23b probably being the worst Stagg ever put out (I still think it’s delicious). The one I blinded against the Smokeye was a 23c. It’s not quite as good as the 2022 batches but I still really like it!

Cant get over that note on the Smokeye finish that kind of ruins it for me.

Anyway these things all come down to personal preference, but I think you’re a little bit peeved at BT products and I’m betting it’s affecting your taste buds lol. You should blind them sometime.

As for Buffalo Trace artificially constraining production, it’s just not factual, you’re straying into conspiracy theory land. And it’s the consumer’s fault, not the distillery’s, distributor’s, or liquor stores’ fault. BT is in the midst of a multiyear massive increase in production that’s seen multiple new rickhouses built. The project will be complete next year. Consumers have already seen the impact in the Buffalo Trace label; the distillery’s intent is to ramp up production enough to make BT a shelfer. My local ABC got so much BT this past month that for the first time they had bottles sitting on the counter for days.

The consequence to the production increase is almost certainly a decrease in quality, perhaps just slight, who knows.

Why is the consumer responsible? Well, originally it was Pappy that drove the Buffalo Trace craze. It won some major awards, people went nuts for it, it became scarce, people turned to Weller next, it became scarce, and eventually every single BT product became insanely popular. Supply and demand…whiskey supply can’t be instantly ramped up, but demand can, and thus the market price shot up for those products.

Because there’s not enough Stagg, Taylor, Weller, etc to go around, they’re allocated based on sales of shelf Sazerac product in non-control states. So a store has to buy a shit ton of Fireball or Wheatley Vodka to get some allocated bottles. The store may choose to then sell the allocated products at market price to cover their expenditures on the shelf product, although some still sell it at MSRP.

This has turned into a dissertation, sorry about that, but there are legitimate economic reasons for the high prices you see for allocated, and it’s the same for Michter’s, Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey and so on. There’s no conspiracy. Just demand.

Lastly, I’d be careful about calling Smokeye Hill a craft product. They don’t grow their own grain and they don’t distill their own juice. It’s contract MGP. At least they age it themselves. The vast majority of distilleries calling themselves​

“craft” either bottle someone else’s aged distillate, blend others’ distillate, or age someone else’s distillate. A few are actually “field to bottle”: Frey Ranch, Dettling, and to some extent Southern Star who sources grain only from local farmers. These are the only ones that deserve to be called craft distilleries.

Before I forget…Smokeye keeps selling out in stores and online (purely because of Minnick’s review)…if that keeps up, eventually its price will get driven up well above MSRP, just like ole Stagg.

 

Makes sense, that’s how he can afford the good stuff

 

https://youtu.be/V9eBlW7PKMo?si=w1sZu6oLZ_Lf0j-1

 

its amazing stuff.

i finally found it, did you see they have a different rye?

 

lol, this is just bait click garbage. It’s sort of fun to speculate about but when you actually sit down and apply reason and common sense it falls apart.

Buffalo Trace has the lowest MSRP to value ratio for allocateds in all of whiskey. Their stuff sells out almost instantly. They don’t need to do anything to help that along, and they also wouldn’t benefit. Their invoice prices to the distributors have changed very little over time and the fact that the invoice and MSRPs have changed so little is truly insane when you think about how sky high Campari (Wild Turkey) has gone.

Here are some salient points of reason:

-Buffalo Trace (Sazerac) gains nothing with this alleged conspired withholding of product. They already sell everything they’ve got, and they’re not trying to jack their price to the distributor up. Conspiracies make no sense when the subject gets nothing out of it.

-Why wouldn’t Buffalo Trace do this with its other products? I’ve never heard of a Taylor BP from past years showing up. So mysteriously they’re just doing it with Stagg?

-Why isn’t this happening nationwide? The stories are anecdotal. It’s not happening in my state, at all, period.

-“The only explanation is”…what a dumb statement. Bottles pass through a LOT of hands before they get to the consumer. If product is somehow being withheld, it’s almost certainly happening within the distribution chain including in between delivery to the selling entity who may store product in a warehouse (say, Walmart) and individual store distribution. And it could be intentional or unintentional. @JoeySauce told me a story the other day that PA recently found a large quantity of JD twice barreled in its state warehouse, a 2023 product. No conspiracy there, probably just shitty management.

-I’ve hunted in a lot of states and I’ve never seen a bottle of Stagg in a store anywhere that was more than a year old. Seems this conspiracy is very limited in its execution, which, again, makes very little sense. I love the story that a batch 15 showed up somewhere. Really, a bottle from 2021? So BT is purposely holding onto bottles for three years? Come on now. Where is this national spotting of batch 15 bottles?

-Given BT pricing, only entities that have something to gain are distributors or stores who can inflate the price, mainly post-distributor. There are some anecdotal examples of this happening in certain locations, which would point the finger at the post-Buffalo Trace distribution and sales process. And even then, entirely possible that those examples were simply due to inventory mismanagement. Or a desire to provide a more even delivery of a product that’s only available 2-3 times a year.

I love the “BREAKING NEWS” in the video title, and then I watch a 7 minute video with zero news or facts. So silly. Not even sure why I bothered to type this all out except that theories with very little logic behind them bother me in principle.

At least I got a couple laughs out of watching.

 

I love clickbait, it's how I found the highly sought after Elvis banana peanut butter whiskey.

 

Don’t forget bacon

 

Someone say Jack Daniel’s!?