| I’m a bad liar Free Rangers, So, I just don’t bother with it. It was a tough week. Lots of demanding holiday tourists spending maximum time and minimal dollars (and occasionally calling me a liar), a record number of no maskers, and our lowest Turkey Day week sales in at least six years. It’s been a tumultuous holiday season for many already. I’ll spare you the full essay I’d like to write here about the current state of our waning democracy and brutally arbitrary criminal justice system, and defer my thoughts on the Murdering Mouseketeer to the eminently even-keeled Stephen Colbert, and my thoughts on the murderous McMichaels (and the jackass who recorded them) to Charles Blow at the Times, and move on to our micro issues here in the tiny insular world of rare wine and whiskey.Now, I promised, so I’ll deliver, even though we’re a little beat up around here, and the work per dollar quotient has been off the charts. But on the other end of the slowest Turkey Day week in recent memory all I can think to do is thank the bejesus out of all of you loyal regulars who are helping to keep our lights on. And to the current team that has been putting up with my erratic energy during these stressful days. And most especially to all of you who bring us your sweet four legged furry friends; they really are the reason I make it through some days. A hearty “Woooof!” to all of you, treats and pets to them…The wholesale market for rare whiskey in NY is a weird one. And not that good Hunter Thompson kind of weird. There are 2 major distributors that control 90% of the rare whiskey for which the bottle hunters call us every day. And there is 1 that controls nearly all of the Kosher wine, Royal, who are the only reason that Empire and Southern are the 2nd and 3rd worst distributors in our market. We used to get our Kosher wine from Royal. At one point, due to a clerical error on their end, we were erroneously put on COD, which screws up deliveries from all NY area distributors until resolution. Turned out the invoice they claimed we hadn’t paid wasn’t even for us and had the name of a different store on it. Even after discovering this, it took almost a week of phone calls and e-mails to have it rectified, and they flat out refused to apologize. We haven’t ordered a single bottle from them since. Luckily there are a small handful of high quality Kosher wines with two smaller distributors which we carry, and I was able to find older bottles of Covenant Cab (by Leslie Rudd) at auction for less than those criminals at Royal charge for the new ones, so severing ties with this worst distributor in NY hasn’t changed our ability to offer you top notch Kosher wine, though I’ll admit that there is one Kosher Bordeaux I genuinely miss. The rare whiskey issue is much bigger, and there are no alternatives out in the world to replace Pappy, Stagg, Weller, and the like. Empire controls those, plus Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, EH Taylor, Blanton’s, Sazerac….Every year when I call to find out about the rules regarding allocation of the rarest whiskeys, I’m speaking to a new manager, and then again when I call to complain that we followed the rules, increased our count, and got zero new allocations. Once in the middle years, I got ahold of a manager (who didn’t last a year at that company) who told me the truth: “Nobody with the power to make any of this better gives a shit.” More measured managers have admitted built-in complacency. We always have these conversations in person or on the phone, as good liars and professional criminals know never to write anything down. The Orange Orangutan, the patron saint of such miscreants, has never had an e-mail account, and is widely known for speaking in Mafia code.This very week, we just found out that the rules by which Empire’s SKU counts are measured have changed drastically at least 4 times in the last 3 years, with nobody updating us (or the vast majority of other retailers), such that we’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of items that didn’t even help our cause. The current manager of the division in question (did I forget to mention that there are six different divisions of Empire, each with their own reps and managers?) was also shocked by the lack of information being disseminated through the company, and he’s the first person to offer so much as an “our bad”. Nobody is going to compensate us for the money we were lied into spending, but it seems at least for the moment that we’re getting accurate and current information now. Thanks, Gary. I don’t envy your position. And whether or not said information translates into sought after bottles remains to be seen.So, we are reassessing how much we plan to play their games, and are liquidating a whole pile of Empire Whiskeys, as I don’t even want to look at them anymore. Regardless of my bitching, there are some great bottles on this list (Iron Smoke, Penelope, Journeyman, Three Chord, Ironweed, Rattlesnake Rosie’s). Since we seem to get a significant response to super sale type deals, we’re bringing it back: TWO DOLLARS! Help us move some units, and somebody gets a FREE bottle of Willett Rye 4yr!For those of you who haven’t been around for the previous incarnations of this one: Every bottle on the linked sale page are available at no more than $2 above wholesale cost. As an added bonus, each bottle purchased gets you 1 entry into a drawing for a FREE bottle of Willett Rye! (!) Click here for hidden sale page (!) *** This week only, as supplies last! *** *** No other discounts apply! *** Happy Hunting, Jack Proprietor Free Range Wine & Spirits P.S. Free Range E-mail Archive |
