So, I’ve been told that these e-mails have turned dark(er again). What can I say, I’m a bit of dark guy, and working seven days per week can really start to crease a body. Currently hiring to remedy that. Also, lots of things that I find genuinely funny cause other people’s faces to invent some really engaging contortions. I made friends with the abyss some time ago. But it’s certainly true that I don’t always take the time to balance tales of turmoil with the sweet. I know that I am profoundly lucky to be here, in a multitude of respects, though I probably should’ve been born about 20 years before I was. Still quite fortunate by historical and geographical points alone. George Carlin put it best: “When you’re born into this world, you’re given a ticket to the freak show. And when you’re born in America, you’re given a front row seat.” And in the microcosm, after a year in which many great businesses have vanished (especially those on street level), we still get to be here, doing what we do, though ‘we’ represents the smallest number of people since our second year here on Atlantic Ave. Still I know: Lucky, glad, grateful (just a little tired). And as always, we quite literally wouldn’t be here without you. Thanks for that. And doubleplus thanks to those actually reading these things. It means a lot to a washed up word salesman like me. Cheers.
The main reason we get so frustrated with whiskey bottle hunters is what we have to go through to get even a small handful of the rarer bottles. On the last business day of every month, I get to call in to an order board at exactly 9am. If you’re not in the hold loop by 1 or 2 seconds after, the allocated whiskeys will likely be sold out by the time you hear an operator gargle the name of your LLC in confirmation of your customer #. It’s like trying to get Madonna tickets in 1987, but every month here in the future. So when a bottle hunter (who has never spent any money here) refers to “regular retail” as 10% above cost, on an item of which we get only 1 bottle per year (if we’re lucky), they are usually privvy to an impressive string of profanity, and a reminder of the location of our front door.
The vast majority of whiskey that anybody has ever heard of comes through the two largest distributors in our market, Southern and Empire. With the latter, access to the very rarest and most sought after items (Pappy, Stagg, barrel program single barrels) often depends on one’s SKU count of total whiskeys from this distributor, and we have no choice but to play the game. So besides products to which we are morally opposed (looking at you, dollar shots of Peanut Butter Whiskey) and those we simply can’t afford (looking at you- longingly- Dalmore 33 year), we try and grab as many of said total whiskeys as possible once per year to keep our SKU total competitive. But since I also spend other people’s money the way I spend my own, I’m incapable of picking up a small number of bottles from a big brand that are available at a much lower price (at much higher volume), so we often grab mixed packs which allow us to pay the lowest possible price, without committing to a year worth of those items. So, here are a handful of those, and a couple others for which we have no shelf space all offered at TWO DOLLARS above cost. This is neither a joke nor a drill. $2 more than we just paid on every bottle on the below hidden sale page. Click away!
