Hello Free Rangers,
The collective hum out there these days is constant, if a touch muted like a post horn, steadily slowly growing, and faintly pulsing. Plowing forth with the unbridled inertia inherent to the necessary levels of irrational exuberance to achieve escape (and/or terminal) velocity. We shall see. C’est la vie. – A completely unrelated short story resides below the following sales. Enjoy.
We’ll be *mostly* faithfully alternating sales and in-store tastings between wine and spirits weekly, and each online only sale will be live for two weeks, so that ideally there’s always one spirits sale and one wine sale live (barring sell-out). So to recap, here’s that Old & Rare Mix ’n’ Match sale again (sold out bottles refreshed with new ones!). Please enjoy any combination of wine on the below linked page at 10% off all, 20% off 6+ bottles, or 30% off 12+ bottles. Here you’ll find some classic Chablis, a couple of Central Coast Group Project 2014s, some serious Barolo, and American, Aussie, French, and Spanish reds with 10+ years in bottle. Full list and descriptions available via the link below.
*** Every 6+ bottle purchase gets one FREE magical mystery bottle from my personal collection, which could be literally anything (though these days we’re drinking a lot of American Syrah, Merlot, and Pinot Noir with 10-30 years in bottle- so highly likely one of these).
(!) Click here for Mix & Match Old & Rare sale page (!)
And now, this:
’Roll Back the Clock’ pricing Part 4!
The latest installment of our Roll Back the Clock pricing series features what I consider to be as close to perfect Bourbon as exists, though I know it’s not high enough proof for many of you hardcores: Elijah Craig 18yr Single Barrel Bourbon! It’s rich, round, and caramely, with just enough bite to let you know that it and you are still alive. It’s old enough to vote, and to die in a war, but not to drink itself (in this country).
Here’s how it works: Buy any bottle from the page linked below to get 1 bottle of Elijah Craig 18yr Bourbon @ $169 (usually $249) automatically added to your cart.
* limit 2 per customer
Many on the list are already lowest price around, and several are further discounted still. Take a look here:
(!) Click here for Elijah Craig 18 deal page (!)
As always, we’re happy to hold your sale purchases until after your dry January, and/or for when you’re next in town to pick up, so don’t let restraint or geography hold you back! And as always, please feel free to reply here with any questions about the wines in question.
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And in case you’ve made it this far, here is a very short piece of fiction from a very long time ago, with no context at all:
7 Pages into the Great Northwest
He didn’t regret a minute of it, though there was much he would have done differently if he could have had it all back, but she was the one he never should have called. That didn’t change the fact that the faintest taste of her on the wind still ignited visceral response beyond will and impossible to ignore. Upon contact, the book in his hand that she had left behind seemed hard-wired to the top of his stomach lining. He both reviled and relished this and opened the book to read it anyway. Sometimes a great notion indeed: “that sick foreboding is spreading from stomach up through lungs and heart like an icy flame.”
Reflex wrist-tossed the book into the fire before the thought could fully occur to the otherwise conscious man who could now only raise an eyebrow and half a grin. 7 Pages. He was sure another copy of that book would fall into his lap at some point, but at this moment he had nothing else to read. He stood, circled the mellowing flames and constructed another teepee of branches over the smoldering hardback, amongst the coals, which rose to greet them.
A tinge of dyslexia made opening a book of more than 350 pages a daunting task. He had done so with the self-agreement that he would call her when he reached the page where the receipt for her dental work had been inexplicably wedged. He couldn’t be sure what sort of procedure a vital pulpotomy might be, but would have gladly wagered his few remaining unburnt possessions that it sucked real bad. Must have. The root canal came next (two of them, actually). Rough day. When he reached that page that held the intimate details of a long unpleasant day in an adjustable pleather chair, he would contact her once more, or try to anyway. He would either thank her for leaving the book behind or tell her to go fuck herself. Now all he could do was laugh and watch the flames lick away the shelf-like strata of the great tome. He wrapped himself around his sleeping bag, on top of his pole-less un-pitched tent, pulled his wool hat down around his ears and curled his back, grinning madly upward toward where he supposed the sky must be. All of these barking branches overhead must be attached to the ones above, attached again to massive rooted swaying beings, all pointing at something. These thoughts met the deep purple that snapped into frigid morning with unwelcome acidity.
He sat up with a grunt, stretched his back, and tilted his head to one side and then the other, with a wholly satisfying xylophonic crackle. He stood up, stretched his legs, shoveled the mass of tent parts and sleeping bag into the trunk, and shoveled some cool earth over the remaining coals. He nudged around the rounded dog-eared stratified mass, in the center of the earthen gray pile, which fell in two at the split where uniformed basalt layers were separated by sediment. A lot of books have their page numbers dangling precariously near the exposed bottom corner, but not this one. Dead center, at the top of the page, millimeters from the body of these few leaves of un-charred text, it winked at him with one wild eye; page 281.
He didn’t know entirely where he was, but it was difficult to get too lost here if one has any sense of the physical world. The water was on his right which meant that the Seattle skyline lay dead ahead, somewhere through the thick gray morning. There are a lot of bookstores in Seattle.
Cheers,
Jack
Proprietor
Free Range Wine & Spirits
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