A Steal of a Deal ?!

@OlJas Thanks. Would you believe the 57 N is out of stock now? :( Just my luck. But thanks for sharing the link.

@broadwayblue , the owner of the shop was posting on another site about how he's trying to restock sold out items before the end of the shipping promo (July 30). So it's probably worth checking back later this month.

That's my plan. I'll pop one of my bottles right away and, if it's as good as everyone says, immediately order a few more if they're back in stock.

@OlJas Thanks. Looks like some others have been checking out the site as a few other items I selected went out of stock while I was browsing. I ended up getting a bottle of Kavalan Solist Sherry Cask and samples of the Talisker 57N, Glenfarclas 15 and Glenfarclas 105. All are hard or impossible to find in the States and I've been wanting to try these for a while! Any idea how long they take in transit?

@broadwayblue , way to score. That Glenfarclas 105 will be an awesome deal too, if they get any back in stock.

I picked my bottles based on what's otherwise unavailable to me, rather than on price, but the Glenfarclas 105 would have caused me to break my rule if it had been in stock.

@broadwayblue , on transit time:

I ordered my stuff on Monday night. As of Thursday afternoon, the DHL tracker shows it at the export center in Germany. So who knows.

Their website claims 5-10 days to the Americas: www.finedrams.com/content/shipping

@OIJas - damn, this has some nice deals. Now I DO regret buying that bottle of Jura, as my budget for this month is running low :-( However, I'm sure I can squeeze something cheap out of this without the wife raising her eyebrows too high. Laphroaig 18 at 50 quid should still be a pretty good offer once they introduce shipping. Pity that's sold out for now.

A little off topic here but I would like to know what you think about the price of whisky in general. The price variance is vast, from the entry level blend or single malt to some rare or exclusive bottles.

Assuming it is for consumption; what are you prepared to pay for a bottle? What can be considered good value and at what price do you decide the 70cl of liquid gold is simply not worth it?

I am interested to see where most of us stand with this.

@BigJoe, if I were starting the discussion topic, I would call it 'The Price of Whisky'.

Certainly both value to the individual and value determined by prices set by the local political taxing apparatus are relative. In addition, values of the varying types of whisky are quite relative as well. In the US, and, especially here where I live, I can currently buy bourbon I would rate near 90 points for under $ 20. Scotch I would rate near 90 points would usually cost me from twice to quadrice that amount here. The prices I pay here are not New York City prices, nor Teipei, Taiwan prices, nor London prices, nor Toronto prices, nor Australia prices.

On a mundane scale, whisky, especially the rarest and highest quality whisk(e)y, has gotten a lot more expensive in the last 5 years. Whisky used to be rather good value for money, as a category. Not so now, except for US whiskey sold domestically, and inexpensive Scotch and Irish blended whiskeys. Certainly in most jurisdictions you can still get some solid products at a fair price, but overall doing so has gotten a lot harder to do.

@Victor Interesting isn't it. I guess the demand has increased substantially within the last 5 years for prices to have been driven so high from where they once were. You are lucky to have a domestic product that can be purchased at a reasonable price, so much so that economically you would be better off exclusively drinking bourbon. The only two here that I am aware of are the Thomson Distillery and the Willowbank Distillery (no longer producing). Neither of these are affordable and I'd be better off purchasing a fine scotch single malt. Personally no matter how good the product I would be reluctant to spend more than NZ$100 (US$65) on a bottle and preferably closer to NZ$75. I know liquor is taxed heavily here in NZ and I'm not sure how it compares.

In case anyone's looking for a review of that unexpected IB Octomore mentioned earlier in this thread:

reddit.com/r/Scotch/…

@OlJas - just curious as to whether you have an update yet on the delivery status on your Fine Drams order ? I checked out about 30 or so whiskies that I was interested in and all but 8 are not available in full bottles. I actually started out at looking at 4-5 specific bottles but as the list of those not available grew, so did my interest in determining what was available. A mighty large task to try and restock some/many of those before the July 30th deadline for free shipping.

@cherylnifer , nope, still waiting. Their handy-dandy tracking link from DHL says it left Germany on Saturday and was checked in in the US on Monday.

I see you can sort the site by "Newest First." That's probably your best bet if you're stalking the stocking, so to speak.

Good news. Appears Fine Drams has acquired additional stocks, and updated their web page listing. Bad news is there are still a number of products in which full bottles are still not available.

The guy who runs the site ("Scotch_Fanatic") is talking a bit about his restocking and his policies shipping to "no shipping" states here:

reddit.com/r/Scotch/…

Still no new Talisker 57 or Glenfarclas 105, or else they're in and out again.

@OlJas still doesn't ship to Canada...

I got my bottles from FineDrams.com everyone...!

Just as advertised.

No duty.

No shipping costs.

No breakage.

No service to Canada still--sorry.

No end Talisker 57 flowing in The Pony (my home bar).

Also, still no Talisker 57 on the site. Too bad.

No one could stop me from placing one more order while the July shipping promo goes on!

The wife sent me off to get some groceries...Just when I thought $43 was a good deal for a 1.75 L of Buffalo Trace bourbon - I picked up the last bottle in a different store for $40.

I'm now set with enough Buffalo Trace to last me for quite a while!

I placed my second order at Fine Drams. They're still out of Talisker 57 and Glenfarclas 105, but I found good prices on hard-to-find (in the US) bottles of Benromach 10 100 Proof (57%) and Glen Scotia (an OB--in contrast to the IBs that I do see here in the US sometimes, and which are generally considered better, but everyone needs a disco cow). And I got a Talisker DE, which is easy to find in the US,, but not for $52 with free shipping!

I still see plenty of good deals on there for Ardbeg 10, Lagavulin 16, Cao Ila 12, Glendronach 15 (if it were in), Glengoyne CS, and most anything from the Ultimate IB folks.

I wonder at which point I'll start to resent the 700 ml bottles.

23yr Pappy Van Winkle 2008...what's the best price you have found for this? I have one that I would hate to part with but need to.

@23yrpappy2008, you tend to make enemies rather than friends when you start talking about selling whiskey on Connosr. Be careful.

That said, if I had a bottle of Pappy 23 that I needed to sell to raise money, I would probably do it through an auction house in New York City. You can easily find out what it brings there. I would guess around $ 1,500, minus whatever the auction house commission is. I know Pappy 20 regularly brings $ 1,000 at the NYC auctions. If I were selling it to a friend in private, I think that in the current market $ 350 to $ 400 is a fair price. Selling it to a stranger privately I would want at least $ 1,000.

Don't forget though, Connosr is about drinking the whiskey and talking about it, not about networking to sell it.

As to the drinking merits of Pappy 23, I passed up on it 5 years ago when I could have bought it under $ 200. For drinking purposes I value it about $ 125. And that's if you can handle a great deal of wood influence.

@Victor @23yrpappy2008 Note that Bonham's no longer does whisky auctions in NYC. You may have better luck with Skinner's in Boston. A bottle sold there in June for $2300.

@OlJas that's great news. I think I'll put my order in, even though I told myself I wasn't buying anymore whiskey this year. :)

@OlJas you are really making me envious. I am tempted to send a bottle or 2 to my friend in Florida. He's moving to Toronto soon, so I'll be able to repatriate all the stuff I'm still waiting for.

@Victor, I agree that this is a site about enjoying, not selling whisky, but I think you'd agree that it is definitely a site that promotes and enables networking. I think this site has made it possible for many of us to get our hands on stuff we would not otherwise have, and that includes trading and selling. The difference, from my experience, is that no one tries to profit from another. The best deal is a win-win...

@Benancio

It's only July.... good luck with that...

Thank you everyone, I do appreciate it. Unfortunately, my company decided they needed to reduce Workforce so they did away with my entire division. Unemployment is backlogged and I've just been having some rough times. I appreciate all of your help.

Massachusetts has some interesting deals at Gary's Liquor, Chestnut Hill (i.e. Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban $37 or Bruichladdich Heavy Peat $49 or Highland Park 12 $39). Kappy's has similar prices... and I recently got an Aberlour 12 Double Cask $35 in a Shaw's Supermarket.

@OlJas do you live in the US? Did you already receive any bottle from FineDrams? No extra charges, no retention in customs? In Massachusetts I can't even get liquor from California, why they would accept it from Europe? Thanks!

@goldfilm , yes, I live in the US, in a state that isn't dumb (Wisconsin). Even so, Fine Drams says they'll ship to ANY state. The shipping info on my outside of the box described everything as "glassware." Hush hush, wink wink, nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Is your locally found Bruichladdich "Heavy Peat" a Port Charlotte labeling? Or an older Bruichladdich labeling? Or is Bruichladdich putting out NEW peaters under their regular Bruichladdich labeling again? They're so hard to keep up with.

@Benancio , go for it. The deals are too sweet to pass up.

If my personal circumstances were a bit different, I woulda gone crazy and stocked up the staples in addition to grabbing the odd finds that I did order. I know when I next buy Ardbeg 10 for over $50 I'll be wishing I'd stashed a few back in July 2015 for $35 or whatever.

@Nozinan , I know you're a man of patience and quality when it comes to your whisky. If you want to rope your friend into receiving for you, you might want to try sorting the bottles on that site by price--highest first*. They don't have a TON of high-end stuff, but I did notice a few old Caol Ilas and Taliskers, for example, that might be worth going through he muling process for. I don't follow prices for 20+ and 30+ YO stuff, but from a glace it seemed like these prices were pretty good.

(*) I think that's the first time in my life that I've found it useful to sort a website's merchandise to see what's MOST expensive.