A Steal of a Deal ?!

@OlJas, you'll miss the Ardbeg 10 deal even more if Ardbeg stops selling age-statement whisky. Maybe it will not happen soon, but it IS possible.

As to when you will resent the 700 ml bottles, probably that will occur when you get down near the end of one or two of them.

@OlJas I think they carry two Bruichladdich: a Port Charlotte Scottish Barley Heavily Peated and a Port Charlotte The Peat Project, and yes, agree, so many versions and names that is confusing...

Old Grand-Dad 114. I've been moaning and groaning for awhile now that my county has de-listed OGD114. This means that only the few stray bottles they currently have on the shelves are all they will carry. Well, when I went out today to buy a bottle for a visiting Connosr member friend I was astonished to find it at a close-out discounted price. So, I bought the bottle for my friend and six more for myself.

$ 129.63 bought me SEVEN bottles.

@Victor

Well played. I did pick up 4 for under $20 each ($25 with shipping) a while back, but I am losing faith that I will ever get one of my 2 bottles. I know they exist because I was able to get @Paddockjudge his, but the others remain elusive...

@Nozinan, are you saying that you still haven't even had a taste of the stuff?

I don't know what Beam/Suntory is up to with Old Grand-Dad 114. They are reducing its presence in several of the markets in this region. I suspect (or hope, if it is not too expensive) that they are diverting stock for some kind of special new product: something like a Barrel Proof Old Grand-Dad as part of the Beam Small Batch Collection. OGD114 is a standarized 57% abv, but that is probably very close to the barrel proof. They might also just be turning their attention to promoting the Old Grand-Dad Bottled in Bond.

@Victor, agreed, we seldom know what a distiller's intentions are for their product lines. Keeping in mind that 100% of Buffalo Trace finished product is allocated*, It would not be surprising to learn that Beam is finding ways to stretch their whiskey stocks. As mush as I would welcome a barrel proof release of OGD, I'm not holding my breath. My hunch is that we might see the demise of 'mature bourbon' in the six to nine year range and see the release of younger expressions. I, for one, would welcome some BIB releases in the four to five year range....however, as you suggest, adding barrel proof OGD to the Beam Small Batch Collection is something we can hope for.

• 16th July, 2014 by Becky Paskin, quoting Marc Brown CEO sazerac, "Every whiskey we make is on allocation,” admits Brown, referring to Buffalo Trace’s stock shortage crisis. “We just finished our semi-annual review of our inventories, and every brand from the youngest to the oldest is on some form of allocation.”

@Victor

Sadly, no. I don't think I've come across it in any tastings.

I bought 4 bottles online. 1 was for my "mule", one was for @paddockjudge. My mule has so far brought over 1 bottle. I gave that one to my friend in Sudbury. He has come several times but under trying circumstances (death in the family) so I wasn't pushing him.

Plus the bottles seem to get preempted. For instance, now that we are in election mode the priority is to get a bottle of the Writer's tears cask strength that is on its way from Europe (Fine Drams purchase) into my hands as a gift for my campaign manager (he - and I - enjoyed the 40% version I got him for his birthday in the last provincial election when he was the candidate).

And he is moving here. Which means either the stuff will go into (air-conditioned) storage, or be brought here all at once. So it may or may not be a long time before I will be able to taste old GD 114....

I have family going to the states in October. maybe I'll see if they can pick up a bottle then. At this rate it will be faster.

@Victor It's not scarce. They are just sending all of their stocks to Texas. ????

Aberlour Abunadh for $77 incl tax. There were also a few glenlivet nadura from various years for the same price. Anyone got a good recommendation for that? Yr/proof?

@newreverie, Glenlivet Nadurra 16 years - Batches 11/11 and 07/12 are amazing. I've had two of each. I will rate 07/12 ahead of 11/11, but only by the slightest of margins. These Nadurras induce an explosion of flavour. They possess what I have coined " Whisky Pop Rocks. "

The Whisky Advocate, Fall 2015 issue, is all about discussing, assessing, and understanding value, price, and value for money, with respect to whisky. This just shows how very much everyone in the whisky industry and in the whisky fan ranks has become aware of the rising costs for whisky.

@Victor , interesting. How cutting is it? Do the articles just boil down to some "everyone's definition of value will differ" nonsense, or do they actually call out sectors of the whisky market that are poor values?

@OlJas, no, Whisky Advocate remains light on any hard-hitting criticism of the whisky industry. While it doesn't surprise me a bit that they remain ardent industry promoters, what catches my eye is that these stalwart industry apologists find the rumbles of discontent loud enough to address them, rather than ignore them.

@Victor I'm looking forward to getting my issue of Whisky Advocate to check out the articles, but I agree it is terrible that there are no whisky journalists or critics who are tough on the whisky industry, except for Jim Murray (who unfortunately comes with a whole bunch of other baggage). The fact that both Whisky Advocate and Whisky Magazine put on events that require the participation of the industry - not to mention the access to review samples and invitations to distillery tours and events - is just one of many reasons why we'll never see an Anthony Bourdain of the whisky world.

After reading through my copy of the Fall 2015 issue of Whisky Advocate, and reviewing their choices for "value" whisky, I do have to point out that many of their choices are based on review/ratings from several years ago. Not so sure, in a blind tasting, they might rate some of these choices as they did four to ten years ago. I have the same pet peeve regarding Jim Murray's Whisky Bible. Lots of reviews/ratings that are 5-10 years past, and while possible relevant at that time, are possibly no longer accurate with today's stock of whiskies.

@cherylnifer, your point about out-of-date reviews is very well taken, and I think that you know, is one on which you and I have agreed for years.

Whisky Advocate has very little excuse for this, since it has a staff of multiple reviewers and fewer than 92 whiskies to re-review in order to verify that the products recommended remain within the current year in the 90+ rating status.

Jim Murray, on the other hand, is in a hopeless position to keep current on 10,000-plus world whiskies each year. One man cannot re-review each year all of the 4,500 products he includes in his annual Bible, much less all of the whiskies in existence.

At the end of the day, we are dealing with a) the reviews of one man who has his own iconoclastic opinions and could never keep up with every new release (nor should he be expected to) and b) a small group of writers who also could not be expected to keep up with every new release, nor all changing releases (and who each may have their own agenda). If in my industry, film writers cannot be expected to be the authoritative opinion on films (which are considered a work of art in their own right), then whisky writers (who have more in common with food writers than art or film critics) can certainly never be considered to be the authoritative opinion on something as subjective as whisky. We all scan, read, research, study and absorb many authors and opinions, and at the end of the day, they are all opinions we take into consideration yet form our own tasting notes on - and leave it at that. And to hell with anyone else.

@talexander, you have expressed the parameters of the situation very well.

We still want to get some advance word on what's out there before we get our own experiences of it, though, and the 'Catch 22' of the situation in our 'reviewing of reviewers' is that even though we read reviews to get good advance word on products we may like to try, our ability to assess how useful a given reviewer is to us personally, i.e. how closely that reviewer's taste is consonant with our own, is proportional to the amount of our own experience testing out that reviewer's reviews. In other words, we need a LOT of our own experience in order to determine which reviewers are likely to be useful to us with respect to liking those whiskies of which we LACK our own experience. It is a very fallible process, but we project agreement with a given reviewer in SOME known things to the PROBABILITY that we will likely agree with that reviewer on some unknown things.

I find that the number of individual reviewers with whom I would share a, say, 70+% consonance of taste, is pretty small. This is not surprising, since taste is quite individual. My short course, when lacking strong recommendations from some of those few personal high consonance reviewers, is to go with the Vox Populi of a large number of reviewers, like the Connosr Top 100 rated list. While there are a few whiskies among those 100 that I am not crazy about, the number of those whiskies is in fact very few. What that list gives is a list of those whiskies about which very few people have said much negative-- viz. given very low ratings numbers. If large numbers of Connosrs had detected any serious flaws in the whiskies, then they would not be on that list.

Maybe not a 'steal', but a 'good' deal is the 1.75 L of Maker's Mark bourbon for $45 I picked up this afternoon.

A store near me now sells Wiser's Legacy for $25. It was alrwady a heck of a deal at $35.

@newreverie, Wiser's Legacy, when first launched in Ontario (2010/2011), was $85 per 750ml bottle...and the dollars were at par.

Gordon's Wine at Waltham, MA, has Lagavulin 16 & Aberlour A'bunadh at $59.99, not bad...

Glenlivet Nadurra 16 yr cask strength for $49.99 at the Cardinal in Joliet. A decidedly better deal than the $90 currently at Binny's! A steal? That will be a matter of taste.

@plattvillepeat , nice price! Leaving aside the Nadurra's good reputation, $50 for a 16 YO cask strength single malt is a deal all day long. And then, of course, you do have the Nadurra's good reputation to boot.

It seems like there's so much of this ostensibly discontinued whisky hanging around on shelves that it'll be a while before it gets truly rare and prices go wacky.

For what it's worth, $70 seems to be the going price up by me (Madison). At that price, I'm only midlly interested. (I've had one before.)

I know a store with an old dumpy Highland Park 18 hanging around for $100. What do we all think—good deal?

And I don't mean relative to normal shelf prices these days (which I know are typically much higher), but in regards to its intrinsic quality.

@OlJas Sounds like a good price for a bottle with a good reputation. It's $200 CAD here.

@Victor Very well said.

@OlJas I had a side by side with an older dumpy HP18 and a new one at Jack Rose in DC. Never would have thought they were the same whiskies. Much more sherry in the dumpy - I think it was listed as a 1985 bottle? I'd buy it for sure.

Balvenie 15yo Single Barrel (new Sherry cask version) for 75€ (89$) over here in Belgium at a small specialist wine shop... hadn't seen it sell for anything under 90€ before.

@Onibubba , thanks. That's exactly the kind of opinion I was looking for.

And I know your conclusion was "go for it!" but that actually makes me somewhat less likely to buy it, just 'cause I'm not a big fan of sherried stuff.