So, what are you drinking now?

2016 Release Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, 63.1% ABV. Yum, yum, yum. Candied oranges against a wall of sweetness.

I have liked the 2016 release a lot better after it has taken a good bit of air. Right at first I only liked it a lot after having tried it with a little water. After a few months this bottle has become the fabulous stuff which Thomas Handy generally is.A couple of drops of water releases a lot of additional wonderful flavour.

Now time for some 2012 Release George T. Stagg, 71.4% ABV. The nose alone is overwhelmingly good. As is the rest....

@Victor How kind of you to remind us how wonderful the BTACs are on a day like this...

@Nozinan Yes - just found out I didn't get anything in the LCBO lottery this year.....sob.

@talexander While it's unfortunate that we can't have a bottle of something delicious and rare, the BTAC price was $150. Considering I would probably have purchased and kept one of each CS bottling had I won them, I've essentially saved $450 thanks to the LCBO.

Think about it. How often do we talk about SAVING MONEY and LCBO in the same sentence?

@Nozinan That’s a fair point. I think you’ve inspired me to begin a new discussion....

All you Canadians have my utmost sympathy. I just can't imagine having to enroll in a lottery to see if I can buy a bottle of spirits.

Crazy!

@RianC, those bottles go the same way in the States, from what I can tell. The lottery system isn't a product of the Canadian monopoly—it's a product of the whisky being underpriced and so demand far outstripping supply.

I thought the lottery system in the US applies only to the few states where the is a state-run liquor board this also in turn keeping the prices within the suggested retail prices. Whereas it's kind of a free for all otherwise.

@MadSingleMalt - Ah! Fair play to Master of Malt then (my usual 'supplier'). They restrict purchases of popular malts to one per customer and generally keep prices low. Although they did 'lotterise' a Taiwanese whisky a while back if I'm not mistaken, but they only had a few bottles.

@cricklewood, many free-er–market retailers in other states still do the lottery too, rather then just sell at market prices. (But I'm sure it does vary.) I think they don't want to be seen as gouging if the price is "supposed to be" X and they're selling it for Y.

At least, here in the capitalistic wild wild west of Wisconsin, my local specialist shop has lotteries all the time for low-quantity whiskies. Mostly bourbons, but I think they did one for Kelpie and for some Japanese stuff too.

@MadSingleMalt Thanks for the clarification, it's nice to know some retailers still play it fair. I think it was @Victor who mentioned some places don't even sell them due to low allocation but basically do a tasting event, allowing a maximum amount of people to actually try these mythical bourbons.

I've seen some of the BTAC bottles crop up at a few of the US retailers I order from online and the prices seem to be in the 300$-600$ range and they are selling...crazy

@RianC , "only had a few bottles" is the whole point. While my county got 174 bottles of BTAC whiskeys this year, there were probably about 5,000 lottery numbers issued.

@cricklewood, yes, most state-run liquor monopolies in the US use a lottery system for the scarcest products, like BTAC and Van Winkle. They do this because they are sick and tired of the harrassment which they get from hundreds of people wanting the bottles and hundreds of people complaining because they haven't been able to get the bottles. Private stores can do what they want. Some will sell first come first served. Others compile lists. Typically the bottles go to those who are big-purchasing customers of the store, or old friends or relatives of the store owners or store managers. For three years now my sister and I (and my wife, when she can) have gone to one store in the Batlimore area which simply pours out its entire allocation of Van Winkle and Antique Collection whiskeys free to its customers on the Friday after US Thanksgiving Day.

The US system of distribution for the scarcest allocated bottles is not a market system in which price seeks its market level, but a patronage system which rewards the dealers who have sold the company's products by giving them the hot bottles at retail prices far below the actual market prices. Current suggested retail prices would have been realistic in 2010, but really not since then, when prices started to go vertical. The dealers do with them what THEY choose. It is a burden for them. They get harrassed all the time. Even as far back as 2010 I heard several store managers cursing blue streaks over Pappy Van Winkle and all of the endless badgering they received about it. Some dealers cop out by conducting charity auctions with their bottles. While posturing as friends of the charities, they screw the whiskey-lovers by ensuring that only the most outrageous prices will take home the bottles.

The great sadness in all of this is that a lot of whisky-lovers will not get to taste some of these whiskeys, due to expense and scarcity.

I used to bring all of the BTAC whiskies and 2 or 3 Van Winkles with me on my trips to Canada for my Canadian friends to sample. Now that I know that I may not be able to replace any of my bottles I do not do that any more.

@Victor Oh oh...looks like we may need to head south to sample them...

@cricklewood, it is an interesting question to consider, just what "playing fair" is, in the context of the decisions as to what dealers do with their bottles which are worth a minimum of 4-6 times their official suggested list prices. I ask that, because I have been friends with a bunch of liquor store managers and a couple of liquor store owners for years, and I would NOT want to be in their shoes with respect to BTAC and Van Winkle allocations. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on whisk(e)y over the years, as has my sister. This put us in good with these managers and owners before the madness hit in full force in 2012, when the prices started to go exponential.

If I were a dealer, as the whiskey lover that I am, I would want most of these bottles for myself, especially since most stores with allocations these days have been cut down in numbers very low, like a bottle here and a bottle there. That store in Baltimore which pours out its allocation each year gets about 2 or 3 bottles of Van Winkle total, and another 4 or so bottles of all BTAC whiskeys put together. They supplement these in their free tasting by adding about 8-10 other premium bottles they have on hand.

Most dealers I know are not whiskey lovers. They don't care to drink it. They know that whatever they do with it many people will be unhappy. They also have few sources of good quick income as certain as are those bottles, if they choose to raise the prices significantly. One of my favourite dealers whom I know well loves whiskey, and saves some bottles for himself to drink. He also sells the remainder of his allocated bottles about 30-50% above MSRP. This practice I consider completely fair, both to himself and to his customers. He is getting some benefit from this small privilege to sell these products, but is still selling them at one third of the highly attainable 'gray market' prices of $ 500-600. The secondary market asking prices are 50-100% higher than the very liquid gray market prices.

In sum, I have enormous sympathy for the dealers with respect to selling the allocated products. They are in a bind. No matter how high the prices they receive for their few treasured bottles, it is a drop in the bucket of the overhead expenses of their businesses. I am not quick to judge them. The only ones whom I do not respect are those who seek prices above the true i.e. gray, market prices.

Like @Victor, I was wondering about the comment from @cricklewood about retailers who "still play it fair."

@cricklewood, of the different ways that retailers move these products, which ones do think are fair and which ones aren't?

For me, I expect businesses to do nothing but whatever makes them the most money. That is, of course, why businesses exist. With the exception of strategies designed to earn them goodwill or just make the headache go away, I'd expect them all to sell these things at market prices. So I guess that's where @Victor and I differ.

@Victor, @MadSingleMalt, by playing it fair I didn't imply some sort of universal measurement of fairness. Simply that if some stores or retailers managed to find a middle ground (whether it by in the mark-up or by lottery style allocation) that suits them, in order to keep the products attainable to the average consumer (those who will actually drink them) then it's a nice gesture considering they are under no obligation to.

We could argue ethics and capitalism, free markets and such but I don't think this is the place for it, nor do I really care to. I know and expect a business to do whatever they need to do to make their bottom line, I am not the one to dictate how they do it regardless of my opinion.

I would not want to be in the place of any of these retailers with the hassles associated with the frenzy after these whiskys. I mean seriously look at the botched inside job at Buffalo Trace a few years back, this is a by-product of that insanity

@cricklewood, tell me if I'm picking up a rock that you don't want to look under, but which retailer practices would you say are not fair?

@MadSingleMalt I don't dispute the legal or moral right of a dealer to ask any price he or she wishes. As a whiskey lover I merely prefer that those dealers ask prices which will move the whiskey into the hands of the whiskey-loving consumer, rather than sit on shelves for months or years.

@MadSingleMalt, I've never seen the underside of a rock I didn't find at once both fascinating and repulsive.

@Nozinan I like it! The higher LCBO prices, the less whisky I buy, so the more money I save! Wheeee!

@Victor - No, I get that; I was merely using it to show that such practices rarely happen here. I get why, I just sympathise (with those who miss out). There's probably a lot more bulk buying and then black market pricing of rare whiskies in the UK as a result ...

That being said, given the supply v demand it seems a fair practice, i suppose, if the price is 'right'.

Your local shop sounds like it knows its customers and I imagine such practices ensure many future purchases and happy clientele? Fair play to them!

@Victor, so if MSRP is $200, the gray market price is $500, and the full secondary (black market) price is $700, then you're cool with anything up to ~$500 but affronted by prices closer to $700?

I'm not trying to criticize you here, just pin you down. I always find opinions on this kind of thing fascinating.

(And I hope affronted is an OK word to put in your mouth. Kindly correct me if I'm misunderstanding your feeling!)

@MadSingleMalt I’m hesitant to wade into the debate, but part of me is wondering if the frustration re: price has to do with what a given person did to be able to charge that price. In other words, this isn’t a business making an extra profit off of their product. This is a consumer or distributor of that product making extra money off of that product. Like a gas station tripling their price at the pump during a brief shortage. They paid the gas provider a certain amount and are now tripling the price at the pump because they can. Obviously I recognize that Bourbon is a want not a need - I’m just drawing a convenient parallel for the purposes of the discussion.

The black market exists largely outside of shops. A person charging a 500% markup on a product isn’t a business choosing to charge whatever they want for a product they have made - it’s a form of profiteering or price gouging. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth to some extent. It’s not as if the producer had made that extra money (outside of the free publicity for the brand generated this time of year).

On some level there are some sour grapes at play here as well. There are people on the site who would happily buy the bottle to enjoy and likely harbour some resentment for the bloke who tries to ge his hands on a bottle in order to sell it to a whisky drinker. It’s like the guy who get a football signed by an all pro so they can sell it. Or the ticker buyer who buys up huge amounts of tickets with bots in order to mark them up on the secondary market. It feels wrong somehow.

@MadSingleMalt, affronted? No. I think that what I said in the immediately preceding post above is completely clear.

And yet people don't feel icky about selling the shares in their 401K for more than they paid. And nobody's mad at the guy who sells his old baseball cards for a fortune. Folks in those situations didn't "do anything" to be able to charge the new market price.

(I do take your point about people who artificially "ruin" the market, though. Like your rogue who buys up all the concert tickets just to scalp them, I imagine some flippers "hoover up" the bottles on local shelves just to immediately resell them. I put that sort of cynical behavior in a different category.)

@Victor, okey-dokey. I was just trying to put a label on your feeling toward the "ones whom [you] do not respect." It sounds like there's more there than simply something you do not prefer.

@MadSingleMalt I don’t know that equating stocks and liquor buying measures up very well. Obviously both can be used as a form of investment, but investment is the sole reason a person buys stocks. Investment in not the sole reason one would buy spirits.

I would imagine there were people who entered the lottery in Ontario numerous times. Maybe I’m the chump for following the rules.

@nooch There's rules?

You may substitute art, Star Wars figures, or antiques into my analogies as you see fit.

@Nozinan one entry per person. If a person is found to have entered mult times their entries are disqualified. I don’t know the likelihood of that actually happening.