"It’s hard to believe that not long ago—2008, 2009—you could stroll into your neighborhood liquor store and walk out with a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 15-year-old bourbon. No special order, secret handshake or stratospheric markup. You could just buy some top-shelf whiskey on your way home from work.
For all there is to love about the current bourbon boom—more distilleries, more brands, more quality brown booze in more places—there’s at least one major downside: The rare stuff has become nearly unattainable.
“I wish I could go back in time to before things got crazy,” says Jordan Moskal, the co-founder of Breaking Bourbon, a website for American whiskey enthusiasts. The same bottle you could pay $68 for off the shelf has today become one of the most sought-after whiskeys in the world, selling for as much as 20 times that amount on the secondary market. Just how crazy is the Pappy frenzy? An empty bottle can fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay.
“Looking back, I think we took the availability for granted,” says Moskal. “Even as recently as 2013, you could find bottles on the retail market. It wasn’t always easy, but you could get it. Now, hunting down those limited-edition bourbons has almost become an art.”
Well, welcome to art school. This fall, as Kentucky pushes out its most coveted cult hooch, including the vaunted Van Winkle line and Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, don’t stand around complaining that your cup is dry. Get out there and hunt. These six tips can increase your chances of scoring a taste of rare bourbon.
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1. Watch the Clock
Don’t be the schmuck who struts into a liquor store in the middle of July asking for a bottle of Van Winkle 20-year-old. Unless you know exactly when your favorite limited-edition bourbon begins its long journey from distillery to liquor store, then you stand little chance of procuring any. Breaking Bourbon keeps an up-to-the-minute release calendar that tells you what’s coming out and when. Read it. Memorize it. Check it weekly for updates. Likewise, whiskey blog Bourbonr runs a Pappy countdown clock and publishes an unofficial Pappy release map, which zeros in on when bottles arrive in specific states.
Don’t be the schmuck who struts into a liquor store in the middle of July asking for a bottle of Van Winkle 20-year-old. Unless you know exactly when your favorite limited-edition bourbon begins its long journey from distillery to liquor store, then you stand little chance of procuring any. Breaking Bourbon keeps an up-to-the-minute release calendar that tells you what’s coming out and when. Read it. Memorize it. Check it weekly for updates. Likewise, whiskey blog Bourbonr runs a Pappy countdown clock and publishes an unofficial Pappy release map, which zeros in on when bottles arrive in specific states.
Generally speaking, a lot of the big allocated bourbon releases happen in the fall. That doesn’t mean you can snooze for the rest of the year. The key to good whiskey hunting, says Moskal, is to start early..." ~ Find out more ways to be a bourbon hunter >>
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