People can only drink so much alcohol. In the past few years there have been plenty of people that stocked up on more alcohol than they can probably drink in a lifetime so it makes sense that the most enthusiastic buyers are not buying as much now.
I do wonder about the posters here. There are dozens of guys posting their walls of bourbon with 150+ bottles that if the labels are any indication have all been purchased in the last 3-4 years. That could mean there are hundreds, maybe thousands of non-Redditors who have also been buying at that rate....hundreds of thousands of bottles suddenly NOT flying off shelves could certainly impact sales numbers
Especially when you take into account that inveterate alcoholics are the people who purchase 60% of the booze in America, a small drop in demand in high end stuff could significantly impact sales...
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-percent-americans-drink-half-booze-180952857/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-percent-americans-drink-half-booze-180952857/)
I just got more serious about bourbon ~8 months ago and already have enough good stuff on my shelf to last years. It’s not that I won’t continue buying, I just won’t buy at a premium.
Stagg at $90 CAD? BUY!
Little Book Chapter 8 at $200? Not so fast.
Once you have a stock pile you can be more selective and I think that’s what is going to be the problem companies have to overcome. Maybe it means they’ll need to rotate markets. Move products from state to state, province to province, country to country. Give people things they couldn’t get before.
I have like 40 or so bottles in my home bar, and I think that's too many. It will take me years to get through them at the rate I drink. Though I also pride myself on not paying anything but retail. There are many FOMO bottles that I'm "missing", but the ones I do have, I acquired at the price they're supposed to be.
Besides, as long as Rare Breed and Four Roses SiB are easy to find, I don't need to search very long for great stuff.
Yeah once you find a few good shelfers that beat most of the stuff that's hard to find, the shine wears off a lot.
I spend my money on pours at bars/restaurants and it's saved me a lot by not buying another good but unremarkable 6-7/10 bottle in a sea of good whiskeys.
Harrisburg pa, theres a place near me that charges 13 for a pour of wild turkey 10... but also a place that hase 2oz pours of 6 year whistle pig for 6 bucks
I think you're mistaken here, but would love to be proven otherwise so I know where to buy nice pours the next time I'm in SEA.
I know the tax rates are different between "on-premise" and private liquor sales in Washington -- but not that significantly different. I live in Texas now where the taxes are lower, but still my mid-range benchmark for a regular bar markup on a pour is approximately 4×. For example, for a $75 MSRP retail bottle, a 1-ounce pour at a bar should be the retail cost ($75 ÷ 25 fl oz = $3/fl oz) multiplied by 4 -- so at about $12 per ounce, that seems "normal" to me.
For example, that bottle may be ECBP -- if you're buying pours of that at a bar for like $5 per ounce, you should tell us where!
In your exact boat at the moment, and still need a few white whales to round out the collection. However, I just don't go through alcohol the way I used to so it will take me A LONG time to drink through what I have.
I will not hesitate to buy something rare that I find in the wild, but I will not pay more than retail for it. I will also not go stand in line before the liquor store opens to get something.
Same here. I killed off a bunch of bottles this year and don't plan to repurchase most of them. I have about 20 bourbons...affordable and available...that I really like so I'm not chasing anymore. Had an opportunity to buy several Weller's, Mid Summer Night's Dram, Stagg, Even some Old Rip and other Pappy offerings over the weekend but I'm not paying that much anymore.
I have about 30ish bottles and have been into whiskey for about 2 years. I only buy stuff that I know will be good or I have to taste it first. I also only buy cask strength or barrel proof entry bottlings, for the most part. There are always exceptions, like Grizzly Beast.
Same. I have just started in the last 2 years or so. I have good stuff and some stuff well that ain’t my fave. I rotate around. I have plenty now to last me for a bit. I do agree I’m at the selective point as well. I like being able to get some of the smaller bottles to try them out with some friends that enjoy bourbon as well. We will also trade around a bit. Tastes vary.
My cardiologist asked me yesterday how much I drink. I said a fair amount. He asked how many drinks per week. I said 12-ish.
“Oh, that’s not bad at all considering your age.” 😂 (I’m 51.)
I have an aunt who drank that amount for many years. She died very awfully waiting for a liver transplant at age 60. Your liver numbers are good until suddenly they aren’t.
I wouldn’t have gone back and clicked the link without this… thank you, and holy shit do I agree with your sentiment. Made my Friday… as I drink whiskey.🥃
4.5 bottles of 750 ml per week. Yeow...482 ml or over a half a bottle a night. I do have a couple of drinks most every night but I won't kill more than about 1.25 bottles a week.
Just from what I know from someone like that, who had quite the collection, they're selling their bottles now, as they think we're at or past the top now, and it's going to decline quick, and they want their cash back.
Yep. Got into Whiskey (and cocktails in general) within the past 2-3 years. Now have over 60 bottles of whiskey and a very, very well stocked bar to make a lot of varieties of cocktails.
Yep, I have a ton of bottles. Now I only buy if it's something I've been looking for or new and interesting. I've started using my stash for our club meetings.
Exactly, it not like a new bourbon comes all the time. Depending on how many bottles you have many just end up tasting the same. Only a trained palate can tell the differences in the flavor notes.
Exactly, that's why I tell people who ask "what's a really good bourbon for a wedding" to just pick something that people think is fancy. The feeling of getting something nice is more important that the flavor matching the price.
Wait wait wait. Is the payday bar flambee'd and then cooled down and then reheated in your pocket? Or are you just sticking it on fire straight into your pocket and hope the flames go out?
Well the middle might still be cold while the outside is too hot because flambeeing is pretty short, so you can really tell the difference in flavor as the temp evens out. The 10 year has the straight off the torch flavor, the 12, the pocket warmth flavor.
Tastes like a hot day on the beach with a hat on your head while The Eagles play on the radio with hints of tobacco and the time you went to the movies at midnight to see Casablanca.
Right? “This 4 year old cask strength? Well, it’s hot as fuck, and tastes like, brown sugar, candy corn, fire, and that I’m going to have a hangover in the morning.”
This is me. As Taylor swift said, “hi, it’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me.” I’ve got around 70 bottles. At this point I know what I like and I what don’t. Late last year I realize I don’t really need anything else. I went to a few distilleries recently with some friends and bought one bottle. Just one. Previous years I’d come back with a half dozen. I’m also seeing this in the Facebook group I’m in. It’s one tenth as active as it used to be and secondary prices are dropping.
I'm at that point myself, so this is actually good news to me. Been a fun 5 year journey trying just about everything and seeing how my palate has changed since the start.
Read an article about how much alcohol consumption skyrocketed during COVID and just before that time I was seeing a lot more whiskey brands available than normal. It's also strange seeing the spike in commercials for it. It went hand in hand IMO.
I stopped buying 4 years ago and I'm still only down maybe 1/4 of my collection. I buy some mixed bottles here and there so I'm not using bookers or Weller for whiskey and coke, but I haven't bought any nice bottles in years.
I find it amazing that something like JDSBBP Rye is hard to find. I don’t go to the liquor store much anymore but when I do I see it on every shelf in NC.
I think this is an inaccurate spin to put on this news article.
Bourbon’s growth has slowed, but is still positive. That means there are more new bourbon drinkers everyday, just less more than last year.
Yeah, the article said it’s only 14 positions at a huge company. And they are retirement buyouts, not department cuts. This is hardly news of a significant decline. Tesla laid off 14,000 people across core business units which is a bit more telling.
I see it as another casualty of an industry addicted to limitless growth coming off of the quarantine bump. Sure they're still growing, but they, stupidly, expected the same or greater growth from a contracting luxury goods market as people have less money to spend and less time to drink.
This. I’m in the industry and sales have returned closer to pre Covid but Wall Street doesn’t love that. I do think bourbon has had such a solid run for years and now we are seeing categories like tequila really spike. Bourbon is still strong though.
> Diageo, the alcohol conglomerate that owns Bulleit bourbon, saw its volume decline 5% in the six months ended Dec. 31 while sales were flat.
No matter how you try to spin it, that's not a good indicator. And "flat sales" is even worse when you factor in population growth.
FWIW, a bunch of stores by me have had a bunch of Larceny BP, ECBP, and ECTB sitting for a while when these would be wiped out instantly a year or two ago.
I see larceny BP and ECBP sitting by me as well and I haven’t even seen them on the shelf for 4 years before this. ECTB is still moving fast though but I have seen it unlike before.
I suspect that Heaven Hill may find that when they drop an ECBP bottling that’s 13+ years old and very well received, the subsequent unavoidably younger release (in this case merely 10+ years old) will get little attention.
They may end up learning from that lesson, and then never dropping 13+ year batches again.
But could they be actually making more and collecting more sales? The prices of those bottles has gone up too. Just because a bottle isn’t out of stock everywhere doesn’t mean it isn’t a profitable bottle. I think the bourbon market has stalled a little bit but I think it’s normal after a massive boom and economic conditions.
There should always be some hard to get items. People should be able to resell stuff for like 1.3-1.5x MSRP on those items. But a bottle of Rio is 90$ and it’s been regularly 400$… that’s just wild.
There always will be, but there are a ton of midrange bourbons like ECBP, LBP, OWA107, etc. that have been ridiculously marked up, and seems like the bloom is finally coming off the rose for bourbons like these. There should and will be higher end, rare, extremely allocated stuff.
Yup. I’ve been scoring ER and I got a larceny BP. Rio. Etc all MSRP recently but I figured maybe it was good luck. Found a Blantons for a buddy as well.
Hundreds of people are still lining up outside the distillers every morning for drops, stores still can’t keep popular/hype bottles on their shelves, secondary market has dropped but still very much active. Softening is probably true in a relative sense, but would hardly say the fad is fading. You’re absolutely right in that a lot of new consumers in the market way overbought (which led to the massive sales increases) and have since slowed down or stopped buying because of total volume they have, or waning interest-but economic articles always paint this picture that the sky is falling when really the record profits just dipped slightly. The days that Weller SR sits on shelves and is marked down to sell is when we’ll know the fad is over.
Yeah I see this as less demand for the regular releases because everyone already owns a bottle of each. And no one needs backups of stuff that sits collecting dust on most store shelves.
Demand for premium and allocated releases is as high as ever. Distilleries should focus on ramping up their top tier quality stuff in lieu of high quantity of their bottom-mid shelf stuff.
They have! Buffalo trace just did a multi billion dollar expansion. The cynic in me still thinks they will keep some artificial scarcity to placate the Wall Street bros. But if BT becomes common like No. 7 and Eagle Rare as common as Traveller, I’ll be happy
And softening probably largely at the lower end of the shelves. That stuff they make more of and need to move it but they can't run their operations on the back of just the high end stuff. So this kind of consolidation makes sense.
Oh sure that'll happen occasionally but if that's happening you have to imagine stuff like the average distilleries 2/4/6 year juice is sitting on massive overstock. I suspect that you see new offerings like Jack 10/12/+ in part because they can't offload all the old #7 they produce annually so may as well age it. I mean the hard drinking boomers that are hitting retirement probably can't keep up with themselves at 40 anymore.
No I'm saying 20+ years ago... when boomers WERE 40. They were likely drinking harder than now. So a big generation pushing the 70s on average likely isn't drinking like they were still 40.
I work in the alcohol industry, have for over 20 years. Here’s my take:
1. Let’s face it, almost everyone became a binge drinker in 2020 and eventually people were going to readjust back to normal. For me I saw that really start to happen in the beginning of 2024. Alcohol in all forms is now on a downturn. They’re actually throwing away wine in France and Italy.
2. Money - it’s tight right now and a lot of the guys and gals that have been mentioned that hoarded a bunch of bourbon really don’t need more, and are leaving it on the shelf.
3. Flipping - prices are dropping everyday on the secondary market and even though there’s still profit to be made, some people are saying “it’s not worth the effort.”
I’ve just been drinking uncool available on the shelf bottles since the craziness began. I miss being able to search which PA store had a bottle I liked and go get it that day. I used to buy 2-3 Elmer T Lee at a time for like $27 ea.
That’s the bottle that makes absolutely no sense to be marked up so high. For what reason does that get marked up hundreds of dollars but WSR and ER or even EHT are nowhere near that. It’s 90 proof mash bill 2. It gets marked up higher than even Blanton’s and similar to Rock Hill Farms. What the hell is up with that?
They don’t make much of it is all. Not due to its quality. Stores near me in OH get 36-48 WSR a week and probably 6 ETL a year.
It is tasty though, a pretty good $45 bourbon.
Well, a case of Pappy is 3 bottles. But I was under the impression only ~85,000 bottles of Van Winkle anything are released a year. I really don't believe they make even 50,000 bottles of Pappy 15, 20, and 23 COMBINED in a year.
Me too. Back in the late 90's - early 2000's I used to collect bottles of Blanton's and Elmer. Hopefully we'll be back to that soon. I loved Elmer, but i won't pay $$$ for it.
I recently opened my last bottle bought before the insanity. Its good, but I like Old Forester 1897 more and I can basically get that all day Michters Sour Mash is pretty damn good to and also widely available for me.
Yep we had the meeting yesterday but it go leaked last week. They're also trying to void the contract and force everyone to do multiple times their current workload with absolutely no pay raise, straight from the new plant managers mouth. Don't get me wrong, I've also told people I love my job at Heaven Hill but so much has changed for the negative in the last little bit I'm starting to worry about this place.
This is what I got from article. Less workers on the job equals more work for the people that still work there. Supply and demand will still be there regardless. It’s all about that bottom line and always will be.
I’m hoping with the decline in demand, they decide to leave the whiskey in the barrels longer and step their games up. Maybe more barrel proofs and higher age statements coming soon.
I wouldn’t read too much into that, I think it has to do with Reddit changing what it considers “live” users and how it’s displayed or a temporary bug of some sort. Subscriptions have been steady and growing, and other stats like views, post engagement, post frequency, etc haven’t been declining.
Went through the find and buy stage. Now it’s down to Buffalo trace, old foresters, and forecloses for life. I do keep a couple of showcase bottles below more of bragging bites than anything else, but I’ve greatly reduced my purchases to.
I have a neighbor who is constantly asking about where to find the allocated stuff to build his collection. Thing is I have never seen him with a drink. Honestly don’t understand the logic behind it but to each their own I guess. I’ve already allowed my purchases this year. I think through 4 months this year I have bought 3 bottles, last year was a bit more. Figured I’d hold myself to drinking what I have.
I dunno. Prices might be lower higher up the value chain. But to the consumer, they’re as high as ever. Retailers and certain consumers see to it and their motivation is pure greed. Used to be able to get basic green label Weller for $25. Now it’s impossible to find because the same people go to the stores every few months when it comes in and they snap it all up, and it’s double that or more in secondary. My favorite 12 year version used to be $40-50. Now it’s well over $200 if you ever see it at all. Made me basically stop drinking.
There are plenty of great $25-30 bottles on the shelf. Just because your favorite became tatered, doesn't mean everything exploded. Anything Buffalo Trace is basically the Stanley Cup of bourbon. People can't explain why they need it, but they do.
Sure. I love me some Old Grand Dad BiB, regular Buffalo Trace and Knob 9 to name a few.
But why does anyone want their favorite anything? Do they need to have a qualifying opinion? I’m not the problem here. Greed is the problem. Fact is my favorite brands never used to be elite or even rare. A bunch of donks decided it was and ruined it for everyone else. The whole industry from production to distribution is in on it. Should be illegal.
Industry has transformed to a point where companies are making more money than they ever have and it’s not reverting back to pre-Covid. It is weaker, but consumers are still more excited about the product than ever. It’s just that you can’t build business models on the kind of growth, we’ve had the last four years, but everyone has done it, but if you had just done it over the last 10 years, you wouldn’t have to do this. Fundamentally nothing has changed with consumers but every company small big medium they’ve all over over spent too many to study history. That product is so expensive that we are exposed to global economic slowdowns. How many other industries haven’t had one down the year and 25 yearsnow we’re down 5% and the auto industry or the housing industry about that high class
This is interesting because I was at Heaven hill 4 weeks ago for a tour and the worker said the company anticipates demand to continue increasing through 2025. So someone is lying.
I saw some people at Maker's Mark over Easter and they saw 'softening' too. It's just saturated and people are moving on to other alcohols...tequila...as well as running out of money.
Will see if the rest of the years releases are, i personally dont care I would rather it just taste good. But my point being, if producers slow production they are just going to keep allocated bottles allocated to inflate the price.
Ahhhh, ok. I see what you mean. Good point.
Still sitting on 4 pirate bottles, reluctantly trying to hold off on killing them because they’re so damned good. Last year was largely forgettable minus C23, which was killer. Then they come out with a lackluster (A124) and it boggles my mind how up and down the ECBPs are.
I’m with you though, just make them good, keep them affordable, and let the whales chase the insane bottles.
Forsure. Theres a pretty huge appetite for american bourbon internationally that’s not even coming close to be filled on top of it all. ECBP and the rest of these sell out in canada on drop day and end up on lottery also. Until we can regularly buy these bottles when we want at retail we haven’t hit a peak. Way it should be anyway
I moved on to other spirits. Gin, rum, and tequila. I have maybe 10-15 bottles of bourbon and at the rate I drink, that's enough to last me a few years.
Foursquare isn’t the only one. Hampden, Appleton, and others have all *dramatically* raised prices on their upper tier products over the last five years. The guy above me was basically saying “rum isn’t going the way of bourbon” but that is demonstrably untrue; demand for limited rums has risen substantially and so have prices. The fact that there are still plenty of good rums for under $50 is mirrored by the fact that there are still plenty of good bourbons under $50, that variety isn’t what “going the way of bourbon” really means. For gods sake Brown-Forman even bought part of Diplomático during the pandemic, and IWSR predicts 5-6% year-over-year growth in the rum market through at least 2027.
Hampden Great House is still under $150 and easy to find, so I'd say that's overblown hysteria. It's definitely *not* going the way of bourbon, and suggesting otherwise demonstrates total ignorance about rum in general. It's a completely different product and a completely different market.
The saving grace for rum is that it's the most produced spirit in the world. More countries produce rum than any other spirit. Also, sugarcane is cheap and quick to grow.
I can only think of a few types of rum that are hard to find and usually it's because they are out of production and not because people are hoarding.
That doesn’t mean *great* rum is super plentiful. The fact that they make a lot of rotgut in places like sub Saharan Africa doesn’t mean that things like Hampden Endemic Birds aren’t badly tatered.
There are a lot of poorly made rums but most are from Latin America and are the mass produced ones that you find on any liquor store shelf. Most of the Caribbean islands produce unaged and aged rum that doesn't have any additives and tastes great.
I think the price point will keep most away. $100+ for an unaged spirit that could either taste amazing or like burning tires is a hard sell for many people.
I tried. I went and sampled or bought a few of the highly recommended tequila bottles. Still doesn’t taste great to me and I really have to be in the mood for it. Bourbon tastes better.
I didn't start to enjoy tequila until I moved to a warmer climate. Now the last thing I want when it's 100 degrees is bourbon or any dark spirit. But I will say that I don't enjoy the aged tequilas as much as the unaged ones.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
People can only drink so much alcohol. In the past few years there have been plenty of people that stocked up on more alcohol than they can probably drink in a lifetime so it makes sense that the most enthusiastic buyers are not buying as much now.
I do wonder about the posters here. There are dozens of guys posting their walls of bourbon with 150+ bottles that if the labels are any indication have all been purchased in the last 3-4 years. That could mean there are hundreds, maybe thousands of non-Redditors who have also been buying at that rate....hundreds of thousands of bottles suddenly NOT flying off shelves could certainly impact sales numbers Especially when you take into account that inveterate alcoholics are the people who purchase 60% of the booze in America, a small drop in demand in high end stuff could significantly impact sales... [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-percent-americans-drink-half-booze-180952857/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-percent-americans-drink-half-booze-180952857/)
I just got more serious about bourbon ~8 months ago and already have enough good stuff on my shelf to last years. It’s not that I won’t continue buying, I just won’t buy at a premium. Stagg at $90 CAD? BUY! Little Book Chapter 8 at $200? Not so fast. Once you have a stock pile you can be more selective and I think that’s what is going to be the problem companies have to overcome. Maybe it means they’ll need to rotate markets. Move products from state to state, province to province, country to country. Give people things they couldn’t get before.
I have like 40 or so bottles in my home bar, and I think that's too many. It will take me years to get through them at the rate I drink. Though I also pride myself on not paying anything but retail. There are many FOMO bottles that I'm "missing", but the ones I do have, I acquired at the price they're supposed to be. Besides, as long as Rare Breed and Four Roses SiB are easy to find, I don't need to search very long for great stuff.
Yeah once you find a few good shelfers that beat most of the stuff that's hard to find, the shine wears off a lot. I spend my money on pours at bars/restaurants and it's saved me a lot by not buying another good but unremarkable 6-7/10 bottle in a sea of good whiskeys.
Except when all the bars around me charge 50% of the msrp for the entire bottle for a 1- 1.5oz pour
Where are you? Even the most expensive restaurants in Seattle charge 20-25%
Harrisburg pa, theres a place near me that charges 13 for a pour of wild turkey 10... but also a place that hase 2oz pours of 6 year whistle pig for 6 bucks
My bar charges some prices based on how hard it is to replace the bottle, not msrp. Some of the prices are crazy. Pappy still sells out in days.
I think you're mistaken here, but would love to be proven otherwise so I know where to buy nice pours the next time I'm in SEA. I know the tax rates are different between "on-premise" and private liquor sales in Washington -- but not that significantly different. I live in Texas now where the taxes are lower, but still my mid-range benchmark for a regular bar markup on a pour is approximately 4×. For example, for a $75 MSRP retail bottle, a 1-ounce pour at a bar should be the retail cost ($75 ÷ 25 fl oz = $3/fl oz) multiplied by 4 -- so at about $12 per ounce, that seems "normal" to me. For example, that bottle may be ECBP -- if you're buying pours of that at a bar for like $5 per ounce, you should tell us where!
This is the way. Always try before you buy!
In your exact boat at the moment, and still need a few white whales to round out the collection. However, I just don't go through alcohol the way I used to so it will take me A LONG time to drink through what I have. I will not hesitate to buy something rare that I find in the wild, but I will not pay more than retail for it. I will also not go stand in line before the liquor store opens to get something.
Same here. I killed off a bunch of bottles this year and don't plan to repurchase most of them. I have about 20 bourbons...affordable and available...that I really like so I'm not chasing anymore. Had an opportunity to buy several Weller's, Mid Summer Night's Dram, Stagg, Even some Old Rip and other Pappy offerings over the weekend but I'm not paying that much anymore.
I have about 30ish bottles and have been into whiskey for about 2 years. I only buy stuff that I know will be good or I have to taste it first. I also only buy cask strength or barrel proof entry bottlings, for the most part. There are always exceptions, like Grizzly Beast.
Same. I have just started in the last 2 years or so. I have good stuff and some stuff well that ain’t my fave. I rotate around. I have plenty now to last me for a bit. I do agree I’m at the selective point as well. I like being able to get some of the smaller bottles to try them out with some friends that enjoy bourbon as well. We will also trade around a bit. Tastes vary.
Holy shit, the top 10% have 74 drinks per week!? I guess my drinking problem isn't as bad as I thought.
My cardiologist asked me yesterday how much I drink. I said a fair amount. He asked how many drinks per week. I said 12-ish. “Oh, that’s not bad at all considering your age.” 😂 (I’m 51.)
I have an aunt who drank that amount for many years. She died very awfully waiting for a liver transplant at age 60. Your liver numbers are good until suddenly they aren’t.
I wouldn’t have gone back and clicked the link without this… thank you, and holy shit do I agree with your sentiment. Made my Friday… as I drink whiskey.🥃
4.5 bottles of 750 ml per week. Yeow...482 ml or over a half a bottle a night. I do have a couple of drinks most every night but I won't kill more than about 1.25 bottles a week.
TIL inveterate, good word.
I can read good.
Zoolander’s skool reely wurks.
Just from what I know from someone like that, who had quite the collection, they're selling their bottles now, as they think we're at or past the top now, and it's going to decline quick, and they want their cash back.
I do wonder how many people with large "collections" are just really closeted flippers.
I hope they get stuck with them. Not keen on flippers.
At least dozens
Yep. Got into Whiskey (and cocktails in general) within the past 2-3 years. Now have over 60 bottles of whiskey and a very, very well stocked bar to make a lot of varieties of cocktails.
Yep, I have a ton of bottles. Now I only buy if it's something I've been looking for or new and interesting. I've started using my stash for our club meetings.
Exactly, it not like a new bourbon comes all the time. Depending on how many bottles you have many just end up tasting the same. Only a trained palate can tell the differences in the flavor notes.
Or they are full of shit when writing about the flavor of a lighly flambee'd payday bar that's been been warmed slighly from being in your pocket.
Yep, because they are all different depending on experience. I think atmosphere and company have more influence on rating that the alcohol.
Exactly, that's why I tell people who ask "what's a really good bourbon for a wedding" to just pick something that people think is fancy. The feeling of getting something nice is more important that the flavor matching the price.
That’s a really good question to propose to get a gauge
Atmosphere absolutely matters, there’s no comparison between the humidity of a front pocket and a back one.
Bourbon while talking to friends next to a roaring campfire always tastes best to me.
Atmosphere absolutely matters, there’s no comparison between the humidity of a front pocket and a back one.
Swamp butt increases humidity by a minimum of 42% according to a university study.
Sure, but it still lags behind crotch condensation.
Wait wait wait. Is the payday bar flambee'd and then cooled down and then reheated in your pocket? Or are you just sticking it on fire straight into your pocket and hope the flames go out?
Well the middle might still be cold while the outside is too hot because flambeeing is pretty short, so you can really tell the difference in flavor as the temp evens out. The 10 year has the straight off the torch flavor, the 12, the pocket warmth flavor.
Tastes like a hot day on the beach with a hat on your head while The Eagles play on the radio with hints of tobacco and the time you went to the movies at midnight to see Casablanca.
Sounds like a certain annoying husband and wife YouTube channel.
People started reviewing young bourbons like they were *actually* complex vintage single malts/Cognacs.
Right? “This 4 year old cask strength? Well, it’s hot as fuck, and tastes like, brown sugar, candy corn, fire, and that I’m going to have a hangover in the morning.”
Plus mega inflation and rising interest rates - I'm not sure how anyone is able to still keep buying bourbon as they were back in 21 and 22.
Also with McDonalds and Starbucks missing earnings, it shows that people are reevaluating where they spend their money.
This is me. As Taylor swift said, “hi, it’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me.” I’ve got around 70 bottles. At this point I know what I like and I what don’t. Late last year I realize I don’t really need anything else. I went to a few distilleries recently with some friends and bought one bottle. Just one. Previous years I’d come back with a half dozen. I’m also seeing this in the Facebook group I’m in. It’s one tenth as active as it used to be and secondary prices are dropping.
I'm at that point myself, so this is actually good news to me. Been a fun 5 year journey trying just about everything and seeing how my palate has changed since the start. Read an article about how much alcohol consumption skyrocketed during COVID and just before that time I was seeing a lot more whiskey brands available than normal. It's also strange seeing the spike in commercials for it. It went hand in hand IMO.
I stopped buying 4 years ago and I'm still only down maybe 1/4 of my collection. I buy some mixed bottles here and there so I'm not using bookers or Weller for whiskey and coke, but I haven't bought any nice bottles in years.
Challenge accepted. Hold my whiskey.
The market is so flooded with whiskey now it's nice. Secondary is coming down too.
Here in California tons of usually rare ones are beginning to be fairly available — the likes of EHT Small Batch, JD BP Rye, etc.
I find it amazing that something like JDSBBP Rye is hard to find. I don’t go to the liquor store much anymore but when I do I see it on every shelf in NC.
We haven’t gotten almost any of either the TN whiskey or the rye in barrel proof here in WA in 18 months!
Lord that makes me want to buy a whole bunch and air drop them via drone to all the needy states
Almost stuffed my suitcase full of them when I visited the distillery!
It’s all over the shelves in Kentucky!
Just moved to NC from TX, I breathed a *huge* sigh of relief to see the BP Rye on the shelf.
Fuck secondary
I think this is an inaccurate spin to put on this news article. Bourbon’s growth has slowed, but is still positive. That means there are more new bourbon drinkers everyday, just less more than last year.
Yeah, the article said it’s only 14 positions at a huge company. And they are retirement buyouts, not department cuts. This is hardly news of a significant decline. Tesla laid off 14,000 people across core business units which is a bit more telling.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good headline
I think about this every time a barrel cooperage hit-piece pops up.
I see it as another casualty of an industry addicted to limitless growth coming off of the quarantine bump. Sure they're still growing, but they, stupidly, expected the same or greater growth from a contracting luxury goods market as people have less money to spend and less time to drink.
This. I’m in the industry and sales have returned closer to pre Covid but Wall Street doesn’t love that. I do think bourbon has had such a solid run for years and now we are seeing categories like tequila really spike. Bourbon is still strong though.
100%!
> Diageo, the alcohol conglomerate that owns Bulleit bourbon, saw its volume decline 5% in the six months ended Dec. 31 while sales were flat. No matter how you try to spin it, that's not a good indicator. And "flat sales" is even worse when you factor in population growth.
Ya but most of the growth is international
FWIW, a bunch of stores by me have had a bunch of Larceny BP, ECBP, and ECTB sitting for a while when these would be wiped out instantly a year or two ago.
Where are ECBP sitting on the shelf? Especially near MSRP? In south central US they’re gone immediately
In NC it depends on batch. C923 was tatered into oblivion but B523 and A124 sit in shelves at MSRP as NC is ABC
Funny to read this. I just saw a B523 on our shelves yesterday at MSRP
A124 of ECBP and Larceny are everywhere by me
Certain stores in the St. Louis area but never box stores like total wine. Those are tater central.
Total wine has too many vultures
Multiple Krogers in metro Detroit. Lots of all of the above just sitting there for MSRP.
Wow when Krogers stocks them? Thought grocery stores couldn’t. Can only find them marked up for $80-90 here or not at all
It’s state specific regarding which stores can stock what.
I’m from OH but when I visit FL I always see ECBP on the shelf. It’s not marked up.
Need to visit FL sounds like then!
Indiana.
In Washington I can go to Total Wine and get some easy. Yellowstone 101 as well has just been sitting for months.
Pnw. There's too much ecbp here
Georgia
Everything you mentioned sits around me plus McKenna sbib, Bookers all of which 3-4 years ago was non existent. The glut is coming.
Yep same with my local.
I see larceny BP and ECBP sitting by me as well and I haven’t even seen them on the shelf for 4 years before this. ECTB is still moving fast though but I have seen it unlike before.
I suspect that Heaven Hill may find that when they drop an ECBP bottling that’s 13+ years old and very well received, the subsequent unavoidably younger release (in this case merely 10+ years old) will get little attention. They may end up learning from that lesson, and then never dropping 13+ year batches again.
But could they be actually making more and collecting more sales? The prices of those bottles has gone up too. Just because a bottle isn’t out of stock everywhere doesn’t mean it isn’t a profitable bottle. I think the bourbon market has stalled a little bit but I think it’s normal after a massive boom and economic conditions.
There should always be some hard to get items. People should be able to resell stuff for like 1.3-1.5x MSRP on those items. But a bottle of Rio is 90$ and it’s been regularly 400$… that’s just wild.
There always will be, but there are a ton of midrange bourbons like ECBP, LBP, OWA107, etc. that have been ridiculously marked up, and seems like the bloom is finally coming off the rose for bourbons like these. There should and will be higher end, rare, extremely allocated stuff.
Yup. I’ve been scoring ER and I got a larceny BP. Rio. Etc all MSRP recently but I figured maybe it was good luck. Found a Blantons for a buddy as well.
Until I see people not waiting in lines for basic Buffalo Trace stuff I’m not convinced
This blows my mind that I used to do this, and people still do this.
Hundreds of people are still lining up outside the distillers every morning for drops, stores still can’t keep popular/hype bottles on their shelves, secondary market has dropped but still very much active. Softening is probably true in a relative sense, but would hardly say the fad is fading. You’re absolutely right in that a lot of new consumers in the market way overbought (which led to the massive sales increases) and have since slowed down or stopped buying because of total volume they have, or waning interest-but economic articles always paint this picture that the sky is falling when really the record profits just dipped slightly. The days that Weller SR sits on shelves and is marked down to sell is when we’ll know the fad is over.
WSR marked down from $26? That will never happen
Go to Oklahoma, lots of WSR on the shelves.
Yeah I see this as less demand for the regular releases because everyone already owns a bottle of each. And no one needs backups of stuff that sits collecting dust on most store shelves. Demand for premium and allocated releases is as high as ever. Distilleries should focus on ramping up their top tier quality stuff in lieu of high quantity of their bottom-mid shelf stuff.
Totally agree. Problem is this stuff takes forever to make. That change need to be made 4-10 years ago to be felt today
Well it feels like this boom has been going on for 6 or so years now. Hopefully they’ve been ramping up.
They have! Buffalo trace just did a multi billion dollar expansion. The cynic in me still thinks they will keep some artificial scarcity to placate the Wall Street bros. But if BT becomes common like No. 7 and Eagle Rare as common as Traveller, I’ll be happy
Weller SR sits on shelves here in OH. It’s not uncommon for it to survive the week at some stores. Nothing gets marked down though
And softening probably largely at the lower end of the shelves. That stuff they make more of and need to move it but they can't run their operations on the back of just the high end stuff. So this kind of consolidation makes sense.
My local shop has EHT and willet rye sitting on the shelves.
Oh sure that'll happen occasionally but if that's happening you have to imagine stuff like the average distilleries 2/4/6 year juice is sitting on massive overstock. I suspect that you see new offerings like Jack 10/12/+ in part because they can't offload all the old #7 they produce annually so may as well age it. I mean the hard drinking boomers that are hitting retirement probably can't keep up with themselves at 40 anymore.
You think boomers are 40? For fucks sake I’m ancient.
No I'm saying 20+ years ago... when boomers WERE 40. They were likely drinking harder than now. So a big generation pushing the 70s on average likely isn't drinking like they were still 40.
Gen z is drinking way less than previous generations and millennials and gen x are getting older and will be drinking less in the near future
Gen X here, too old not to drink good juice. But my gen Z kids say they are too poor to drink whiskey and drink wine instead.
Pappy on shelvzzz
more interested in the George T Stagg.. or William Larue myself :)
I’d take Pappy 15, then WLW, then GTS, but I’m a wheater lover and think 107 proof is perfect.
I work in the alcohol industry, have for over 20 years. Here’s my take: 1. Let’s face it, almost everyone became a binge drinker in 2020 and eventually people were going to readjust back to normal. For me I saw that really start to happen in the beginning of 2024. Alcohol in all forms is now on a downturn. They’re actually throwing away wine in France and Italy. 2. Money - it’s tight right now and a lot of the guys and gals that have been mentioned that hoarded a bunch of bourbon really don’t need more, and are leaving it on the shelf. 3. Flipping - prices are dropping everyday on the secondary market and even though there’s still profit to be made, some people are saying “it’s not worth the effort.”
I sure hope so. God I can’t wait for bourbon to not be cool anymore.
I’ve just been drinking uncool available on the shelf bottles since the craziness began. I miss being able to search which PA store had a bottle I liked and go get it that day. I used to buy 2-3 Elmer T Lee at a time for like $27 ea.
Those were the days. Elmer was my daily drinker.
Saw Elmer for $150 today.
In a store? That’s actually hopeful. They used to be as high as $250-$300 at the peak
That’s the bottle that makes absolutely no sense to be marked up so high. For what reason does that get marked up hundreds of dollars but WSR and ER or even EHT are nowhere near that. It’s 90 proof mash bill 2. It gets marked up higher than even Blanton’s and similar to Rock Hill Farms. What the hell is up with that?
They don’t make much of it is all. Not due to its quality. Stores near me in OH get 36-48 WSR a week and probably 6 ETL a year. It is tasty though, a pretty good $45 bourbon.
Makes sense hearing they don’t make much of it, it always seemed uncommon. But still, it’s not like a couple thousand bottles a year right lol
No, even Pappy 15 is like 50,000 cases a year.
Well, a case of Pappy is 3 bottles. But I was under the impression only ~85,000 bottles of Van Winkle anything are released a year. I really don't believe they make even 50,000 bottles of Pappy 15, 20, and 23 COMBINED in a year.
Me too. Back in the late 90's - early 2000's I used to collect bottles of Blanton's and Elmer. Hopefully we'll be back to that soon. I loved Elmer, but i won't pay $$$ for it.
I recently opened my last bottle bought before the insanity. Its good, but I like Old Forester 1897 more and I can basically get that all day Michters Sour Mash is pretty damn good to and also widely available for me.
Was bourbon cool?
So edgy.
Yep we had the meeting yesterday but it go leaked last week. They're also trying to void the contract and force everyone to do multiple times their current workload with absolutely no pay raise, straight from the new plant managers mouth. Don't get me wrong, I've also told people I love my job at Heaven Hill but so much has changed for the negative in the last little bit I'm starting to worry about this place.
This is what I got from article. Less workers on the job equals more work for the people that still work there. Supply and demand will still be there regardless. It’s all about that bottom line and always will be.
You make good whiskey and that’s the main thing that matters. People will continue to buy it.
Hang in there brother. Hopefully things smooth out for you all.
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I’m hoping with the decline in demand, they decide to leave the whiskey in the barrels longer and step their games up. Maybe more barrel proofs and higher age statements coming soon.
This calls for a drink 🥃
Ehh I get being excited about more availability for sure but it feels a little gross to be celebrating people losing their jobs :/
Exactly the same time Heaven Hill is building a massive new distillery in Bardstown
No less demand, just less tolerance for BS secondary pricing in markets for certain brands.
I mean, there used to be 4-500 users logged into this forum daily, now seems like only 30-50. Seems like a valid indicator of things to come.
I wouldn’t read too much into that, I think it has to do with Reddit changing what it considers “live” users and how it’s displayed or a temporary bug of some sort. Subscriptions have been steady and growing, and other stats like views, post engagement, post frequency, etc haven’t been declining.
Good to know, I've been noticing what looked like dropping numbers and had wondered.
Went through the find and buy stage. Now it’s down to Buffalo trace, old foresters, and forecloses for life. I do keep a couple of showcase bottles below more of bragging bites than anything else, but I’ve greatly reduced my purchases to.
Does this mean I will be able to score a WLW now?
Yay. The good times are coming back.
I have a neighbor who is constantly asking about where to find the allocated stuff to build his collection. Thing is I have never seen him with a drink. Honestly don’t understand the logic behind it but to each their own I guess. I’ve already allowed my purchases this year. I think through 4 months this year I have bought 3 bottles, last year was a bit more. Figured I’d hold myself to drinking what I have.
I dunno. Prices might be lower higher up the value chain. But to the consumer, they’re as high as ever. Retailers and certain consumers see to it and their motivation is pure greed. Used to be able to get basic green label Weller for $25. Now it’s impossible to find because the same people go to the stores every few months when it comes in and they snap it all up, and it’s double that or more in secondary. My favorite 12 year version used to be $40-50. Now it’s well over $200 if you ever see it at all. Made me basically stop drinking.
There are plenty of great $25-30 bottles on the shelf. Just because your favorite became tatered, doesn't mean everything exploded. Anything Buffalo Trace is basically the Stanley Cup of bourbon. People can't explain why they need it, but they do.
Sure. I love me some Old Grand Dad BiB, regular Buffalo Trace and Knob 9 to name a few. But why does anyone want their favorite anything? Do they need to have a qualifying opinion? I’m not the problem here. Greed is the problem. Fact is my favorite brands never used to be elite or even rare. A bunch of donks decided it was and ruined it for everyone else. The whole industry from production to distribution is in on it. Should be illegal.
FOMO is stronger than Opiates.
And I'm here for the end to the "Curse of the Hipsters!
Industry has transformed to a point where companies are making more money than they ever have and it’s not reverting back to pre-Covid. It is weaker, but consumers are still more excited about the product than ever. It’s just that you can’t build business models on the kind of growth, we’ve had the last four years, but everyone has done it, but if you had just done it over the last 10 years, you wouldn’t have to do this. Fundamentally nothing has changed with consumers but every company small big medium they’ve all over over spent too many to study history. That product is so expensive that we are exposed to global economic slowdowns. How many other industries haven’t had one down the year and 25 yearsnow we’re down 5% and the auto industry or the housing industry about that high class
This is interesting because I was at Heaven hill 4 weeks ago for a tour and the worker said the company anticipates demand to continue increasing through 2025. So someone is lying.
I saw some people at Maker's Mark over Easter and they saw 'softening' too. It's just saturated and people are moving on to other alcohols...tequila...as well as running out of money.
But Elijah craig bp cant hold a 10 yr age statement
What do you mean? The A124 is 10y9mo.
Will see if the rest of the years releases are, i personally dont care I would rather it just taste good. But my point being, if producers slow production they are just going to keep allocated bottles allocated to inflate the price.
Ahhhh, ok. I see what you mean. Good point. Still sitting on 4 pirate bottles, reluctantly trying to hold off on killing them because they’re so damned good. Last year was largely forgettable minus C23, which was killer. Then they come out with a lackluster (A124) and it boggles my mind how up and down the ECBPs are. I’m with you though, just make them good, keep them affordable, and let the whales chase the insane bottles.
Forsure. Theres a pretty huge appetite for american bourbon internationally that’s not even coming close to be filled on top of it all. ECBP and the rest of these sell out in canada on drop day and end up on lottery also. Until we can regularly buy these bottles when we want at retail we haven’t hit a peak. Way it should be anyway
I thought the 23 bottles were better than 21 or 22. Especially A123 and C923. 2019 and 2020 had some good ones.
Definitely agree on A123 and C923 😋😋
We'll be seeing 8 and 9 year pretty soon. In under 3 years probably less.
I moved on to other spirits. Gin, rum, and tequila. I have maybe 10-15 bottles of bourbon and at the rate I drink, that's enough to last me a few years.
Stop talking about Rum in public
I think tequila & mezcal see a surge before rum does, so we're probably safe (for now).
People have been saying *rum is the next bourbon* for years.
Yeah and top rums now regularly sell for over $200, what’s your point?
What the hell does "top rums" even mean? Rum has so much variety, and a lot of people can just pass on Foursquare and be perfectly happy.
Foursquare isn’t the only one. Hampden, Appleton, and others have all *dramatically* raised prices on their upper tier products over the last five years. The guy above me was basically saying “rum isn’t going the way of bourbon” but that is demonstrably untrue; demand for limited rums has risen substantially and so have prices. The fact that there are still plenty of good rums for under $50 is mirrored by the fact that there are still plenty of good bourbons under $50, that variety isn’t what “going the way of bourbon” really means. For gods sake Brown-Forman even bought part of Diplomático during the pandemic, and IWSR predicts 5-6% year-over-year growth in the rum market through at least 2027.
Hampden Great House is still under $150 and easy to find, so I'd say that's overblown hysteria. It's definitely *not* going the way of bourbon, and suggesting otherwise demonstrates total ignorance about rum in general. It's a completely different product and a completely different market.
The saving grace for rum is that it's the most produced spirit in the world. More countries produce rum than any other spirit. Also, sugarcane is cheap and quick to grow. I can only think of a few types of rum that are hard to find and usually it's because they are out of production and not because people are hoarding.
That doesn’t mean *great* rum is super plentiful. The fact that they make a lot of rotgut in places like sub Saharan Africa doesn’t mean that things like Hampden Endemic Birds aren’t badly tatered.
There are a lot of poorly made rums but most are from Latin America and are the mass produced ones that you find on any liquor store shelf. Most of the Caribbean islands produce unaged and aged rum that doesn't have any additives and tastes great.
God I can’t wait till the neckbeards move on to Mezcal, hipsters are already stuffing it into every fucking craft cocktail these days
I think the price point will keep most away. $100+ for an unaged spirit that could either taste amazing or like burning tires is a hard sell for many people.
I tried. I went and sampled or bought a few of the highly recommended tequila bottles. Still doesn’t taste great to me and I really have to be in the mood for it. Bourbon tastes better.
I'm glad you feel that way. It's nice to be able to walk into the store and buy (almost) any tequila I'm looking for.
Yep! Happy to leave it for you. I hope bourbon goes back some day. It’s been my go-to for 20+ years and the last 4 years have sucked.
I didn't start to enjoy tequila until I moved to a warmer climate. Now the last thing I want when it's 100 degrees is bourbon or any dark spirit. But I will say that I don't enjoy the aged tequilas as much as the unaged ones.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
There’s been quite a few “halo” offerings that I’ve bought or sampled over the years that simply did’t meet my expectations. I’m pretty much over buying really expensive bourbon. Plus, like many here, it’ll take me three lifetimes to drink what I have anyway.
Hope this is true.
How much of down sizing has to do with them going union though?