I got into bourbon in and out of Hobart (thanks to my affluent boarding school friends from college for the intro-I was barely able to scrape together money for golden anniversary cases my FR year) and it was no problem in the 2000s, really started to take off first half of this past decade and I basically gave up competing with newbies the last 3-4yrs. It got stupid. Heck I recall seeing a 23yr Pappy at a store in Longwood Fl around the corner from my beat friends house circa 2014-2015 for like $350 and was annoyed (still thought about buying it) as I could still get the 20s and 15s for like $85-$125 less than two years earlier. Now those bottles go for a couple of grand. It’s stupid. Was annoyed a couple of years back when Bookers intentionally cut production to feed into the new “I gots some disposable income and bourbon seems cool” crowd and prices went up 50% within a few months of that move being announced. I feel like the guy that discovered “Dave Matthews or Pearl Jam at the local bars or 2,000 capacity venues and have no interest in seeing them at arenas and football fields”. (This basically happened to me, saw DMB probably 25x in High School early college but by late 90s/turn of Millenium it was all over)a fan wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 5:14 pmBoth. The secondary market-----people reselling hard to find bottles-----is about half or more of that cost. So "flippers" buy ten bottles, instead of just one.get it to x wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:16 pm So I had considered a bottle of Colonel E. H. Taylor Small Batch as a sipping bourbon. Had a glass at a neighbor's house. Spectacular! I can't find it anywhere in Greenville. Looking on line it was between $125 and $199. As you can see by the 5 year old review below the MSRP was $55. Is this a product of people hoarding or the demand for a fine bourbon, or both?
The other, is that after 50 years of "not being cool", the Bourbon and Rye producers are finally pricing their whiskies appropriately, given market conditions.
Good for the producers. It’s a free market they should get theirs. But it sucks for people who cared more than 5-8yrs ago. I’m on the wagon for a while personally with a TBD return date but wonder how much I’ll bother with higher end stuff or just buy my $25 bottles of 1792 (Ridgemont Reserve) and just call it a day.