Bourbon Folk: Your Entitlement Is Showing
To quote Judge Elihu Smails: “You’ll get nothing and like it”.
As Bourbon fans, we love our allocated product. Whether it is because we truly like the taste, embrace the status of having it or suffer from an extreme case of FOMO (the fear of missing out)…we can’t get enough of what we can’t get enough of. The more we are told we can’t have it, the more our desire for it grows. This is called a “psychological reactance” (see you’ve learned something today).
Even though it’s been proven to be inferior to “lesser” brands in blind tasting after blind tasting, too many whiskey people will crawl over women and children like George Costanza escaping a burning building to get a bottle of Blanton’s. And if we are told that we missed out, some among us get real pissy about it.
Whether an art or a science, bottle releases are imperfect at best. Most distilleries, store owners, and Bourbon groups do their best to be “fair”. However, to some whiskey enthusiasts it is “fair” only when they get what they want and “unfair” when they don’t.
We would hope that loyalty to a store would bring some benefit of opportunities to buy allocated bottles or get first shot at private selection releases. However, what we perceive that “benefit” should be and what it actually is can be two different things.
Old Forester, like some other distilleries, during COVID shutdowns had taken to on-line sign-ups for their special releases. These on-line sales would be announced via e-mail and would sell out in a matter of seconds leading many to cry “Foul! Unfair!”. Were people getting inside info on the secret release time? Did the system get hacked? Were voting machines in Georgia rigged? Wait…wrong conspiracy theory.
The same would happen with Bourbon groups on Facebook. Private group picks would be released on a group post and the bottles would sell out instantly. Many would comment that it was inconceivable how quickly everything sold and suggested favoritism was at play.
A local Louisville bar/restaurant owner has been doing periodic releases of private selection and allocated bottles during the virus shutdowns. The bar owner would announce the sales on a local Bourbon group’s Facebook page and people would go as quickly as they could to a scheduling website to reserve a time to visit the bar to shop for the whiskey being sold. This past week, a few resourceful individuals in this Bourbon group hacked the scheduling site and started reserving spots for an as-yet-unannounced bottle release. The link apparently got passed around to a few of their friends and the schedule was full before the release had even been announced to the group as a whole.
We can debate the fairness of any of these situations and what could have been done better. The bottom line is we are entitled to nothing. Not from a store owner. Not from a distillery. Not from a Facebook group.
What you do have is the right to choose. If you don’t like the way you are treated or the way things are done, take your business elsewhere. None of the complaining and “Karen-ing” in the world will speak as loudly as your dollars and support will.
A person losing their mind over not getting a bottle of whiskey is nonsense, especially since most of us couldn’t distinguish that coveted booze in a blind tasting from a mid-level shelfer anyway. Life is too short.Take time off from the chase. Pass an evening with a drink with a friend. It’s OK to sometimes get nothing and like it because we all likely have so much for which to be thankful already.
