Agave Spirits+ Journey

One of the best things about the spirits enthusiast community (-ties) and particularly having colleagues and buddies who also enjoy spirits in moderation and nerding out about production details is being able to help one another out. Where this is easiest, so to speak, to do is keeping an eye out for bottles your friends and colleagues are looking for.

Today and earlier this week I was lucky enough to walk into several of Virginia’s random, unannounced allocated drops and was able to grab Blanton’s bottles with letters a few folks need to complete their topper verticals (or should it be “horizontals”?) Other than having an absolutely great teaching day with my home conference group graduate students at work, being able to complete someone’s Blanton’s lineup is the best thing to happen today.

I’ve been lucky to have met some fantastic human beings in multiple spirits communities for whiskies and agave spirits. I’m also happy to be able to help folks snag bottles that are hard to find when I can.

Fantastic people in the whisky and agave spirits communities, including some colleagues and buddies met through spirits, and my home seminar conference group (class) graduate students really put things in perspective about what matters most in life. The current state of affairs leaves much to be desired and what we need is kindness, honesty, and goodness.

I’ve been pretty lucky in that up to this point I’ve only interacted with one dishonest person through spirits since delving back after over 15 years away. There is only one exception and I’ve warned folks about him across the DMV so he can’t waste their time like he did mine.

Late last year up to May of this year, I picked up 8 bottles that were either allocated bourbons and two harder-to-find scotches for much, much cheaper than he is able to find in his home state of Maryland. On his “wanted” list was “eh taylor” (sic), which I interpreted to mean the entirety of the regular Colonel E. H. Taylor, Jr. line – the Small Batch Bottled in Bond Bourbon, the Barrel Proof Bourbon, and the Bottled in Bond Rye. I picked up the latter two for him and he reimbursed me for those and six of the seven other bottles without any issue. The last bottle I picked up for him, which he was excited for initially and confirmed he wanted, was the E. H. Taylor Small Batch Bottled in Bond. Long story short, he changed his mind and instead of just being honest about it, he claimed he was “not buying any bottles of whisky” for “a while.” That was a lie. He never stopped buying bottles and even told me he bought one less than a month after telling me he “wasn’t buying bottles” for the foreseeable future. A small-time “WhiskyTuber,” he disdains folks who enjoy bourbons over single malt scotches, which is ridiculous, and, from what several friends who I recommended his content to last year recently let me know how blatant his lie was about “not buying bottles.” Instead of just being honest, he decided to be a liar and then acted as “persecuted” when he was called out about it.

It took me a few months to realize that he did me a favor – to paraphrase a famous scene from A Bronx Tale, for the $54.99 I paid for the E. H. Taylor Small Batch Bourbon, he’s out of my life forever and I’ll never waste another minute or penny on helping out someone who absolutely isn’t worth it. Life teaches us hard lessons if we’re open to learning them. I’ll spend my time and energy on helping good folks and leave losers and liars to their own devices.

In a great turn of fate, I actually love the flavors and aromas of the EHT Small Batch Bourbon and am sharing the bottle originally purchased for the liar with my graduate students, collectively a great group of professionals who are far better men than the liar from Maryland.

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