Agave Spirits+ Journey

Over the past several months, I’d brought several dozen spirits bottles to my office for planned weekly group tastings/socials. The two photographs above show “after” (today) and the agave spirits cabinet before I took a bunch of bottles home with me today.

Despite many folks saying they were of interest, in the end only one has actually been held. 

On more than a few occasions, I’ve brought additional bottles from home to share based on specific folks’ expressed interests only to have them not attend continuously.

Today I began the gradual process of transitioning many, if not ultimately most or all, the spirits bottles back home.

The weekly social idea was great in theory – it just lacks consistent demonstrable buy-in.  Instead of being a graduate student-helmed event, a faculty partner & I ended up doing much of the proactive organization – the opposite of what we intended to be supporting roles. 

Having never achieved consistent follow-through & buy-in, the weekly socials have been suspended/ended.  As such, there’s no need to keep many bottles on hand in the office anymore – a dozen came back home with me today & more/most will gradually follow as I reconfigure home storage.

The two photographs above show the “after” and the “before” I took a bunch of bottles from the whisky and “other spirits” office cabinet back home today.

I am mildly annoyed that I didn’t listen to my gut early last month and instead went ahead and bought six bottles from tequila brands (Jose Cuervo Tradicional & Casamigos) I don’t drink in order to set up tequila blind flights at some of the socials per a recommendation from a graduate student (it’s a good idea but will never happen). Luckily, I was just within the 45 day return/refund window and was able to return four of the bottles. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with two bottles because I lost the receipt for them. I should never have bought them in the first place in hindsight.

Like many great ideas, it garnered a lot of rhetorical support but achieved very inconsistent, at best, follow-through from the graduate students. My faculty partner and I, who were enthusiastic supporters of the idea, jointly decided that we both should not be trying to fill in enthusiasm gaps from the majority of our two groups of graduate students.

Too bad – I was looking forward to supporting these. It’s also unfortunate that a few graduate students spent so much of their own time, energy, and efforts on trying to corral two dozen colleagues, many of whom expressed interest but then rarely – or never – followed through.

A noble effort that ended as a dud.

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