...where distraction is the main attraction.

Monday, February 18, 2013

So, I bought a bottle...

Warning: This post may be a bunch of diary-style navel-gazing.  Or at least more so than usual.

I bought my first whisky bottle in five weeks.  The purchase didn't come easy.  Thirty-four days ago, I'd posted a little bit about my internal struggle with amassing whisky, so I wasn't going to break the fast easily.  I continued window shopping, but I always asked myself "Why?" each time a bottle drew me in.  Nothing stood up to that challenge until this past weekend.

There's been only one Lowland whisky I've actually enjoyed, and mostly because it was anything but a "Lowland Lady".  It was a weird earthy clay-grass-and-white-pepper malt bottled at cask strength by one of my favorite independent bottlers, priced far below anything else of its type.

So, I pestered six different employees at two stores about it.  Why did I pester?  One of the stores had an incorrect listing that was actually selling an older bottling at the same price.  Same distillery, same bottler, but a different cask type, different age, different year, different ABV.  A few months ago, I would have exclaimed, "Woo hoo!  I'll take both!"

But not now.  Despite having a chance at a great deal, I knew nothing about the older bottling.  Never tasted it.  No reviews of it to be found.  It wasn't the bottle I actually wanted.  Again, I'd tasted the one I was looking for and I liked it.  I was willing, for the first time in memory, to turn down a better bargain for a potentially decent whisky.  So, I did.  I turned it down.  And I called and travelled around, questioned and questioned and questioned employees (who are at the mercy of distributors) until I found my whisky.

I returned home with one bottle rather than two.  To me this is a victory.

During this very journey I also came upon three additional exceptionally priced whiskies.  Each are on my Someday list.  Previously, I would have returned home with those three in hand as well.  But they remain on the Someday list, not the Today list.  Today I'll have some great whisky to drink, and the whisky is already in my possession.

There's much less desperation for accumulation.  Though there are other purchases I'm considering, I no longer feel a rush to do them immediately.  And if I miss out on a limited or disappearing bottling, then so be it.  Hopefully a good whisky lover gets it, opens it and drinks it and enjoys it.

Do I believe that last paragraph?  Today, yes.  Tomorrow, I don't know.