- Aug 24, 2011
- 28,783
- 13,801
Sounds like an invite to come over and drink all your booze pal.I've had all kinds of the expensive shit. I've owned no less than 3 of the BTAC series, and 3-4 different bottles in the Van Winkle lineup. None of them are good enough to command the prices they do. I've been fortunate to try all of them at retail or in whiskey bars, so the 5-6 assorted bottles of these two series that I've gotten... I've sold for 5x what I paid, and never thought twice about it.
There are at least a dozen bottles in the $50-70 range, that you can regularly pick up on shelves any time you want, that I'd put up against any of the "big ones". And 9/10 people who drink them blind, side-by-side, will never even be able to tell me the difference.
Former bartender here, there are a lot of differences between some of the nicer $100+ bottles and the more common whiskeys (Makers, Angels Envy, etc...) you've just got to be a big whiskey fan to notice them most of the time. Some of the nicer ones have noticeable structural differences in them that are really enjoyable but I do agree for the most part you're not going to be able to tell the difference.
Restaurants carry things like Pappy and Clase Azul because they know mooks trying to blow their cash and inflate their ego will be drawn to it. It's sort of a status thing which was fine for me as a server/bartender because, hey build up that check baby.
I'm also not convinced Pappy isn't just reworked Buffalo Trace with a big price tag on it. That distillery has soured on me because they make Weller so artificially hard to get and make liquor stores/restaurants sell like 1,000 bottles of Buffalo Trace in order to carry Weller/Pappy.
I stay away from Maker's/Angels Envy/Woodford/etc...because they're so mass produced and the taste is just off IMO. Clase Azul/1942 Casa Drogones put flavor additives in their tequilas and you can definitley taste it for example. If I were to go to Binny's with $200 to spend on a bottle of bourbon I'd spend on it on something I haven't heard of before and enjoy something new. Chances are it isn't mass-produced and is made with a little more TLC.