Column: On Legacies And Lawsuits, Who Was Really First, And The Rapid Bourbon Festival Sell-Out
Column: On Legacies And Lawsuits, Who Was Really First, And The Rapid Bourbon Festival Sell-Out
Bourbon is broken. Sounds really funny if you sing it like Cat Stevens’s song, “Morning is Broken.” But writer Brent Joseph’s claim that “bourbon is broken” because it’s stalked and hoarded and resold on the secondary market and drives up prices—lacks all humor because it’s all happening at the hands of unscrupulous buyers and resellers.
In his four-part Bourbon & Banter opinion piece, Joseph dives deep into why the fun is spilling out of the hunt for good whiskey—bourbon especially—because the allocated stuff is usually beyond the hands of, well, anyone who wants it legally. He credits buyers and flippers who’ve cleverly figured out the timing of special and allocated releases, but like all of us, he’s not fond of those grabbling as many bottles as they can, lining them up and photographing them in hopes of piquing others’ envy. That even $30 MSRP selections sell for three to 10 times retail prices on the secondary irritates him, to say the least.