winegeist

This just in: We will have a new president next year, which is good. I am profoundly glad to have been wrong. It will be nice to have a president who speaks, generally, in complete sentences, and more often than not, bases his words on verifiable facts, and isn’t a blatant sociopath. The absolute worst case scenario has been avoided, but a lot of people are dancing like this is the big victory at the end, as opposed to a slight door opening to the new work beginning. Also, there are two remaining Senate runoff races, which will determine whether or not Mitch McConnell remains in control of the Senate. If so, Dems will be able to pass no legislation, and nominate no judges. If this matters to you, do what you can to elect Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff in GA! I bought just about everything on both of their merch pages. Also, very curious to see who will be appointed to Kamala Harris’ seat in the Senate. Now, back to the e-mail I wrote the day before the election was called for Biden and Harris….

So, this 20-something jackass comes in at 1:45pm, on a weekday, very obviously wearing pajama bottoms. He goes right for the fridge (which as we all know has multiple signs on it, asking one not to do that), Derek explains the usual, and after some coaxing, for about a minute, he complies. After getting a cold bottle of grigio, he crouches down in front of the fridge, and flatly ignores questions and statements from both of us such as: “Is there anything else we can help you find?” and “If you’re looking for cans, they’re all visible with pricing over here, where the lights are on.” When he finally stands up and responds, pouty and sour-faced, all he wants to do is argue about why he should be able to block the font door and stare into a dark fridge, if that’s what he wants to do. It’s his birthday. Spoken like a true entitled idiot who has never worked a hard day in his life. I’ll bet you $1000 I can guess which building he lives in. Most of the worst people that come in here live in one of two new(ish) builds (in fairness, a handful of truly decent regulars live there as well, but they are in the notable minority). Aside from this, the number of phone calls being made in our shop, directly in front of one of the no cell phones signs is off the charts (and even a couple of facetime calls). Not sure how we’re going to make it through the end of this godforsaken year without major policy changes. I’m an inch away from making entering the building by appointment only, or just go the pick-up only route. … Sigh.

Anyway, the two largest booze distributors in our market account for about 85% of all alcoholic products (excluding beer) that are available to us retailers in New York, including just about every domestic and world whiskey that most people have heard of. Many of the larger conglomerates of producers switch between them (as they’re both impressively poorly run companies) because their size gives them near monopolistic control over the widest local distribution networks. Recently, Diageo (which owns Johnnie Walker, Ciroc, Captain Morgan’s, and other factory crap we’ll never carry) jumped from (the Evil) Empire to Southern, and all of a sudden, products that were supposedly long “sold out” at Empire popped back up on the Southern wholesale website. I Assumed this was due to Diageo’s published product list being handed over and copied, regardless of what was physically available, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try and order. Though it’s also possible that remaining stock in other markets was consolidated here to clear it off the books, as was the case with now very rare Orphan Barrel Barterhouse 20 year. While I was largely correct, a few of these long unavailable bottles actually showed up, most notably 3 of the limited edition Game of Thrones whiskeys by Lagavulin, Dalwhinnie, and Oban (the latter of which is my favorite of the set, in both palate and presentation).

Even more interesting is that the price of most good Scotch, most especially the legendary Lagavulin, has gone up in cost considerably in the last year and a half, such that we’ve just now paid slightly less for Lagavulin Lannister Edition 9 year as we’ve been paying for the regular release of Lagavulin 8 year (though in fairness to the proof sluts, it is 2% lower abv than said 8yr), and you know how much we love to pass a good deal on to you. So, guess what’s on flash sale this week?! Apologies to those who paid full collectible price last year, before the GoT finale, we were assured those were the only bottles we’d ever receive, and the demand at that time was rather high.

(!) CLICK HERE to access the hidden sale page (!)

Dalwhinnie Stark Winter’s Frost   SALE: $44     retail: $56       last year: $125

Lagavulin Lannister 9 year   SALE: $69            retail: $85            last year: $145

Oban Night’s Watch Bay Reserve  SALE: $75   retail: $89            last year: $165

** This week only, as supplies last! **
* No other discounts apply.*

Cheers,

Jack
Proprietor
Free Range Wine & Spirits

P.S. Free Range E-mail Archive.