If I want a decent bottle at a cheap price 30-40-dollar range I should be able to get a bottle of Weller 12-year MSRP $30 or Elmer T Lee (ETL) $35.99 but that’s almost impossible. If I go into a liquor store and ask for either one typically I get a blank stare from the early twenties college student manning the counter as they ask me to spell out the names so they can look those up.
“Those are like really rare man” one recently stated to me “You’ve got to be on the list”. A list for $30-dollar bourbon? What the hell. The sad, but true reality that many bourbon drinkers are coming to realize is due to unprecedented demand some varieties of bourbon are becoming increasingly hard to find on the shelf.
Let me tell you about a couple of stores.
Store A is a volume dealer of liquor. They have more square footage and a great location. They sell massive amounts of alcohol in fact they are one of the top 5 stores in the state I live in. They get allocated bottles on a continuing basis and you either must be on their list or in the store to get them as they sell quickly. They have a set mark up on their bottles and it is both fair and reasonable. They sell more because they are reasonably priced.
Now this is where liquor stores are ruining the industry.
Store B is different they are a new ownership group of a reasonably sized store. They are in a much smaller town, but, it is in a college market so they have decent sales. They are hustling to get more inventory and the distributor in this area dumps every dud bottle they can’t sell elsewhere to them in exchange for increasing their allocation. They are graded on every bottle they sell over a certain price point. SOOO. They jack up the prices. A lot, more than I am willing to pay. In fact, on the most recent shipment they received one of the selections Wellers, 12-year was priced at over a 100% mark up on the MSRP.
This brought the price of the bottle over the price point for them to get credit as a premium bottle and it made them a ton of money.
The store B's believe that scarcity justifies raping the customer and that a blossoming secondary market is making them lose money so why not get it now.
In a free market society supply and demand dictate pricing and obviously someone is paying that price retail for a bottle it just won’t be me. But this is happening in every state and in most stores that carry liquor. It explains why a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23-year MSRP $249.99 sits on a shelf untouched in Texas at the price of 1999.99.
You can’t go back 20 years to tell them to make more of a good batch of bourbon, and until supply catches demand you will continue to see the Store B’s of the liquor world gouging customers and ruining drinking.