I feel like I’m falling out of love with whisky appreciation. Not whisky – I still enjoy a good deal of whisky from all over the world. No, I’m talking about falling out of love with the pursuit of new bottles, new distilleries, new information. The prospect of Rosebank distillery reopening used to excite me, now I just shrug and think about all the limited edition “not quite there yet!” bottlings that are going to retail for $150 and I just can’t get enthused about it. I hear about a new craft distillery (that I’ve never heard of) winning awards at a recent competition and all it makes me think about is the other thousands upon thousands of new craft distilleries (that I’ve never heard of) popping up all over the place that I also won’t be able to keep track of. Ardbeg releases yet another whimsical special edition and I assume it will just taste like overpriced Ardbeg.
It doesn’t help that I go to the liquor store to grab a quick refill on the old cabinet, and I find Lagavulin 16 is $85 instead of $55, Glenlivet 12 is $36 instead of $21, and Macallan 18 is $415 instead of $120! You can’t buy anything with the name “Weller” on it, forget Stitzel-Weller, nor can you get a bottle of Blanton’s. All the rye and half of the bourbon on the shelves isn’t made by the distillery on the label (because the “distillery” on the label doesn’t exist), and it seems like they’re creating new NDP (non-distiller producer) brands so fast that there’s bound to be a new one put on the shelf before I’m finished shopping.
I will stop complaining now in order to come around to my point. I am not having a novel experience, here. When I started getting “into” scotch in 2010 I distinctly recall hearing from “old timers” about how the whole whisky industry had gone downhill, with independents raising prices and age statements disappearing from bottles. They were just as frustrated by the constant release of new “limited” expressions, the proliferation of cask finishing instead of full-term sherry maturation, and upstart American “craft” distilleries daring to charge more than $20 a handle for 3 year-old bourbon. They were planning to creep back into their respective bunkers to ride out the mania.
This all makes me think that appreciation of anything comes with a kind of half-life. You start out enthusiastic about everything, hungry for knowledge. Then you settle into a period of confident expertise, keeping up with the times and adapting to the changes. Next you reach a plateau of enjoyment, where you start to get wary of the new and nostalgic for the old. Finally you fall into a pit of disillusionment where you see everything through jade-colored glasses. “It’s all a scam to trick the newcomers into wasting their money.” “Nothing’s as good as it used to be in the good old days.” “It’s all changing too fast to keep up with, so why bother?” I find myself at Costco looking for deals on my old favorites so I can load up the bunker. Meanwhile, somewhere out there some sparkly-eyed newborn whisky geek is camping out on the sidewalk of a boutique shop to be first in line for the new Japanese-Scottish fusion Mizunara cask from Glen Loch Firth, and damn the cost. It’s LIMITED!
I guess my whisky appreciation half-life is about 13 years. I’m not done, I’m not quitting, but I have about a half of a tank of “give a crap” left. In the Circle of Eau de Vie, I guess that makes me the aging elephant trudging along at the back of the pack. Perhaps writing tortured metaphors to convey my ennui is another symptom of this disease. My tank of those is still pretty full.
It’s probably just as well that blogging in general has begun sliding down the back side of the cultural zeitgeist curve. That sparkly-eyed geek is not reading blogs on his phone while sitting on the sidewalk. He’s watching Tiktoks. Or scrolling instas. Or something. My self-indulgent jaded whining will not taint his youthful enthusiasm, more power to him. Godspeed young one, and let me know how the Mizunara is.
