Vintage Bourbon and Shelf Management

[bluesbassdad]

Suppose I decided that I wanted to try an earlier vintage of EWSB than the one I have (1992).

What are the chances that I could find a 1991 or a 1990 on a shelf somewhere? Would they be deliberately separated, or would liqour store proprietors even know that there are/were multiple vintages?

Does Heaven Hill intend for each year's vintage to sell out before the next one hits the shelves? If so, are they generally successful?

Yours truly,

Dave Morefield

[jbutler]

No Dave, I don't believe they would be deliberately separated.

I think your best bet here are hole in the wall neighborhood liquor stores. The store's gotta be big enough to carry a relatively obscure bottling like EWSB, but small enough that it doesnt sell well.

In my experience those kinda stores are all over the place. Will they have what you seek? Only one way to find out!

[bobbyc]

I can find 1991 very easily the places that have this and it hasn't sold do not usually have the '92 yet. I started collecting these whiskies a few years back and was able to get '88 '89'90'91 The 86& 87 are gone , I think I saw somewhere that there was a tasting of these and they had to get them from Max Shapira himself. I plan to get a 92 at some point but it should be readily available even after the 93 comes out. Sometimes I wish they hadn't started this because I like to collect and each year there's a new one. Also the Birthday Bourbon is going to be like this . At least I have the first year on that one. Toddy's at Bardstown also have a private label Evan Williams that is dated I have 2000 and 2001 of those.

On the Evan Wiliams SB the practice I see is they usually place the newest vintage on the front facing and the older ones are behind , so if you can find a place that has them pretty deep on the shelf they should have one or 2 years older in back.

[MurphyDawg]

Hey Dave come to Ohio!! I have seen from '89 to '92 floating around on the shelves during the course of the years travels (We have '90 @ the local liquor store currently). I wish I woulda picked up the '89 in Toledo when I was there, i heard that one was top notch. Yeah, I agree with Bobby, if they had more than one year's bottling, the newer ones were in front.

TomC

[Paradox]

While in Virginia about two months ago, the sb evan williams was on sale... They had the 92 right up front, but upon looking a little deeper I found 91's and even a few 90's. So from my experience you may have a bit of luck moving the bottles around.