Tennessee Oddities (A Redundancy, Perhaps?)

[TNbourbon]

I made what will probably be my last significant bourbon-hunting expedition until school (and, thus, paychecks) resume in August , meandering 100 miles or so west, crossing the Tennessee River into what we know locally as West Tennessee. Tennessee is a license state, with private ownership of both liquor stores and distribution companies, and is divided into four distribution regions -- East (Knoxville, et al), Southeast (Chattanooga and environs), Middle (between the southward and northward branches of the Tennessee River, generally -- I'm located here), and West (between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers). Availability is not uniform -- some items are available in only one or two of the regions, or might be absent from just one.

As it happens, I'm within a 60-90-minute drive from all but the the East Tennessee distribution region, though I don't get out of Middle Tennessee that often.

I found no great rarities today, but spotted a couple of items I've never seen before in other TN regions. In particular, I picked up a bottle of Virginia Gentleman 80 proof, which seemed to be widely available ("The Fox" 90 proof is available in our region, but not the 80-proof) for $10.27. Also, I snagged a liter and 375ml of tax-stamped AAA 10yo (the liter still had its original price tag on it -- $14.23, or less than double the 375ml price). I bought a liter of McAfee's Benchmark just on general principle -- it was marked an unbelievable $6.99 (probably illegal, since you can't sell below wholesale here) and the clerk inexplicably gave me a 10% discount besides . Too, a found a pair of strip-stamped Walker's Deluxe, one bottle-dated '89' and the other '90'.

Anyway, if there is a particular point to the verbal ramble, it's to demonstrate that it is both impossible to know exactly what you're going to find where in Tennessee, but highly likely you can find most anything if you look long and widely enough.