You’re Pretty Serious About Your Bourbon If…

[MikeK]

You’re Pretty Serious About Your Bourbon If…

• Given a bottle of Bourbon, you can name the distillery that made it and when you last hung out with the Master Distiller.
  
• Local liquor stores call YOU when they run out of hard to find bottles.
  
• Distilleries send you hand written Birthday and Christmas cards.
  
• You’ve weaseled your way into most of the major distilleries and drank straight from the barrel. Sometimes straight from the still.
  
• Your Bourbon Bunker puts most liquor stores to shame.
  
• Many of the local liquor distributors and brand reps know you on sight.
  
• You arrange business trips to hit the cities with the best Bourbon hunting.
  
• You know all the airline regulations regarding the amount of liquor you can check through and carry on.
  
• You know about the new products coming out months before the distributors and liquor stores.
  
• Your dining room walls are decorated with barrel heads signed by the master distillers.
  
• Your ten year old daughter knows how to properly nose a glass of Bourbon.
  
• Very few bottles in your Bunker can be obtained at even the largest liquor stores.
  
• Some or all of your pets are named after major brands.
  
• You have the owner or manager of all the major liquor stores in the state in your cell phone.
  
• Been to all of the major distilleries. More than once.
  
• Your personal inventory is so large that if Prohibition was reinstated tomorrow you wouldn't be affected for many, many years.

[cowdery]

I think you've just described everybody on this site. Except I don't have any kids or pets.

[HighTower]

Well, I just got a puppy......suggested Elijah as a name:grin: but that didn't happen.......

[barturtle]

I think you've just described everybody on this site. Except I don't have any kids or pets.

No pet, kids or barrel heads. But the rest sounds vaguely familiar

[Nebraska]

My 4 year old weighs in each evening on what would be the appropriate bottle choice, although I think she is heavily influenced by label design.

[CrispyCritter]

• Your personal inventory is so large that if Prohibition was reinstated tomorrow you wouldn't be affected for many, many years.

I'm not quite to that level yet, but I'm getting there. :slappin:

Then again, sometimes I think that Prohibition 2.0 might be just around the corner. :hot: If Texas is any indication, it's already on its way.

After reading about the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Comission's Gestapo-style raids on bars, where they'd bust bar patrons for public drunkeness without even bothering to measure BAC, even busting hotel patrons in hotel bars!, on the flimsy excuse that they might drive home drunk (Department of Pre-Crime, anyone?), I'm frickin' glad I don't live in Texas, and I have no intention of visiting Texas, either.

"I don't really understand the hateful outrage. I don't understand, 'Die in a fire.'"

-TABC spokeswoman Carolyn Beck

It's quite simple. Die. In. A. Fire.

[tachyonshuggy]

Well, I just got a puppy......suggested Elijah as a name:grin: but that didn't happen.......

We inherited a betta fish that was part of a wedding centerpiece (!) last month.

I named it Overholt

[SBOmarc]

My 6 year old can pour it neat, and on the rock, one cube only.

Some visitors get a bit uncomfortable.

Is this a problem?

[Nebraska]

Maybe they are afraid some will spill.:cool:

[gr8erdane]

I think you missed one: You have something bourbon related in every room of the house, including the guest bathroom and laundryroom. (GUILTY)

[BourbonJoe]

I think you missed one: You have something bourbon related in every room of the house, including the guest bathroom and laundryroom. (GUILTY)

I tried that once Dane. The wife said if I put Bourbon stuff anywhere but my bunker, I'll be living in the gararge. Sooooooooo.

Joe :usflag:

[ThomasH]

I have the bunker, the kids, the pets, a bourbon barrelhead that is a clock that even has my last name in the brand name (Harper), my master bathroom has a stack of whiskey books to view when I visit, I have been to every distillery...more than once, I have multiple bottles from every distillery, I hunt for whiskey while on vacation, the duty free is one of my favorite retail stores, all of my co-workers ask me what bourbon to try next, I daily surf the whiskey screw top bottle and miniature sections on ebay, Most of my favorite online sites are whiskey related, I've completely exhausted the bourbon selection at all the local liquor stores, and last but not least, I log on to SB.com first think in the morning and last thing at night. And to think my wife would suggest that I'm obsessed. I prefer to think of it as the extreme sport of bourbon hunting!

[TimmyBoston]

You're pretty serious about bourbon if....Chuck Cowdery learned anything from You!

[dougdog]

In a recent email from Howie (stoopsie, as known to all, here on the forum) he mentioned the following (we were discussing our "fascinations" related to whisk(e)y.)...seems to have a similar flavor to the other posts here...

Symptoms of this Particular Disease:

Primary: Buy a few bottles of whiskey, drink them and then buy some more.

Secondary: 1. Start buying multiple of the same bottle

2. Keeping some for the future?

3. Peruse web sites, participating in focus groups, chat rooms, join SB.com

Tertiary: 1. Amass a collection larger that one person can drink in a lifetime

2. Go to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival or Sampler

3. Visit the distilleries or take a class in whiskey making

4. Begin to question "facts" about where, how, when a whiskey was made

5. Buying a barrel of whiskey

6. Making your own whiskey or re-aging whiskey

Terminal stage is actually moving to the bourbon Tri-City area in Kentucky to be close, all the time to the aging whiskeys.

This only 1 known cure:

Having a family who has not yet acquired this disease.

My professional opinion is that you have it bad. Really bad. Terminal bad. And I don't think that you want the cure.

BTW, Howies IS a professional, although I don't know if his opinion is valid here, as I believe he is, or might be, inflicted with the same condition!

Howie, you crack me up!...dram on!

Anyway...who the heck would even consider a move to Kentucky for that reason??????????????????????

[mrt]

I have too much way to go, I see...Besides, distilleries are on the other side of the world. I just get along with sipping what I can find here. But on the theoretical side, I'm doing rather good-thanks to the web and especially to SB.

[dougdog]

Howie sent me this personal reply to my previous post, he said it would be OK to post it....I now have a new definition for my use of the word "Profesional". I hope you get as big a laugh as I did! (BTW this is a true story)

He wrote the following:

Long Story, so get yourself a pour.

Are you back yet? Its okay, I can wait.

Alright lets start.

I have three brothers but only 2 play golf, along with me. My 3rd brother owns a boat and in the summer he is on that and doesn't have time to play golf with us. He says that he had to make a choice on his limited free time and he chose boating over golf. I am the only one addicted to the 3 big sins (according to my ex wife) Golf, Bourbon and Cigars. But, I digress.

My brother Charlie belongs to a golf club near his home in Harrisburg, PA called Shade Mountain Golf course. Every year at the end of summer or beginning of fall depending on how you look at it, the 4th weekend in September or 1st weekend in October the have a 2 man, 2 day better ball tournament. Since it is a 2 man tournament every year one of us has to sit out. We have been playing in this event since 1984. This is a serious tournament for the locals, but since my brother Wes and I don't live there we travel in on Saturday to play and have some fun. It is like most tournaments in the area where you get a dinner and unlimited pop (soda) or keg beer. Well since we don't see each other much because of the travel distances, all 3 of us show up every year and the one that does not play is just there to support the other 2. We take turns on who sits out. Well the first day after golf we sit around the clubhouse and drink beer and generally just goof off. Well one year in the late 80's we were not ready to leave when they were closing the clubhouse for cleaning, so the nice people there said we could sit outside and drink and they even moved the keg outside and gave us a pitcher for the beer. Now we are not good golfers. After the Saturday round they rank the pairs and the worse pairs go off 1st on Sunday. We are usually one of the first teams to go off on Sunday. Since we had the keg outside we stayed till about 1AM in fact my brother Charlie drove down to the local convenience store and got us some chips and pretzels so we had something to munch on while we tipped a few, no not really, we drank alot. We left when the keg ran dry. The next day Wes and I had a 0715 tee time. We came and we were laughing and carrying on and we played pretty decent. Decent enough to win a little bit of our entry fee back. Now everyone who was there when they closed the clubhouse wondered how we showed up on time and played so well. We just shrugged our shoulders and said "I dunno know, we just come to have fun".

Well, this started the Stoops tradition of closing the clubhouse and/or finishing off the keg. Some years when the keg was empty they just kicked us out and then some years they let us take the keg outside when the clubhouse closed or if they didn't fell that comfortable on taking the keg outside they gave us few pitchers and we would sit outside. So the last few years we would bring our own pitchers so we would have enough beer to last a little while. Lately, after the beer is gone, we now go to the closest bar and get some wings (they have 20 different flavors) and have a couple of more beers.

My brother Wes remarried and his wife has a brother who plays golf. So now every year we have two twosomes and nobody has to sit out each year. Now that he is has been indoctrinated to the Stoops tradition. The first year on Sunday was not pretty for him, by the way. We run out of beer sooner and we get to the bar sooner, but we still stay out as late.

Last year the twosome that Charlie and I played with on Saturday ate and drank with us and then they left. This was their first year playing in the tournament. After the beer was gone we went out to the bar and had wings and saw the two guys. We sent them over a pitcher of beer and they come and drank with us till the bar closed. That is 2 AM in Pennsylvania. The next day they were in very, very bad shape. After the round was over we were watching football in the clubhouse and these guys were sitting close enough to us for us to overhear their conversation. They were explaining their bad performance on that day to be hung over since they stayed at the bar until closing with the Stoops clan. The guy they were explaining this to had played in this tournament for many years and knew my brothers and I. He then Said to these guys' You went drinking with them? Are you insane? Those Stoops guys are "Professionals"

So how did you know that?

Happy Howie

[Virus_Of_Life]

I didn't know there was any other definition for the word professional.

[bigtoys]

Given today's zero tolerance it wouldn't be right to discuss how a minor child (even as young as 10) has acquired a taste for some single malts and bourbons and even tequila, such as if he or she was allowed a sip here and there. But, I have heard of such unresponsible parents allowing this.

[shaggy]

I think I have been terminal since the beginning. I grew up in Bourbon County (Paris), Ky. My parents owned a liquor store for most of my childhood. I moved to Lexington to go to college. I still live there and work in Frankfort. Next step is to fill up the swimming pool with bourbon and pray that lightning doesn't strike!