Update From Above Water

Excuse the five day absence here; it's so very unlike me to be away for that long, but we've been smack in the middle of Bordeaux season here this past week and I've been scrambling to get my photos and notes updated from our trip to the On the Trail blog. Some very big Bordeaux guns came out recently including Haut Brion, Margaux, Angelus, and Ducru-Beaucaillou. Keeping my head above water this week has been my main goal, especially after the Japanese whisky onslaught yesterday. I managed to secure some rather sizable allocations of incredibly desirable Yamazaki and Hibiki expressions and the whole system went nuts under the volume of orders coming in. I know some customers think that the internet and automated website do all the hard work for us, but unfortunately that isn't quite the case. When we release high-demand, highly-allocated whiskies in somewhat sizable amounts I have to sit there and babysit the queue for hours, making sure the orders get split off as we run out in certain stores while cancelling the orders of customers who go back in to try and skirt the bottle limits. It's a full time job once those bottles go live on klwines.com.

There does seem to be some confusion from time to time about what the term "one bottle limit" means when it comes to limited whisky supplies. Literally it means you can only buy one bottle per order with us (and we limit those orders to one per week), but there's nothing other than one's honor and goodwill preventing further purchasing. You could of course log back into the site after checking out, place a second order and test your luck, but unfortunately the big eye in the sky (me) is watching more vigilantly than ever these days. We have so many people asking, requesting, literally begging us for these rare bottles that my goal when releasing them is to put as many bottles in to as many different hands as possible. To spread them out as widely as we can. To help those who are constantly missing out to secondary marker scalpers and hoarders around the world locate a bottle they can actually consume. I'm very sensitive to people who try and circumvent those restrictions by creating new accounts, or having their wife, cousin, and sister also buy a bottle with the same credit card. That's why I'm constantly asking folks to please respect the limits and each other! It's hard enough to find enough whisky for everyone as it is! It shouldn't be that hard to sell it fairly and equitably.

In terms of new things coming into stock, keep your eyes peeled to the website and the blog. We've got two new casks of Four Roses coming in soon (both over 10 years of age!) and two single casks of Kavalan that should be hitting live inventory any time now. And, if you can believe this, I finally located a single cask of Glen Garioch that we selected at the distillery with Rachel Barrie more than two and a half years ago! It got lost in a warehouse, and then further buried when Beam and Suntory merged and switched importation over from Campari. That should be arriving soon as well: and for the original price we were quoted back then!

There's a lot to be excited about! Now pardon me as I go back and monitor the sales queue again.

-David Driscoll