As you might imagine, a fire at a whiskey barrelhouse is one hell of a problem. Witnesses reported a sound like a muted gunfire report each time a new barrel was breached. Aided by water from the fire hoses, a steady stream of burning bourbon flowed into the adjacent river (and I’ve searched YouTube for that hoping to show it to you; alas, in vain). Keep in mind that this was full barrel strength, so it was probably in the neighborhood of 120 proof.
A whiskey calamity of another sort is developing now. “They” have seized 2,400 bottles of Jack Daniel’s in a liquor license dispute. The cache includes a sealed bottle from 1914 valued at $10,000, as well as
internal distillery-only miniatures containing samples of virgin whiskey that never spent any time in a barrel, presumably for some sort of diagnostic purpose.
And guess what “they”—the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission—are probably going to do with it? Pour it out. Yup, that’s what the law says has to happen. Yay, law.
Here’s the thing. No one wants to drink a lot of this stuff anyway. Liquor lasts a really long time, but it’s still rather unlikely that a 93-year-old bottle of whiskey contains anything you’d want to taste, whether it’s been opened or not. And the distillery miniatures of virgin whiskey would certainly be kept as is. These are not drinks, but collectibles. So, whatever the legal fate of the arrested parties, why destroy the whiskey?
I think we need a bunch more laws, don’t you?
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