Beware that Special Bourbon!

[EssJaySea]

Hey all.

Without running afoul of any forum rules, I thought I'd point people in this particular section to a story I saw over the weekend. I'll link to it and provide the key pieces:

To the casual eye, there was nothing amiss about the bottle of whiskey sitting on a shelf at Acker, a wine store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But for anyone who knew what to look for, the warning signs were clear.
....

The producer bought the whiskey, then took it to Buffalo Trace, the Kentucky distillery that makes the Col. E.H. Taylor line of bourbon, for chemical analysis. The bottle, it turned out, was fake: It had been refilled with cheap whiskey and resealed, then sold to Acker as part of a private collection.
....

It was just the latest high-profile example of what distillers, retailers and consumers describe as a growing problem for the bourbon industry and its millions of enthusiasts. Over the past few years counterfeiting, long a problem for purveyors of fine wines and single-malt Scotch, has come to American whiskey.

The story calls "super-premium American whiskey" as bottles above $50.

That $1,000 Bourbon You Bought May Be a Phony (Published 2022)

Counterfeiting — filling luxury bottles with cheap liquor — has hit American whiskey hard as sky-high prices raise the payoff for scammers.

www.nytimes.com

Buyer beware!!

 

[mso489]

Knock-offs are everywhere -- wine, liquor, clothing, cook ware, you name it. Unless you are pretty secure with your retailer, probably low and mid-price items are safer, since a rip-off artist would have to sell a high volume of knock-offs to turn a big profit.

 

[greeneyes]

And yet rebranding pipe tobacco? Nary a squeak.

 

[Tar Wheel]

Hey all.

Without running afoul of any forum rules, I thought I'd point people in this particular section to a story I saw over the weekend. I'll link to it and provide the key pieces:



The story calls "super-premium American whiskey" as bottles above $50.

That $1,000 Bourbon You Bought May Be a Phony (Published 2022)

Counterfeiting — filling luxury bottles with cheap liquor — has hit American whiskey hard as sky-high prices raise the payoff for scammers.

www.nytimes.com

Buyer beware!!

This is the reason ( well, one of the reasons ) why I stay away from the secondary market. Besides being price gouged, anywhere from 2x- 20x the price, you just never know how many hands the bottle has passed through, and the possibility of a bottle being tampered with increases with each person it passes through. Secondary market = Buyer beware.

Finding the hard to find allocated bottles, at retail price, is the thrill of the hunt for me. All of my bottles have been purchased at a North Carolina ABC store at retail price.

Thank you, EssJaySea, for this very important public service announcement. This thread has inspired me. I think I’ll have a drink. Cheers!

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

And yet rebranding pipe tobacco? Nary a squeak.

Most of our favorite blends have already changed sources two or three times in the last 20 years.
I suppose as consolation we can say that no tobacco stockpile lasts forever, everything must change, but the frequency of changing hands of the blenders is a bit disconcerting.