The Problem Isn’t The Secondary Market Anymore. It’s The Retailers. By Richard Thomas Whenever the subject of the spiraling cost for limited edition whiskeys has come up during the last decade, someone always curses “the secondary market.” Lately, it has even become the villain for why brands like Blanton’s are no longer available on store shelves. So what, exactly, is ...

Trump’s Trade War Didn’t Help Bourbon Consumers At All, But It Could Have Crippled The Goose Laying The Golden Eggs By Richard Thomas Between March and June 2018, President Trump enacted tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum for certain countries, and then extended those tariffs to imports from the European Union. While many targets of Trump’s controversial ...

By Richard Thomas As late autumn arrives, the trees turn bare and the first frosts appear, I restore a bottle of Scots single malt to my liquor shelf. Late autumn to early spring is when I most enjoy most Scotch whiskies, especially the richer or smokier ones. Yet the thing about Scotch is that it is usually bottled between 40 ...

By Richard Thomas US President Joe Biden and European Commission head Ursula van der Leyen announced this past Sunday that an agreement has been reached ending the trade conflict begun by former president Donald Trump in 2018. The trade difficulties began when the US imposed a 25% tariff on European steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum, measures which most ...

By Richard Thomas Single malt whiskies, with their distinct and individual identities and rich-yet-sophisticated characters, have always been a drink withdrawn from my shelf from late Spring to early Autumn. Between living in sweltering DC, steamy Asia, sunny Portugal and now also-sweltering Kentucky, my adult years have been marked by summer climates that were too hot to enjoy most malts ...