Chivas Regal 18 yo (40%, OB, blended Scotch, +/-2020) - MacNair's 12 'Lum Reek' (46%, OB, Glenallachie Distillers, blended malt, 2020) - Peat Bourbon Barrel (60.5%, Elixir Distillers, Elements of Islay, Canada exclusive, 2020) - Scarabus 10 yo (46%, Hunter Laing, +/-2020) - Vital Spark 12 yo 'Batch 002' (50.2%, Meadowside Blending, 1280 bottles, +/-2020)

Glencadam 13 yo 2007/2020 (40%, OB, Whisky Journey Singapore, 1st fill bourbon, cask #27, 368 bottles) - Glencadam 9 yo 2011/2020 (63.9%, The Single Malts of Scotland, Elixir Distillers, barrel, cask #800015, 249 bottles) - Glencadam 9 yo 2011/2020 (64.6%, Signatory Vintage, for Kirsch Import, bourbon barrel, cask #800144, 178 bottles)

Glenrothes 31 yo 1989/2020 (44.4%, The Whisky Agency, hogshead, 268 bottles) - Glenrothes 21 yo 1997/2019 (43%, Signatory Vintage, cask #6369) - Glenrothes-Glenlivet 23 yo (46%, Cadenhead, Original Collection, bourbon and sherry, 2020) - Glenrothes 29 yo 1990/2020 (48.8%, Or Sileis, 'The Emperor', hogshead, cask #17999, 242 bottles) - Glenrothes 9 yo 2009/2019 (54.6%, Duncan Taylor, Dimensions, cask #4923204, 293 bottles) - Glenrothes 13 yo 2006/2020 (61.8%, Signatory Vintage for Whic, 1st fill butt, cask #9683, 329 bottles) - Glenrothes 12 yo 2006/2019 (57%, The Whisky Baron, 1st fill sherry butt, cask #6147)

It’s almost inevitable that on your bourbon journey you will go through the “squirrel hoarding nuts” phase of bourbon. Now by that, I don’t mean that you are going to scurry rapidly after all the nut forward bourbon recipes like those from Beam or Dickel, but rather, you will enter that phase where you must have “one of everything” in your collection. Why does it happen, and why does it generally happen so soon into the bourbon journey for most?

Well, I think a lot of it depends on the reason many people get into bourbon in the first place - it certainly did factor into why it happened to me. Many of us get into bourbon because it represents excellent value compared to most other types of whiskey. Certainly back when I got into bourbon in a serious way, you could still find your Pappy and BTAC on the shelf and if you were keen, you would almost certainly be able to amass the full collection each year. It wasn’t because they weren’t good whiskies - it was simply because bourbon was an overlooked category of whiskey synonymous with “coke” and a brawl outside the bar at the end of the night. People weren’t looking for high-end bourbon and they certainly weren’t willing to pay what was then the princely sum of almost £100 for a bottle of it. This meant that those of us who knew how different high-quality bourbon was could pick it up for next to nothing. It wasn’t that long ago that you could buy Elijah Craig 12yo at M&S for £23 a bottle. It was (and still is) an accessible and affordable way to get into drinking some excellent distilled beverages.

However, with the boom in bourbon over the last few years, it meant that there was ever-increasing competition for bottles and this desire for bourbon meant that more and more producers were entering into the market launching new products every day. We all know that not everything makes it to the UK, but certainly, over the last few years, more new products have been hitting the shelves through the various importers. At the same time, the huge increase in premium bourbon buyers in the UK means that many new releases get snapped up almost instantly. This isn’t always because they are actually any good or highly sought after, it's sometimes simply because the importer is testing the market and only brings a small number of bottles in on the first run.

The problem this creates for the new bourbon aficionado is that it can be very hard to tell the difference between legitimately good new products and those that are just another release of that same sourced or contract distilled stuff as the last “new” label that came out - particularly when the copy on the main whiskey sellers online might just be a “cut and paste” of the marketing from the brand - meaning you don’t often learn all that much from the retailers’ websites. However, new bourbon drinkers can at least be grateful that the practices of 5 or 6 years ago where the stories behind most new brands - including some we know and love today - were to use a technical term “complete bullshit”. At least today there is much more transparency on the labels around things like sourcing.... but it's certainly not universal and there are still a lot of misleading websites and labels...which apparently is passed off as “marketing”.

However it's the combination of an ever-increasing number of premium bourbon drinkers, a limited supply and a lack of good information on new bottles, that leads to what the kids call

“FOMO” or fear of missing out for us older people. Believe me, it's a very real thing that can often cause buying decisions that aren’t based in logic or level-headedness. I certainly succumbed to it early in my whiskey career. It basically occurs when a new release appears on the websites and you saw the number of people “looking” at the website and you remember how quickly the last release became “sold out” and you don’t want to miss out on what could be (and certainly as marketed like) it's the “next Pappy”. So you add it to your basket and you buy it because you are sure you will get around to drinking it one day...and if not...at least you got in on the ground floor of “the next big thing”.

Except, you didn’t - you just bought another bottle from another new producer that may or may not have been sourced and probably cost you two to three times as much as a well-aged bottle from Buffalo Trace or Four Roses. The reality is that most shiny new things stay shiny until the next new thing comes along and in the bourbon world, that’s about two to three weeks. Just take a look at the bourbon release calendar on Breaking Bourbon - every year there is literally a huge number of new releases of both regular and limited edition products. You simply cannot buy them all and if you don’t buy one...so what? What did you actually miss out on? The reality is within a few weeks, a few months, or the worst case, a year, the next new release will be out.

So my advice, and believe me it comes after spending a lot of money on shiny new whiskies because of FOMO, is to stop buying new things and just to buy good things. If you really have to buy that new thing, if you just can’t face the thought of missing out, consider going in with two or three people into a bottle split rather than buying the whole bottle. The reality is that most of the time, that shiny new bottle you brought won’t bring you as much drinking satisfaction as the bottles you know and love. It may well bring you cache on BBS when you are the first to post the picture of the bottle and some tasting notes or the secret pleasure of having it “in the bunker” (for those that buy but don’t open). But stop and think for a second how many of these bottles are in your bunker or open on your shelf that are not getting drunk at the same rate as the bottles you actually buy multiples of?

So what do I do now? Well, whenever I see a new bottle posted on a website (or indeed BBS), the first thing I do is start googling - I want to learn about the bottle and more importantly the liquid inside. Is it distilled by the producer or is it sourced or contract distilled? If the latter, is it from a producer that I actually enjoy and is it priced in accordance with other products sourced from the same place. If it's distilled by the producer, how old is it? How was it aged? Did they use small barrels to “speed up” the oak-flavour? All of these things are worth looking into and it’s only once I am satisfied that I would actually enjoy drinking the whiskey that the “FOMO” will kick in.

Looking at this another way, I have stopped getting “FOMO” because:

•  I don’t have FOMO for whiskies that I know I wouldn’t enjoy drinking - I do my research before hitting “buy” and decide whether I actually think this might be a whiskey that I would enjoy based on an understanding of my own preferences;

•  there will always be another shiny new whiskey released that will be just as good (if not better) than the whiskey that was just released; and

• if you have more than one or two bottles in reserve that you actually want to drink, the chances of you needing and getting through that shiny new bottle before the next shiny new thing comes out is pretty low and this means you will have an ever-increasing bunker of whiskies that you may, or may not, actually want to drink.

So my advice is: don’t pull the trigger just because there is a new bottle of bourbon released - do your research and work out if it's right for you and spend your money wisely; and don’t worry about FOMO, buy good whiskey that you will enjoy drinking because you know you enjoy it - not because you want to have it or to show it off on BBS.

Words by Mark Latimour

Rosebank 30 yo 1989/2019 (55.2%, Hunter Laing, The First Editions, Author's Series, refill hogshead, cask #HL17438, 192 bottles) - Rosebank 12 yo 1980/1992 (60.1%, Kingsbury, sherry butt, cask #2467)

Fine Single Grain 43 yo 1976/2020 (45.7%, Whisky-Fassle, hogshead) - North British 30 yo 1989 (Dramfool, bourbon hogshead, 182 bottles) - Cambus 27 yo 1991/2019 (58%, Hotmalt Taiwan, Richard's Choice, sherry, cask #61970, 205 bottles) - Port Dundas 31 yo 1988/2020 (51.3%, Cadenhead, bourbon hogshead) - Invergordon 45 yo 1974/2019 (46.9%, Single Cask Nation, bourbon barrel, cask # 7844000025, 194 bottles) - Girvan 30 yo 1989/2020 (51.8% The Whisky Exchange Whisky Show, Artificial Intelligence) - Invergordon 32 yo 1987/2020 (52.7%, Elixir Distillers, Whisky Trail, cask #88799)

Drouet et Fils 'Reserve de Jean' (40%, OB, Cognac, +/-2020) - Michel Forgeron 2008 'Folle Blanche' (47%, OB, Grande Champagne, +/-2019) - Hermitage Chez Richon 2008 (45%, Cognac, Grande Champagne, +/-2020) - Hermitage 50 yo (44%, OB, cognac, Petite Champagne, +/2015) - Jean-Luc Pasquet 'Lot 62 La Corbeille de Fruits' (40.1%, Malternatives Belgium, 200 bottles, 2020)