The Bar Towel

phirleh wrote:

spinrsx wrote:there a item number for this? I'd like to add it to my drinkvine watchlist

And knowing the LCBO, that bottle is still listed in stock probably, one of those "Phantom" bottles.

They have the 40 y.o. listed on LCBO website, but not the 50 y.o.

Stores in sketchy neighbourhoods generally keep the big bottles somewhere else, locked up, but I bet Cooper, Summerhill, Bayview, et al like to have people "seen" buying the big one. I would nearly promise you, though, that if you wanted one, an employee would open it, and take it to the counter for you, for all the reasons noted (mainly, the potential you would break it before you paid). As and aside, does anybody else think it's insane selling a bottle like that in retail? I'm assuming they're all bought on black amex cards, but it just seems silly. Vintages should have a private system for people like that.

All I'm thinking is, I'd take that ponce-ass bottle to a really dumb LCBO and say "hey I lost the receipt, can I just put the return credit on ($1,000) gift cards?"

Because doing that you'd never need cash for YEARS to buy your wine and beer. That's all I'm saying!

As and aside, does anybody else think it's insane selling a bottle like that in retail?

Yes! My new car cost less than that.

midlife crisis wrote:

As and aside, does anybody else think it's insane selling a bottle like that in retail?

Yes! My new car cost less than that.

No it's a matter of scale, if you make more than 26k in a week you can sanely rationalize the cost for the enjoyment the scotch whisky will give you. In addition if you also entertain wealthy clientele, it might work for you as an expense.

That answers more the question of 'buying it' - not the sanity of 'selling it' which, I guess follows whether people DO buy a 26k bottle.

The point was, it is a bit silly (and risky, apparently) to sell something that expensive in a standard retail environment. I don't doubt there are people who will purchase it.

It's funny. I worked at the Starbucks at Avenue and Lawrence for like a year and a half. I got to know some of the neighbourhood pretty well. It was the first place I saw the aforementioned Amex Black cards. But here's the thing, we had customers who were ridiculously rich, but most would likely have never walked into (or more specifically, had one of their people walk into) an LCBO and buy a $26 000 bottle of anything. You hit a certain threshold, where you just do stuff like that more privately. A dealer comes to your house or place of work, or an auction house delivers it after you've made arrangements. Whatever. The LCBO can (and should) totally be part of that, offering ultra-high-end products for the crazy-rich, but not sitting in a glass case in a store. All that's there for, is to make people feel like they should be buying a more expensive product, because, obviously, there are important people who drink this stuff. In a way, I kind of like that somebody stole it, and while I doubt it was civil disobedience against a manipulative system, it still feels that way to me.

Oh, and as an aside, those folks who I sold coffee too, who were insanely rich? They're generally the most friendly, caring, patient customers you have. Often, you would never guess how much they're worth, they just look like nice people. The loud, obnoxious, needy people were generally just quite wealthy, and felt they needed to appear more so. Sadly, they obviously didn't know the really rich people, or they would have chilled the fuck out.....

chris_schryer wrote:It's funny. I worked at the Starbucks at Avenue and Lawrence for like a year and a half. I got to know some of the neighbourhood pretty well. It was the first place I saw the aforementioned Amex Black cards. But here's the thing, we had customers who were ridiculously rich, but most would likely have never walked into (or more specifically, had one of their people walk into) an LCBO and buy a $26 000 bottle of anything. You hit a certain threshold, where you just do stuff like that more privately. A dealer comes to your house or place of work, or an auction house delivers it after you've made arrangements. Whatever. The LCBO can (and should) totally be part of that, offering ultra-high-end products for the crazy-rich, but not sitting in a glass case in a store. All that's there for, is to make people feel like they should be buying a more expensive product, because, obviously, there are important people who drink this stuff. In a way, I kind of like that somebody stole it, and while I doubt it was civil disobedience against a manipulative system, it still feels that way to me.

That's what I keep thinking about when I read this story. I mean how often is a $26,000 bottle of booze bought as in impulse buy because a rich dude just happened to be in the store and decided to get it. It seems like the kind of product that would be in some fancy high end LCBO catalog (where like you said if you buy it, it gets delivered to you) or just the kind of thing that isn't advertised but you only know about it if you are rich enough to know about it.