Back in college, I took a class in Existential Philosophy. I was flirting with a double major (English being what I declared), and the class was taught by a prominent member of the philosophy faculty, Dr. Dyke (yes, I'm naming names here). The reading list was interesting, Camus, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. I maybe nineteen years old, and I was terribly excited. Yet, when it came to the class, the professor would walk in, sit on the desk rocking back and forth, mutter under his breath, and put on a movie. I saw some great movies in that class. Bergman's Seventh Seal. The documentary on Crumb. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. And yet, aside from Seventh Seal, I didn't know what any of them had to do with Existential Philosophy, and I didn't know because Dyke didn't bother to teach.
I mean, he taught one kid in the front row. When he introduced the class schedule, the kid had made a joke about a chess match with death, so they were on the same page, and all the rocking back and forth mutterings went to that kid. But what did Dyke care about the rest of us. He had tenure. Ah, tenure. Placing you almost beyond reproach, almost beyond criticism. Tenure, the great goal of academics everywhere. Your job is safe. You can run a grift on your student, showing them movies the whole semester and teaching them absolutely nothing.
Why, you might ask, am I starting a whisky review with a story like this? Well, grift, scams. I'm not sure why these words come to mind when Buffalo Trace comes up, except, that's right, I am. Buffalo Trace is running the biggest grift in the whisky world, producing one of the most overrated bottles in Eagle Rare and allocating their higher end products so they're either resold on the secondary market for exorbitant prices or placed into a lottery so that only a select few can get them. Don't get me wrong, in my state, they have them at SRP so I enroll in those lotteries (despite my beliefs), but there are 13 million people in my state. And only about 100 bottles to go around, so it's a hope and a prayer to get selected. This distillery has allocated its stock to such an extent that we're all in a rush to get in line to taste....well, I don't know if we can go by Eagle Rare or Buffalo Trace as a measure, but people swear by these bottles, they rush to snap them up, and they just never seem to live up to...
Back in the aughts, I remember the music site PItchfork, published a review of the band Jet's second record that was just a monkey pissing into its own mouth. I don't think Buffalo Trace is that bad, but based on its reputation as the budget bourbon to end all budget bourbons, I'm tempted. I don't even want to get into what this tastes like, it's a 90 proof bourbon that I got for $27 and now it's $30, and I only picked it up on impulse to see what all the fuss is about. So instead of telling you what it tastes like, I'll tell you what I'd pick up instead of this: any bottled in bond bourbon from Evan Williams to Jack Bonded; Maker's Mark; Larceny Small Batch.
Do you get my point? There's no reason to kill yourself rushing to the liquor store when you hear they have Buffalo Trace because there's plenty of other stuff out there in the same price range that's as good if not better. Actually, you know what, splurge the $5 more and pick up Knob Creek 9 Year 100 Proof or Russell's Reserve 10 instead of this, and just send the good karma back to me.
As for that teacher I had: I heard a story later about how the entire faculty had gone on strike for better wages, and out of the entire faculty, he was the only person who crossed the picket line and went on teaching. Well, why screw it up when you've got a good thing going. Piss off the administration and who knows, they might send an observer into your classroom to see what you're doing. Buffalo Trace is that teacher; I'm that observer. If I'd had any say in the matter, tenure would have been denied.
Can we finally call it like it is? The emperor has no clothes.