An amazing collection of bottles of pure joy are available through Whisky-Online.
For as long as we have known Little Jamie Jones we have coveted his booze collection (the picture above is only a small selection of his collection), especially as he shares our love of Bourbon. However, Jamie has decided it is time to part with his bottles, which is great news for any of you out there that like to collect, want to start collecting or who fancy a treat to sip on to make 2020 better.
We had a quick catch up with Jamie to talk about his collection and pick out a couple of his favourite bottles.
‘My booze collection was a huge source of personal joy for many years. From the very start of my career in the drinks world over 16 years ago, I would research and invest in bottles, dominantly bourbon. I’ve spent more hours than I care to imagine delving deep into resources for research and spoken with a fair few master distillers and family of long dead bourbon producers to dig out facts and gems.
But there comes a time when you move on, and my little lot has been boxed up and in storage for a couple years now. So now it’s there for other people to enjoy. Either drink it or stare at it on a shelf and taste it through the sunlight, you do what you love.
A few of my personal highlights would be the Waterfill & Frazier – distilled in 1916 and bottled 18 years later in 1934. Not only does this bottle pre-date AND post-date prohibition, it’s liquid is now 104 years old!! That shit still blows my mind! I cleaned this bottle up and have always kept it price of place, if I’m sad to let go of anything, that was my favourite genuine piece of history.
Other big hitters are the Antique Collection Eagle Rare 17 distilled in 1984, bottled in 2001. This was the second ever release of the ER17 which has grown to become a huge collectors line. The Van Winkles are all from the days when they still had Stitzel-Weller juice in them, so for those that know, they’re the ones you want!
Tim Roberts (an old mate from Cellar Trends back in the day) and the team at Whisky-Online have all be mega and even collected the bottles themselves to avoid posting out.’
You can check out what is up for grabs and make bids (or just have a good nose around) at the Whisky-Online website the auction is live until September 2nd. It is worth pointing out that not everything on there is Jamie’s but it has a great search function so you can just look at the Bourbon available or whatever floats your boat (the Congratulations Charles & Camilla bottle is a particular treat).
In completely unrelated news it’s my birthday in November…… and my two lucky numbers are 1916 and 1934……