Early Times and the Weight of Memory
There’s something about the name that gets you there, right? Early Times. Not “Good Times” or “Happy Times” or “Premium Times.” Early Times. Like whoever named this bourbon knew something the rest of us are still figuring out: that the best times, the ones worth remembering, always seem to be behind us. I’ve been drinking Early Times for twenty years now. Not because it’s good – though it’s decent enough for the price – but because it’s honest. It doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. No fancy bottles, no aged statements that sound like poetry, no marketing campaigns about heritage and tradition. Just brown liquid in a plain bottle with a name that cuts right to the heart of the human condition. It tastes like what it is: working man’s whiskey. Rough around the edges, a little harsh going down, but it gets the job done. There’s corn in there, some rye, probably some regret. It’s the kind of bourbon your grandfather might have drunk after a ten-hour shift at the factory, sitting on the front porch watching the sun go down and wondering where all the years went. My grandfather never drank Early Times. Hell, my grandfather barely drank at all. But I can picture him with a glass of this stuff, can almost see him in the amber liquid when the light hits it right. Maybe that’s what they’re selling – not just whiskey, but the idea of whiskey. The mythology of simpler times when men were men and problems could be solved with hard work and a stiff drink. Early Times doesn’t taste like the future. It tastes like memory. Like the idea of sitting on a porch that you never actually sat on, in a time you never actually lived through, talking to people who probably never existed the way you remember them Course, those times were never as simple as we remember them. Grandpa’s generation had the Depression, World War II, segregation, polio. They had plenty of problems that couldn’t be solved with anything, let alone bourbon. But somehow, from this distance, it all seems cleaner. More straightforward. Like people knew who they were and what they were supposed to do. Early Times. As if there was a specific period in history when everything made sense, when people understood their place in the world, when right was right and wrong was wrong and you didn’t need a philosophy degree to figure out the difference. I think about this every time I pour a glass. Usually around 10 PM, after another day of trying to make sense of a world that seems designed to confuse and disappoint. The whiskey burns a little, then settles into something like warmth. And for a moment, I can almost taste what the name promises: a time when things were different. Maybe better. Maybe just different. See, that’s the genius of nostalgia – it’s not really about the past. It’s about the present being so goddamn complicated that we’ll invent a golden age just to have something to compare it to. We look back at the 1950s and see prosperity and simplicity, conveniently forgetting about the Cold War and the fact that half the population couldn’t vote. We remember the 1960s as a time of idealism and change, glossing over the part where people were getting shot for having opinions. But Early Times knows better. It’s not promising you can go back to those times. It’s just acknowledging that we all wish we could. That somewhere in our lizard brains, we’re convinced that life used to be easier, that people used to be happier, that the world used to make more sense. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe admitting that we’re all just refugees from an imaginary better time is the first step toward making peace with the time we actually live in. I was at the liquor store last week, reaching for my usual bottle of Early Times, when this kid – couldn’t have been more than twenty-five – looks at my choice and smirks. “Why don’t you try something good?” he says, pointing to a shelf full of craft whiskeys with names like “Rebellion” and “Revolution” and other words that sound like they were focus-grouped by marketing majors. “This is good,” I told him. “That’s bottom-shelf garbage, man. You can get a decent bourbon for like ten bucks more.” And that’s when it hit me. This kid doesn’t understand. He thinks better means more expensive. He thinks progress means complexity. He’s looking forward to some hypothetical future when everything will be perfect and optimized and craft-distilled to match his personal preferences. He doesn’t get that sometimes you don’t want something better. Sometimes you want something that reminds you that not everything has to be improved, innovated, or disrupted. Sometimes you want something that tastes like it might have tasted fifty years ago, made by people who understood that the point isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to make a wheel that turns. Early Times doesn’t taste like the future. It tastes like memory. Like the idea of sitting on a porch that you never actually sat on, in a time you never actually lived through, talking to people who probably never existed the way you remember them. But here’s the thing about nostalgia: it’s not supposed to be accurate. It’s supposed to be comforting. It’s supposed to remind you that somewhere, somewhen, things felt simpler. Even if they weren’t. So I drink my Early Times and I think about early times. Not because I believe they were better, but because believing they might have been makes the current times a little more bearable. And sometimes, when the whiskey hits just right and the evening light slants through my window the way it probably slanted through my grandfather’s, I can almost convince myself that I’m living in someone else’s early times. That someday, some guy like me will be sitting in his apartment, drinking whatever cheap bourbon they’re making
The Night Blanton’s Gold Taught Me About Value
by Carlos Bukowski My friend Marcus is the kind of rich that makes you tired just thinking about it. Trust fund money, the kind where his biggest decision on any given Tuesday is whether to take the Porsche or the Tesla to his therapist. He’s not a bad guy, just… vacant. Like someone hollowed out the inside of a Ken doll and filled it with cryptocurrency and daddy issues. So when he shows up at my door last month with a bottle of Blanton’s Gold Edition, I should have known it was going to cost me more than whatever he paid for it. “Happy birthday, man!” he says, thrusting this gorgeous amber bottle at me like it’s a peace offering to the gods of working-class resentment. My birthday was three months ago. “Marcus,” I tell him, “this bottle costs more than my rent.” “Marcus,” I tell him, “this bottle costs more than my rent.” “Exactly!” He grins like he’s just solved world hunger. “You always drink that cheap shit. Time to upgrade your palate.” See, that’s the thing about rich idiots – they think expensive automatically means better, and better automatically means what you need. Like the universe is just waiting for them to throw money at problems that don’t actually exist. But it was beautiful, I’ll give him that. Single barrel, hand-bottled, each one supposedly unique. The kind of bourbon that whiskey nerds write poetry about and collectors mortgage their houses to obtain. The kind that sits behind glass cases in liquor stores with little signs that say “Please Ask for Assistance” because they know damn well that if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. I should have put it on the shelf. Should have saved it for a special occasion. Should have done what sensible people do with gifts that cost more than their car. Instead, I opened it that night. Not because I was celebrating anything. Not because I was having a particularly good day. I opened it because Angela was supposed to come over. Angela, who’d been giving me another chance after I’d fucked up the first three chances she’d given me. Angela, who worked double shifts at the diner and studied nursing on her days off and somehow still found time to believe that I might be worth something. She was bringing dinner. Homemade lasagna, the kind that takes all day to make right. The kind you make for someone when you’re trying to say something important without having to use words. So I thought, hell, if she’s making an effort, maybe I should too. Maybe we’ll crack open this fancy bourbon and have one of those nights you remember when you’re old and everything else has turned to shit. Angela never made it over. Car trouble turned into a tow truck turned into a mechanic telling her she needed eight hundred dollars in repairs she didn’t have. She called crying, apologizing, asking if we could do it another night. And there I was, sitting alone in my apartment with a pan of lasagna that was never coming and a $400 bottle of bourbon that suddenly felt like a monument to my own stupidity. I drank half the bottle that night. Not because it tasted good – though it did, smooth as silk and complex as a jazz solo. I drank it because I was angry. Angry at Marcus for giving me something I couldn’t appreciate. Angry at Angela’s car for breaking down. Angry at myself for thinking expensive bourbon could somehow make me into the kind of man who deserved homemade lasagna. But mostly, I drank it because I could. Because unlike Angela’s time, unlike her effort, unlike the care she put into planning that evening, the bourbon was just sitting there, available. Easy. The next morning, I woke up with a hangover that felt like it cost $200 and the realization that I’d just pissed away more money in one night than Angela made in a week. When I told Marcus what happened, he just shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll get you another one.” And that’s when it hit me. The lesson wasn’t about the bourbon. It was about value itself. See, Marcus could replace that bottle without thinking about it. To him, it was just money, and money was just numbers on a screen that magically replenished themselves. But Angela’s lasagna? The time she took to call me even when her world was falling apart? The fact that she’d rearranged her whole day around the idea of making me happy? You can’t buy that. You can’t replace it. You can’t waltz into a store and say, “I’ll take another Tuesday evening with someone who gives a damn.” Rich idiots like Marcus think the most expensive thing in any room is whatever they bought. But the most valuable thing in that room that night wasn’t the Blanton’s Gold Edition bourbon. It was the woman who wasn’t there, and the dinner that never happened, and the chance I might have blown by confusing price with worth. Angela and I are still together. She got her car fixed, eventually. I learned to appreciate the cheap bourbon again – turns out it tastes just fine when you’re drinking it with the right person. And Marcus? He’s still rich. Still buying expensive shit for people who don’t need it, still thinking money can substitute for understanding. As for that remaining half bottle of Blanton’s? It’s still sitting on my shelf, unopened. Not because I’m saving it for a special occasion, but because I’m saving it for the right one. The next time Angela makes lasagna and her car doesn’t break down and we have one of those perfect, ordinary evenings that money can’t buy. That’s when I’ll know what it’s actually worth. Carlos Bukowski writes about bourbon, bad decisions, and the difference between price and value from his apartment in Hollywood. He still drinks cheap whiskey most nights, and has
A Humble Plea from the Bottom Shelf (Pappy Van Winkle)
Listen, I’m not proud of this: I’ve spent the better part of forty years drinking everything from rotgut bourbon to French wine that doubles as home security, and I’ve never asked anyone for anything stronger than a recommendation. But here I am, hat in hand, asking you beautiful bastards for something I’ll never be able to afford this side of the grave. Pappy Van Winkle. There, I said it. The holy grail of bourbon. The unicorn. The bottle that costs more than most people’s cars and appears about as often as an honest politician. Now, before you start rolling your eyes and thinking this is just another broke writer trying to get free booze, hear me out. This isn’t about getting drunk. Hell, I can get drunk on a ten-dollar bottle of Kentucky Gentleman just fine, thank you very much. This is about understanding what all the fuss is about. See, I’ve built a career writing about the things that separate the haves from the have-nots. I’ve tasted $400 bottles of Blanton’s Gold and $300 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, usually through the generosity of rich friends or lucky finds in dead professors’ basements. But Pappy? Pappy is in a different stratosphere entirely. We’re talking about bourbon that sells for $2,000 to $5,000 a bottle, if you can even find it. The kind of money that could pay my rent for three months. The kind of money that separates “expensive hobby” from “mortgage the house and divorce the wife.” And that’s exactly why I need to try it. Because I write about value. About what things are actually worth versus what people pay for them. About the difference between price and meaning. And how the hell can I keep writing about the absurdity of luxury goods if I’ve never tasted the most absurd luxury of them all? I’m not asking for a whole bottle, Christ knows. A pour would do. Two fingers in a glass. Hell, a thimbleful would be enough to understand what fifteen years of aging and artificial scarcity tastes like. Just enough to know whether it’s actually transcendent or just another example of people paying ridiculous money for the privilege of saying they paid ridiculous money. Here’s what I’m offering in return: the most honest review you’ll ever read about Pappy Van Winkle. Not some flowery wine magazine bullshit about “notes of caramel and vanilla dancing on the palate like butterflies in a summer meadow.” I’m talking about a real review from someone who’s never tasted anything that costs more than a used motorcycle. I want to know: Does it actually taste like liquid gold, or does it just taste expensive? Can your tongue tell the difference between twenty-year aging and twenty-year marketing? Is it transcendent enough to justify the price, or is it just good bourbon in a bottle with a fancy name? I’ll tell you if it’s worth selling your grandmother’s jewelry for. I’ll tell you if it makes you understand God or just makes you understand why rich people are so insufferable. I’ll tell you if it tastes like freedom or just tastes like you’ve been financially dominated by a dead Kentucky farmer. The truth is, there’s something beautiful about wanting something you can’t have. It keeps you hungry. It keeps you honest. But there’s also something to be said for scratching that itch, just once, so you can move on with your life. I’m fifty-three years old. I’ve worked shit jobs, written decent books, and drunk more bourbon than any reasonable human should. But I’ve never tasted the bourbon that’s supposed to be the best bourbon ever made. And that bothers me more than it should. So here’s the deal: If you’ve got a bottle of Pappy gathering dust in your liquor cabinet because you’re too scared to open it, or if you work at a distillery and can spare a sample, or if you’re just a rich bastard who thinks it would be funny to watch a working-class writer try to describe liquid unicorn tears – I’m your guy. Send me anything from the Pappy Van Winkle family tree. Ten-year, fifteen-year, twenty-three-year – hell, I’ll take the Lot B if that’s all you’ve got. I promise to treat it with the respect it deserves and the skepticism it’s earned. And if it turns out to be worth every penny? I’ll say so. If it turns out to be the biggest scam since pet rocks? I’ll say that too. Because that’s what I do: I tell the truth about things, especially expensive things that most people will never get to judge for themselves. Plus, think about it: wouldn’t you rather see that bottle go to someone who’ll actually appreciate the experience, rather than some hedge fund manager who’s going to drink it out of a crystal tumbler while complaining about his stock options? I’m not asking for charity. I’m asking for the chance to complete my education in the absurd economics of American whiskey. To finally answer the question that keeps me up at night: Is Pappy Van Winkle actually worth it, or is it just the most successful marketing campaign in the history of bourbon? Help a brother out. Let me taste the dream so I can tell everyone else whether it’s worth waking up for. You can reach me at the usual places. I’ll be the guy at the end of the bar, drinking something that costs less than your lunch and wondering what the big deal is about. Carlos Bukowski writes about bourbon, bad decisions, and the vast gulf between rich and poor from his apartment in Hollywood. He has never owned anything worth four digits except his car, and that was an accident.