I’ve always enjoyed whiskey.

For most of my family, that meant Scotch, and for a long time that’s where my own tastes lived too. But somewhere along the way — probably as I got older and my palate changed — I drifted toward bourbon. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It just happened.

In the early 2000s, bourbon started becoming personal for me.

I picked up a 1998 Evan Williams Single Barrel to honor my daughter and the year she was born. Later, I bought a 2008 Old Forester Birthday Bourbon to celebrate and remember my mother. Those bottles weren’t trophies. They meant something. They were markers in my life.

Over the years, I always had a few nice bottles around, but it wasn’t until last year that I really started collecting bourbon in any intentional way. Even then, I never thought of it as collecting for collecting’s sake. I bought bourbon to drink it — to enjoy it — not to stash it away like liquid Beanie Babies in the hope that it might one day fund someone’s retirement.

Bourbon was never meant to be hoarded.
It was meant to be shared.

Somewhere along the way, the bourbon world changed. Money flooded in. Scarcity became a feature instead of a flaw. Allocations and “special releases” took center stage. And slowly, bourbon — a drink that once belonged to everyone — started feeling like it was being carved up for the elite.

That’s never what it was supposed to be.

Bourbon has always been crafted, and it has always been special. But it was special for the common man. Elijah Craig and Jack Daniel weren’t making whiskey for kings, princes, or heads of state. They were making bourbon for the people they lived among — farmers, laborers, neighbors — people who wanted something honest and well-made at the end of a long day.

That belief is the foundation of Bourbon Cheapskate.

This column isn’t about chasing hype. It’s not about allocations, unicorn bottles, or tasting notes so obscure they require an imagination more than a palate. It’s about finding accessible, affordable bourbon — bottles that regular people can actually buy — and enjoying them the way bourbon was always intended to be enjoyed.

One of my favorite stories that captures this perfectly comes from Freddie Johnson at Buffalo Trace.

When Buffalo Trace filled its six-millionth barrel, Freddie was gifted a bottle of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle. He planned to share just a little of it with his father and brother and save the rest. His father stopped him.

You don’t do that with your closest family and friends, he told him.

There will always be special bottles down the road. There won’t always be time to share them with the people you love.

Freddie has said they spent three hours together that day — laughing, talking, sharing stories — and the whiskey was part of the moment, not the point of it.

“It’s not about the whiskey,” Freddie said. “It’s about the lives you touch and the people you meet, and the whiskey’s a by-product of a good relationship.”

You can hear him tell that story here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpQ1_5xZuKY

That’s what Bourbon Cheapskate is about.

Not hunting the perfect bottle just to lock it away.
Not paying ransom prices for prestige.
Not confusing cost with quality.

It’s about finding good bourbon — attainable bourbon — and letting it be part of real life. Bottles that get opened. Pours that get shared. Whiskey that shows up at anniversaries, holidays, quiet conversations, and ordinary nights that turn into memories.

I’m not going to compete with people who taste 40 notes in a glass. I’m not going to pretend I pick up flavors I don’t actually experience. What I taste is what I taste — and that’s enough.

I’m not going to chase bottles I can’t afford or feel lesser because I don’t own them. Instead, I’m going to focus on the best bourbon most of us can reasonably buy — usually under $40, sometimes under $50 — because that’s where real value lives for real people.

And when I find something special, I’m not saving it for “someday.” I’m opening it. I’m sharing it. Because bourbon doesn’t create memories by sitting on a shelf.

Bourbon Cheapskate exists to remind us of that.

Bourbon was never meant to be elite.
It was never meant to be hoarded.

It was meant to be enjoyed — together.

Good bourbon doesn’t need to be rare. It just needs to be shared.

That’s the bourbon I believe in.
And that’s the bourbon I’ll keep writing about.

Copyright © 2025 by Doug DeBolt.