Most Tasting Tuesday posts begin with a bottle.

This one begins with the place that provides the bottle.

Or at least, the place that is supposed to provide the bottle.

Every bourbon drinker knows the hunt is part of the fun. You walk into a store you’ve never visited before, scan the shelves, look behind the counter, check the locked case, and wonder if this might be the day you find something interesting at a price that does not require selling a kidney, refinancing your house, or explaining to your wife why the grocery budget now smells like toasted oak.

Sometimes, the hunt pays off.

Sometimes, you find a terrific store with fair prices, interesting picks, knowledgeable people, and the kind of selection that makes you wish you had brought more money.

And sometimes, you walk into a cavernous building advertised as the “Largest Liquor Store in Georgia” and discover that the only thing large about it is the distance between the mostly empty shelves.

That happened to me recently in Macon.

I had seen the billboard for Macon Beverage Outlet, which has two locations. The one I visited was off I-475, and the advertising had done its job. “Largest Liquor Store in Georgia” sounds promising. It sounds like the kind of place where a bourbon hunter might need to stretch first, hydrate, and perhaps leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find his way back to the car.

Instead, I walked into a place that felt less like a bourbon destination and more like a warehouse that had recently lost an argument with inventory.

Maybe they were talking about raw square footage. If so, fair enough. The place was certainly big. But big only helps if there is something worth buying inside it. The shelves were spaced far apart, the selection was thin, and the bourbon aisle did not exactly inspire choirs of angels to start singing.

I was looking for Old Grand-Dad 114 Single Barrel.

They did not have Old Grand-Dad 114 Single Barrel.

They did not have Old Grand-Dad 114.

They did not have Old Grand-Dad Bottled-in-Bond.

As far as I could tell, they did not have one bottle of Old Grand-Dad anything.

I think the only old granddad in the building was me.

That was the first kind of bad liquor store experience: the bait-and-switch feeling. The billboard promises bourbon wonderland. The actual store gives you empty space, lonely shelves, and the sinking suspicion that the advertising department was paid by the square foot.

So I left empty-handed.

The other kind of bad liquor store experience came a little farther south, at Harry’s, just below Macon and about 300 yards north of the Buc-ee’s. To be fair, Harry’s does have a good selection. It is the kind of store where you can slow down, browse, and find some interesting bottles. They had bourbon. They had store picks. They had bottles I do not see every day.

They also seemed very proud of them.

A little too proud.

Case in point: they had a lone bottle of Weller Antique 107 sitting on the shelf. That is a good bottle, and like most Weller products, it has been turned into something far more mythical than it probably deserves to be. But still, it is a bottle people chase. I get that.

A fair secondary price for Weller Antique 107 is generally no more than about $150, and even that is on the high end. Harry’s had theirs marked at $250.

For one lonely bottle of Weller Antique 107.

At that point, it is not really a shelf price anymore. It is a dare.

Now, I did not buy the Weller. I may be many things, but I am not paying $250 for Antique 107. However, I did buy a Blue Note single barrel store pick because I had not done my homework on that bottle before I walked in. I paid $60 for it. A couple of hours later, I saw another store’s Blue Note single barrel pick for $50.

That one is on me.

And that is part of the point.

Bourbon hunting can be fun, but it is also one of those hobbies where ignorance can get expensive fast. If you do not know what a bottle usually costs, what it should cost, or what it sells for elsewhere, some stores will be more than happy to educate you the hard way.

I have written before about Classic Wine and Spirits in Jacksonville, where the owner seems to treat every allocated bottle like it was hand-delivered by Elijah Craig himself while angels blew trumpets in the parking lot. At one point, standard Buffalo Trace was $50. Henry McKenna was $80. Eagle Rare 10-year was going for upwards of $150. There was a bottle of Stagg Jr. sitting there for $600.

That is not a bourbon store.

That is a museum with price tags.

To be clear, I am not saying liquor stores should sell every bottle at MSRP. I understand how the game works. Allocated bottles are hard to get. Store owners have overhead. They have to make money. They have to balance supply and demand. I am not asking anyone to run a bourbon charity.

But there is a huge difference between making money and treating customers like marks.

My favorite stores understand that difference.

Shores and Broudy’s are not giving allocated bourbon away. They charge more than MSRP on some of the hard-to-find bottles, and I understand that. But they are not insane about it. More importantly, they offer fair prices and good deals on a lot of other bottles. They have selections worth browsing. They make the experience enjoyable. I can walk in without feeling like I need to check every shelf tag against three websites and a polygraph machine.

That matters.

Because the best liquor stores understand something the gougers do not seem to understand.

Bourbon drinkers remember.

We remember the store that gave us a fair price. We remember the owner who pointed us toward a good value bottle instead of pushing the most expensive thing on the shelf. We remember the store pick that delivered. We remember the place that treated us like customers instead of contestants on a hidden-camera show called “How Much Will This Idiot Pay?”

And we also remember the stores that tried to rip us off.

That is why I think some independent liquor stores may be in real trouble over the next few years. Not all of them. The good ones may be more valuable than ever, especially as bourbon drinkers get tired of big-box sameness and online hype. A great local store can still build loyalty in a way Total Wine never will.

But the stores built on dusty unicorn bottles, inflated shelf tags, and the hope that one uninformed customer will overpay by $100 may find that the bourbon crowd has gotten a lot smarter.

Chains like Total Wine are not going anywhere. They are the big-box stores of the liquor industry, and they serve a purpose. You may not always find the rarest bottle there, but you usually have a pretty good idea of what kind of pricing world you are walking into.

The small independent stores have to offer something different.

Better service.

Better picks.

Better relationships.

Better recommendations.

Better reasons to come back.

If the only thing a store offers is the opportunity to pay secondary-plus pricing for an ordinary bottle, why would anyone return?

That is the foolish part of this business model. Gouging a customer may work once. It may even work several times if the customer is new to bourbon, desperate for a bottle, or trying to impress somebody. But eventually, people learn. They check prices. They ask friends. They join groups. They compare store picks. They figure out which stores are fair and which stores are trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the hunt.

And once they figure it out, they do not forget.

So here is my word to the wise, from one bourbon hunter to another.

Do your research before you buy a bottle.

Better yet, do your research before you walk into a store.

Look up the reputation of the places competing for your business. Ask other bourbon drinkers where they shop. Learn what the bottles you want should actually cost. Know the difference between MSRP, fair markup, secondary pricing, and “this store owner has lost his ever-loving mind” pricing.

And when you find a good store, support it.

Get to know the owner or the people behind the counter. Ask questions. Buy regular bottles, not just allocated ones. Try their store picks. Be the kind of customer they want to see walk through the door. A good relationship with a fair store is worth far more than chasing every overpriced bottle in every dusty case from here to Nashville.

But when you walk into a store that is clearly gouging people, walk out.

Kick the dust off your shoes and do not go back.

And if the moment allows for it, politely let the proprietor know why. You do not have to be ugly about it. You do not have to make a scene. Just be clear.

“I would have bought something today, but your pricing is too high.”

Maybe they will shrug.

Maybe they will argue.

Maybe they will keep that $250 bottle of Weller Antique 107 sitting on the shelf until the cork turns to powder.

But maybe, if enough customers say it, some of these stores will start to understand that bourbon drinkers are not just walking wallets with Glencairns at home.

We are customers.

We are loyal when we are treated fairly.

And when we are not, we have cars, phones, maps, group chats, price-checking apps, and long memories.

The bourbon hunt should be fun.

It should feel like discovery, not a shakedown.

And if a store cannot understand the difference, there is probably another one down the road that can.