We had the pleasure of Nicole Austin, Dickel's Master Distiller, visiting our San Francisco store last year when we selected these barrels. As always, it was a pleasure to pick her brain about the state of the industry at large and all things Dickel specifically. When we pressed her a bit on the single barrel program and its biggest shortcoming in whiskey geek circles -- that Diageo uses pre-selected proof points within 1% ABV to standardize their bottling and labeling efforts -- the reply was three-fold and valid on all accounts. Paraphrasing slightly, they were "1. The carbon footprint of the entire operation goes down dramatically." (She backed this up with so many examples we can't recount them all here.) "2. The change is so small that it's virtually imperceptible even to extremely experienced professional palates." Can't argue with that. But it was the 3rd point that really shut us up: " 3. Who else is selling 15- to 17-year-old barrels of bourbon for 60 bucks?! They're grossly underpriced for the quality and specs!" And therein lies the rub -- there may be no better value on our shelf than these top-notch Dickel single barrels. While the official 17- and 18-year releases from Dickel are hundreds of dollars, these barrels quietly get drunk up by those in the know on the cheap. Just a tiny nine case yield isn't much to go around, but if Dickel will keep selling them to us at these prices, we will gladly keep buying them!