by cowdery » Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:18 pm
Those are all possibilities.
The EC18 may turn over fast in that store but maybe not in all VA ABC stores, and it wouldn't surprise me if they cleared some old stock from one store and moved it to another. That's fairly easy to do when one entity owns every store in the state.
While I can imagine some 19 or even 20-year-old barrels being used for a bottling of EC18, I find it hard to believe there is much of that, or that they are going much older, if for no other reason than for the current shortage of extra-aged whiskey. I think an explanation that involves the bottle drifting around some before reaching your store is the likeliest explanation.
Something like EC18, as a small brand, may only be bottled once or twice a year. In other words, 18 months to two years could easily pass from the bottling date until a particular bottle from that batch hits a retail shelf. Add to that some kind of diversion, like a special order that didn't get picked up, and something like that could easily be out of the pipeline for a while. Since there is no "freshness" issue, years can slip away pretty easily.
Then there is the sterling efficiency we expect from all government agencies.