The Whiskey Whisperer

An otherwise ordinary guy has a special way with whiskey.

- Susannah Skiver Barton

In a living room chock-a-block with animal skulls, taxi-dermied raccoons, Civil War-era wooden furniture, and 1980s Japanese robots, it’s easy to overlook the shelf of whiskey bottles. Many of the labels are faded or torn, while others—Cutty Sark, Wild Turkey—look perfectly ordinary, part of any whiskey drinker’s home bar.

At first glance, the sheer number of bottles on the floor-to ceiling bookcase is impressive, but on closer inspection, these are not familiar bottom-shelf whiskey brands. The forgotten distillery names, the faded labels, the tax strips on the necks—all are indicators of the whiskeys’ provenance and age, which are well out of the ordinary— indeed, exceedingly rare—in 2017.

Mike Jasinski is one of the country’s foremost hunters of old whiskey, and one of the most generous. His collection of “dusties,” dusty old bottles rescued from liquor store shelves, once numbered 1,200. These days he has closer to 700 or so bourbons, ryes, scotches, and other whiskeys dating from pre-Prohibition to the present. The shelves in his antique packed house are bursting with vintage bottles, more than most whiskey lovers will experience in their lifetime and can only dream of tasting: pre-Prohibition I.W. Harper, dozens of decanters of Old Crow 10 year old in the shape of chess pieces, oodles of 1970s Wild Turkey, Juarez “straight American whiskey” (made in Mexico), and bottlings from Kentucky’s coveted Stitzel Weller Distillery.