Which is more scarce?
A wine that takes 3 years to make.
A whiskey that takes 15.
Wine and whiskey are both low time preference beverages. More time in the barrel should mean more scarcity, but it doesn't.
Real scarcity can't be recreated.
The first step in winemaking is growing the grapes. That growing season sets the acidity, structure, and character for everything that follows. The winemaker's job is to shepherd those flavors to the bottle without losing what the land gave them.
Whiskey doesn't work that way. Distillation erases the growing season entirely, leaving a blank slate.
A 15-year whiskey is a craft object. A 2023 Pinot Noir from a high-elevation vineyard in western Colorado is a document of that specific year. You can make another whiskey. You cannot repeat the 2023 growing season.
That's why people get mystical about wine. You open a bottle from a specific place, a specific year, and that exact thing will never exist again.
BenJustman / Ben Justman🍷
npub153…2ryu8
2026-06-03 22:00:00 UTC
Author Public Key
npub153xmex42x4chdf757hp3q6zxagykkek7pdgwuwd074964dkyha9s82ryu8Seen on
wss://relay.damus.ioPublished at
2026-06-03 22:00:00 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Which is more scarce?\n\nA wine that takes 3 years to make.\nA whiskey that takes 15.\n\nWine and whiskey are both low time preference beverages. More time in the barrel should mean more scarcity, but it doesn't.\n\nReal scarcity can't be recreated.\n\nThe first step in winemaking is growing the grapes. That growing season sets the acidity, structure, and character for everything that follows. The winemaker's job is to shepherd those flavors to the bottle without losing what the land gave them.\n\nWhiskey doesn't work that way. Distillation erases the growing season entirely, leaving a blank slate.\n\nA 15-year whiskey is a craft object. A 2023 Pinot Noir from a high-elevation vineyard in western Colorado is a document of that specific year. You can make another whiskey. You cannot repeat the 2023 growing season.\n\nThat's why people get mystical about wine. You open a bottle from a specific place, a specific year, and that exact thing will never exist again.",
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