Hey you magnificent bastards. I’m feeling a little philosophical, so I hope you don’t mind if I let loose a bit.
These have been tough days to be in the whiskey business for sure. I’m just a moochy bastard living at the Crowded Barrel, but I see things. I see the tired looks on the faces of the people who work here. Everyone has been in Covid survival mode and the distilleries got hit hard, as you know.
Austin has been lashed by tremendous thunderstorms the last couple of weeks too. Bad storms. I found some coyote tracks in the mud not far from the distillery. I hear them sometimes in the hours near midnight up beyond the tower in the wild places where they do their living.
Man, coyotes at night. What a sound. It’s a cross between a theremin and someone playing a saw. I put a finger right in the center of a paw print and imagined how they look at night. The joyous reunions when they find each other in the darkness. Noses bobbing at the sky, crying their existence into the night.
Wild things surround us. Thunderstorms, coyotes, and Covid. It’s been a tough 18 months, but dammit we are still here. All of us in the tribe, we are here. We work and live and love and play and raise our glasses to life and to each other.
Like I said, I’m feeling philosophical.
You received this email on Friday morning. This very night I will be at the Crowded Barrel with a glass of whiskey in my hand. You know what would be cool? If someone who reads this would find me and share a dram on the deck. That would be amazing. I’d like to meet you and know you and share that moment together.
Because we’re magnificent bastards, you and me. And when we raise a glass and speak meaning into the night, that is our howl of existence.
We’re making sure the world knows that we are still here.
~ A Magnificent Bastard
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