There is actually an old adage that states “Whisky drinking is risky drinking.” With that said I never envisioned that it could become this risky.

After months of delays, the bottles for our whiskey finally arrived at the winery and while they looked beautiful an examination of the bottles detected an awful toxic odor.  So toxic that we immediately moved them from the inside of the winery to the outside. 

After some research, it appears that the truck that delivered the bottles was marked with a hazard warning sign indicating that the truck contained or previously carried hazardous material.  Further research revealed that the bottles had been shipped in a truck containing liquid styrene and it is my opinion that the styrene vapors filled the box of the truck as well as our bottles.  It is totally inconceivable how a trucking company could be so irresponsible as to transport any material that would expose products associated with a beverage with styrene vapors without understanding the safety issues associated with the transportation of such chemicals.  In my 15 years of being in this business and having bottles shipped to us from all over the world, I have never had this experience as every trucker that I have dealt with had the intelligence to understand that bottles are akin to any food product and that they need to be handled in the same fashion in order to insure safety and quality. 

Having spent this week trying to understanding the impact of this incident, health and quality concerns and after carefully considering all options, I have made the decision that the only prudent approach to this situation is to order new bottles and start all over.  There is no 100 percent accurate method of making sure that every single bottle is not contaminated without testing every bottle.  With the laboratory fees of $450 per bottle for testing this is simply not practical and I am not comfortable with random testing of a few bottles.   Yesterday, I placed an order with our supplier in Italy to ship new bottles to us as soon as possible.  They anticipate a delivery date towards the end of October.  Following receipt we will again have to ship the bottles for processing and hopefully have them returned to us for distribution in early November. 

 I truly want to apologize for the situation but your safety and the safety and quality of our products justifies the approach.  We have produced a product that we are all very proud of and is representative of the time and effort that we put into all of our products and while “whisky drinking might be risky drinking”, this is not the risk that we want to participate in.  If you wish to cancel your order please email us with your request as we will understand and appreciate your decision.  If we do not hear from you we will assume that you wish to continue with your purchase and we will continue to keep you informed of our progress with the new bottles.

 Thanks for your understanding.

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