Learn to pick the best whiskey on any shelf with my distiller's method and save $2,000 a year.
You do not need to be a distiller for this. I will show you how to read any bottle in any store, the state store, the chain or the warehouse club, and bring home the better whiskey for less.
What you'll be able to do with it
- Read the back of any bourbon in about eleven seconds and know who made it, where, how old it is, and how much of it is water.
- Find the cheaper cousin of the name you already buy, out of the same building, for $13 to $56 less a bottle.
- Shop any store by the ounce, across the fifth, the liter, the handle and the 700, and pay as little as half the state store price for the same whiskey.
- Pick a Scotch off the bottom shelf that beats the boxed one on age and wood for a quarter of the money.
- Cut a 100 proof bottle once at your own counter and pour a cold glass that holds its strength to the last sip.
The manual
Three books. One hundred and nineteen readings. Two thousand dollars a year.
The back of the bottle, the age number, the story on the front, the rye beside your bourbon, Scotch, the Costco shelf, bourbon under $30 and up to $55, the names and their cousins, the pour and the count. One hundred and nineteen numbered readings, each one with what you need, the prices with the month they were read, and the steps. Start this weekend with the bottle already in your cabinet and eleven seconds on its back label.
Three illustrated PDFs · 154 pages · First Edition
The Distiller's Secret Book
The readings I was taught in the warehouse and never saw written down for a buyer: the verb on the back, the age line and the silence where it should be, the proof, the plant number, the building behind the name, and the Scotch shelf where the truth moved to the front. You are buying the secret book and the Costco guide together. The bourbon handbook and every future edition come free with them.
What you get for $27:
- The main bookThe Distiller's Secret Book · the label readings a distiller is never asked to explain $47
- The Costco Whiskey Guide · the Kirkland shelf, bottle by bottle $27
-
The Distiller's Guide To Bourbon · every bottle, every pour, never overpay again
$17Free -
Every future edition · straight to your inbox
$7Free -
Total value
$98$27
In your inbox the minute you pay · Pay once · Yours forever
What's inside
Exactly what you get for $27.
One hundred and nineteen numbered readings across three books. Every one is one page: what you need, the steps, the prices with the month they were read, and one plain note about what it does not do.
Who made it, where, how old, and how much is water, in about eleven seconds.
- The verb on the back: distilled by, bottled by, produced by
- The silence where the age should be, and what it promises
- The words that mean nothing, and the $2.5 million settlement that proved it
- Bottled in bond: the one line they were made to print
- DSP-KY-12, and the Kirkland bonded bourbon from $23.99
The number on the front is a receipt for storage, not for work.
- A barrel ages in summers: the ninth tier against the ground floor
- Why the $29.99 Elijah Craig and the $177.99 one come from the same buildings
- The 53-gallon arithmetic: you pay for what left the barrel
- Barrel entry proof, 110 against 125, and the test that settled it
- Two bottles against the light, and when the darker one wins
A building, a barrel or a number, and all three come cheaper.
- Blanton's at $82.99 and the bottle without the horse at $26.99
- The $42.99 bottle and the $25.99 bottle born in the same building
- What a single barrel label lets you check, and what it hides
- The word where the number was: artfully, extra, carefully
- Rare Breed at $52.99: the bottle filled low and never watered
Same name, same price, and only one of the two was hard to make.
- The pair: Wild Turkey 101 and 101 Rye, both $27.99
- Start near 51 percent, not 95
- Rittenhouse at $26.99: the two plant numbers on the back
- The face on the front and the state on the back
Different parliament, different rules, and the truth moved to the front.
- The five words on the Kirkland Islay, $32.99, and why each one had to be earned
- Matured against finished: six months of paint is not fifteen years of wood
- Hoyt's windowsill: the $199.94 Macallan against the $51.99 Glenfarclas
- The store's own 18 year old at $69.99, and whose whisky it probably is
- White Horse at $29.99 for the 1.75 liter, with a $99.99 single malt at the heart of it
The pallet by the ounce, the plain bottle by its back label.
- Divide before you decide: the liter, the handle and the 700
- The handle of Woodford at $46.99 against two fifths at $64.98
- The .97 price, the star, and the day to buy two
- The gap: Crown Royal $42.00 against the Kirkland Canadian $19.72
- Four arrangements behind one Kirkland label, and how to read the next one
- The card: where whiskey does not count toward the 2 percent
Every one prints a number where the story could have been.
- Early Times Bottled in Bond, $19.99, 100 proof by law
- Old Grand-Dad Bonded, $25.99, the high rye recipe at twenty proof points more
- Wild Turkey 101, $26.99, every warehouse metal clad
- Old Forester 100, $28.99, same recipe as the $41.99 bottle
- Larceny, 1792, Benchmark Full Proof, and the rest
Where the extra money buys years and proof, and nothing else.
- Knob Creek 9 Year, $39.99, a number that came back on the label
- Evan Williams Single Barrel, $37.99, the only label you can do the arithmetic on
- Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond 7 Year, $49.99, two plant numbers on the front
- Wild Turkey Rare Breed, $52.99, never watered front or back
What the extra money went to, and the plainer bottle from the same building.
- Woodford Reserve $41.99, Old Forester 100 $28.99
- Basil Hayden $42.99, Old Grand-Dad Bonded $25.99
- Jefferson's Ocean $89.99, Wild Turkey Rare Breed $52.99
- Elijah Craig 18 at $177.99, Elijah Craig Small Batch at $29.99
The harder whiskey at the easier whiskey's price.
- Rebel 100 Rye, $21.99, half corn, the place to start
- Old Overholt Bonded, $24.99, the story costs $15 and the bond comes free
- Rittenhouse Bottled in Bond, $26.99, and the fire of 1996
- Jack Daniel's Bonded Rye, $36.99, 70 percent rye
The last step of the job, done at your own counter instead of by four cubes.
- Cut the bottle once, to 86, the night before
- Ounces times label proof, divided by the proof you want
- Where ice belongs: the soda glass, the porch, the bottle above 110
- Two more pours out of every 100 proof bottle
- The measuring cup under the last sip
Pour by the proof, and know what you drank before you feel it.
- 120 divided by the proof on the label: 1.5 ounces at 80, under an ounce at 129
- Measure your two fingers once, and what the glass has been telling you
- Eat before the first pour, one an hour, one bottle all night
- Why the $75 bottle does not treat you better than the $15 one
- The last pour two hours before bed, and the tape on the neck
Run it on your own prices before you believe mine.
- The whiskey year the way it gets bought: $3,788
- The same year with the readings: about $1,537
- Forty-four names on the wall, thirteen buildings
- Which building made the bottle in your hand
Reader results
What people did with the books in the first month.
Three readers, three different states, three different stores. Each one names the reading and what it saved.
★★★★★Took the book to the state store on a Saturday and read the back of every bottle I used to buy. Switched my everyday Woodford for the Old Forester 100 out of the same building. That is thirteen dollars a bottle, three bottles a month. The set paid for itself before the second bottle was empty.
★★★★★I bought Blanton's for my brother-in-law every Christmas for six years. This year he got Wild Turkey 101 with the page on why folded around the neck, and he called it the best bottle I ever gave him. I kept the fifty-six dollars. The Kirkland table alone was worth the price of the set.
★★★★★Went in skeptical. The Scotch chapter got me off the Macallan box and onto a Glenfarclas 10 at $51.99, and I like it better. Measured my pour with the cup like the book says and a bottle now lasts me almost two weeks longer. Plain English, prices written down, no tasting-note nonsense.
Who am I
Thirty four years on the making side.
I am Wade Cooper. I spent 34 years in the industry on the making side. I ran a still, I managed warehouses, and I walked nine tiers of rick with a flashlight in February and again in August, pulling samples out of barrels that stood 40 feet apart and tasted like they came off different farms. A man named Hoyt ran the warehouses at the second place I worked. He had it off his own father, he never wrote a word of it down, and most of what is in these books came off him sideways. My right shoulder does not go over my head anymore, and my nose has not tolerated cologne since somewhere around 2011.
What I did, mostly, was fill barrels. A spec came down from an office, I hit the spec, and the barrels went out under names that were not the name of the place that made them. In 2009 the average price on a single barrel bourbon I still buy was $25.99. It is $12 more now, and the shelf is arranged so you do not notice where the money goes. I filled the barrels behind those labels.
What I actually know
Forty-four names on that wall. Thirteen buildings made them.
Everybody buys the name. My money goes to the building, and it has since Hoyt showed me where to find it on the back of the bottle.
The chart is in the front of the book, marked up with what each building's everyday bottle should cost you and which ones I take home.
What the chart lets you do
- Find the cousin before you pay for the name. Same building, same mash, plainer label: the $42.99 bottle and the $25.99 bottle out of Clermont, $17.00 apart, twelve times a year.
- Read the verb on the back. Distilled by, bottled by, produced by. Only the first one means they made it, and the chart tells you which building that is.
- Put a plant number to a building. DSP-KY-12 is Bardstown. The government keeps the register of plants, a bonded bottle has to print the number, and the chart puts the building to it.
- Buy the proof, not the water. Under 90 on a bottle over $40 and you are paying for water. The chart marks the everyday bottle from each building that sits at 100.
- Know which store bottle is somebody's whiskey with the name taken off. Three Kirkland bourbons name Barton on the label. The fourth names a town, and the chart shows you the difference.
The arithmetic
You make the twenty seven dollars back on the first trip to the store.
I am not asking you to take the number on faith. Here is where it comes from.
- The everyday bottle: the handle at Costco instead of the fifth at the state store, and poured measured $984
- The bottle for company: the number instead of the story $366
- Scotch: the bottom shelf instead of the box $500
- Gifts and the holidays: the bottle without the horse $336
That is one house that pours most evenings and keeps a bottle for company. Pour twice a week and the number is about a third of that; the readings are the same. The whole ledger is written out in the front of the book so you can run it on your own prices before you believe mine.
Get all three booksQuestions
Before you order
What am I actually getting?
Three books as PDF, digital only, no paper copy. One hundred and nineteen numbered readings: the back and the front of a whiskey label, the Costco guide with every Kirkland whiskey on one table, and the bourbon handbook with 27 bourbons and 7 ryes priced, the eight names with their cheaper cousins, and the pour. Every future edition comes with it.
How long before I can use any of it?
The next bottle. Look up the one in your hand, read the page, and put it back or put it in the cart. You do not read it end to end first.
Is this the same as the videos?
A video covers one shelf. This is 119 readings in order, with the prices written down and the month they were read, and the parts I never had room for on camera.
Do I need special equipment?
The calculator on your phone, a measuring cup, a clean quart jar and a roll of tape. Nothing in the book costs more than the bottle does.
I do not shop at Costco.
Neither do most people, and in some states Costco cannot sell you a bottle at all. The readings work on any shelf in the country, and the prices come off state lists you can check yourself. The Costco guide is one of the three books, not the point of them.
