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. The $27 comes back on your first trip to the store, just from pricing the bottle by the ounce and buying the cousin instead of the name.
What you'll be able to do with it
- Read the back of any bourbon in about eleven seconds: who made it, how old, how much water.
- Find the cheaper cousin of the name you buy, from the same building, $13 to $56 less.
- Price any store by the ounce and pay as little as half for the same whiskey.
- Pick a bottom-shelf Scotch that beats the boxed one, for a quarter of the money.
- Cut a 100 proof bottle once and pour a cold glass that holds to the last sip.
The manual
Three books. One hundred and nineteen readings. Two thousand dollars a year.
Bourbon, rye and Scotch. The state store, the chain store and Costco. The everyday bottle, the bottle for company, the gift and the pour. Each reading gives you the bottle, the price with the month it was 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
Who really made the bottle. What a missing age line means. The cheaper cousin from the same building. The handle against the fifth. The Scotch on the bottom shelf. The pour that holds to the last sip. What I was taught in the warehouse and never saw written down for a buyer. You buy the secret book and the Costco guide together; the bourbon handbook and every future edition come free.
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
The arithmetic
You make the twenty seven dollars back on the first trip to the store.
Count the bottles your house bought last year, then read these four lines. I am not asking you to take the number on faith.
- 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 booksWhat'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.
Know who made any bottle in eleven seconds.
- Tell who really made the bottle
- What a missing age line really means
- The label words that mean nothing
- The one line they are forced to print
- The plant number that tells you the building
An age statement counts storage, not work.
- Why two barrels of the same age differ
- Elijah Craig at $29.99 and at $177.99
- You pay for what left the barrel
- The barrel-proof test that settled 110 against 125
- When the darker bottle is the better one
Pay for the whiskey, not the story.
- The $26.99 bourbon to buy instead of Blanton's
- Same building: one at $42.99, one at $25.99
- What “single barrel” does and does not tell you
- The fancy words printed where the number was
- Rare Breed: never watered down
Same name, same price, harder to make.
- Wild Turkey 101 or 101 Rye, same price
- Start with a rye near 51 percent
- Rittenhouse, and what its back label shows
- Where the rye was really made
With Scotch, the truth is on the front.
- The $51.99 Scotch beside the $199.94 Macallan
- Why Costco's Islay label is honest
- Six months of finish is not fifteen years
- The store's 18 year old, and its likely maker
- White Horse, with a single malt at its heart
Every Kirkland bottle on one table.
- Divide by the ounce before you decide
- The Woodford handle against two fifths
- What the .97 price and the star mean
- Crown Royal $42.00, Kirkland Canadian $19.72
- How to read the next Kirkland label
- Where whiskey earns no 2 percent back
Cheap bottles that print the facts.
- Early Times Bonded: 100 proof by law
- Old Grand-Dad Bonded, the high-rye recipe
- Wild Turkey 101, the bottle without the horse
- Old Forester 100, the same recipe as Woodford
- Larceny, 1792, Benchmark Full Proof and more
Extra money that buys years and proof.
- Knob Creek 9: the age is back on
- Evan Williams Single Barrel, a label you can check
- Heaven Hill 7 Year, bonded by law
- Rare Breed: full proof, never watered
The cheaper bottle from the same building.
- Woodford at $41.99, its cousin at $28.99
- Basil Hayden at $42.99, its cousin at $25.99
- Jefferson's Ocean at $89.99, Rare Breed at $52.99
- Elijah Craig 18 at $177.99, Small Batch at $29.99
The harder whiskey at the easier price.
- Rebel 100 Rye, the place to start
- Old Overholt Bonded: the bond comes free
- Rittenhouse Bonded, and the fire of 1996
- Jack Daniel's Bonded Rye, 70 percent rye
A cold glass without four ice cubes.
- Cut the bottle to 86 the night before
- One sum for any proof you want
- When ice belongs, and when it doesn't
- Two more pours from every 100 proof bottle
- A glass that holds its strength to the end
Know what you drank before you feel it.
- How big a pour is at any proof
- Measure your two fingers once
- Eat first, then one an hour
- Why the $75 bottle won't treat you better
- The last pour, two hours before bed
Run it on your own prices first.
- A whiskey year as bought: $3,788
- The same year with the readings: about $1,537
- Forty-four names, 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.
Order the set
$27 once. No subscription. Yours forever.
In your inbox the minute you pay.
Three illustrated PDFs · 154 pages · First Edition
The Distiller's Secret Book
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
Questions
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.
