Save money with decanters

Alcohol is bad for your health and costs money. If you can drink less or never start drinking, that’s ideal.

Depending on your tastes and how much you drink, you can easily spend as much as maxing out an IRA contribution for the year.

Find better values through blind taste tests

We adopted the practice of blind taste testing new brands of alcohol to find better values. In doing so we have managed to find gems like a great $11 bourbon that won or tied in our blind taste tests with some $40-45 bottles. If your house goes through one bottle per week, $45 weekly comes to $2,340 annually, or ~$45,000 invested in the market over 10 years, or ~$470,000 over 30 years. By reducing your cost to $11 per week, that comes to $572 annually, or ~$11,000 over 10 years, or ~$115,000 over 30 years.

So, it’s worth discovering lower priced higher quality booze. It’s fun, too.

The method

You need a partner. You probably already have your house favorite stocked. Buy two or more cheap bottles that you have never had before. Have your partner pour up a taste of each in separate glasses of the same type in a different room. Your partner knows which is which but only tells you A, B, or C. You try each one with your eyes closed. You don’t even want to see the color because it may bias you and what you really care about is the taste and price.

Pick which one you liked the most. Was it the house favorite or do you have a new champion?

Bring some friends over and have them blind test too. It’s fun.

Decanters

If the new champion’s bottle doesn’t look great on your shelf, put it in a decanter. There are many to choose from.

Don’t go overboard on your decanter. Just make sure it doesn’t have a plastic stopper. All glass or crystal is preferred. And remember, you’re trying to save money.

Wine

This goes for wine too. Decanters pair particularly well with box wine or good value store brands. When you have a dinner date or a party, just fill a wine decanter with your box wine and voila. Now it’s not cheap wine. It’s decanted wine. And decanters are classy.