Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

I like ’em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican and Haitian,

Dominican, Bahamian, and even

from forbidden nations.

The same month that I discovered Ishi and his family living in the wild, I frequently passed a liquor store that kept intermittent and inconsistent hours.  Every time I saw that it was open I was driving to something work-related. When I wasn’t working the store was invariably closed.

A little after 3 on an unexpectedly warm and sunny Saturday afternoon, I saw man lifting up the metal lock-down gates to the most reluctant liquor store in the tri-state area. He unbolts three more locks on the door, enters, and instantly clicks on the neon sign in the window: Open. I’m in this part of the city to visit a bakery, but I immediately change my plans.

From a block away it soon becomes clear to me that I wasn’t the only one waiting for this place to open. Before I could walk the 500 feet it would take to get there, several people crept out from alleys, slithered off of benches, and shuffled out of double-parked cars into the store. They had lumpy and uneven bags under their eyes, debris in their beards, and handfuls of warped lottery tickets with deep abrasions. By the time I went into the store a raucous crowd had formed in front of the cash register, shouting numbers over one another and leveraging between bodies to get closer as if they were betting on horses at the track.

The first thing I do when I go in the store is look for anything with a tax strip. Spotted a pre-1985 peach schnapps and a faded crème-de-menthe liquor, no interest. Next mission, rum.

The rum selection was small but respectable. There were obligatory Bacardis and Ron Barcelos, but there were also Don Q single barrels, a lonesome Brugal 1888 still in its box (when it came in a box), and something I had never seen before. The Don Q and Brugal 1888 were somewhat recent to the market, but what caught my eye was by no means new. Perched at the top of an uneven shelving unit was a bottle of what I thought said Old Nassau Gold Rum. It had the color of a chardonnay and  from the shoulder and above it was covered in dust. It wasn’t in direct sunlight so the representations of award medals that I could distinguish on the label shined like blue eyes in front of its blonde hair.

The rum shelf was behind the register, and I knew I’d have to wait until the regulars thinned out from the lottery counter before I could ask to see the bottle. I pulled out my phone and looked up Old Nassau Gold Rum. My eyes deceived me. Ole Nassau, Google corrected me, and I began to scroll. There wasn’t a single American store on wine-searcher.com that carried it. There was only one listing for a grocery in the Bahamas. None of the online shops in Europe (whose online carts I continuously fill and then empty without making a purchase) carried it either.

Some time passed and it was my turn. The man handed me the bottle and went back to selling 50 mLs, blunts, and lottery tickets. I studied it for a few minutes. One liter bottle, 80 proof. Plastic spin-off cap, particulates drifting lazily to the bottom after a light spin. It’s lighter in color than the gold rum examples I’ve seen on Google Image. The back label has some mawkish poetry about pirates, however I noticed that something was missing: no mention of a distribution company.

This bottle likely has limited distribution outside of the Bahamas. I don’t think it’s stolen, as it has its rear label.

This bottle shouldn’t be here, I thought.

The crowd thinned out again. Hey man, how much is this here bottle? He gave it a passing glance and a shrug. 19 dollars. I added a bottle of water for a dollar, paid him with a twenty, and left.

He put the 20 in his pocket, not the register.

**

I was hosting a dinner party and in need of a rum for a cocktail. My “local” liquor store is less than 1000 feet away and is actually the 4th closest among other liquors stores that could be my “local” liquor store, however the three nearest liquor stores cater to aggressive drunks and people who pay in piles of pocket change.

My local liquor store sees me daily for wine and weekly to browse the brown stuff. The rum selection is OK here, small but affordable. Without fail I can pick up a liter of Brugal XV for thirty dollars, which I think is a good deal for a full liter.  The rum aisle also serves as a conduit to the counter, so this time I picked up the bottle of Brugal and waited my turn to check out. I wasn’t here to browse and I didn’t look at anything else on the shelves. As I waited in line my gaze fell on the label of a bottle. The label looked more like an aberration, but it was written by hand and placed quite squarely parallel with the side edges of the front label. 70 cl. I only saw that measurement, 70 cl. on a small orange price tag.

Wait. Stop what you’re doing.

I grab it and look at it. Punta Cana Club Ron Muy Viejo. No rear label, but that may be by design.

This is a European bottling. Roughly 38% alcohol by volume. What are you doing here?

There was no mention of a distribution company on the labeling.

I knew from previous research that this was an Oliver and Oliver product. Ron muy viejo from Oliver and Oliver is a relative term, our ideas of muy viejo are many time zones apart. Added sugar is a given as well. But, 70 cl.

What are you doing here?

Punta Cana Club Ron Muy Viejo for 19.99 and Punta Cana Club Ron Viejo for 14.99. There is a third variety, the white Silver Dry priced at 14.99 as well. No stock on the shelves. One bottle of Muy Viejo, one bottle of Viejo, one bottle of Silver Dry, all with bright second orange thumbnail-size tags with the prices written on them by hand, anomalous in contrast to the white price tags with printed prices on them for every other bottle in the store. I was just here two days ago looking for anything new in the rum aisle and these weren’t here.

I take the two 70 cl brown rums and wait my turn to check out. 35 dollars for the two, a 1 liter Brugal XV as a back up for 30. For a dinner party that is already stocked with wine, brandy, and cognac, I still feel justified in these extra purchases because… 70 cl.  Something’s up.

There isn’t much I can say about these rums that isn’t covered on other websites. Though I knew Oliver and Oliver rums were likely dosed and dressed up with misleading age-statements, I hadn’t seen reviews for these specific rums yet. My hope was that these 70 cl. bottles meant for Europe were also tailored to the more discriminating tastes of European rum consumers- Oliver and Oliver’s attempt at a high quality undosed rum. On the other hand, for 15 and 20 dollars, the safest bet to place would be to bet on these rums being too sweet and too milquetoast to drink without mixers, ground zero for an explosion of cavities and fillings at my next trip to the dentist.

At home I put the Ron Muy Viejo in my bunker and opened the Viejo and the Brugal XV. My wife and I tasted both and decided that the sweeter Punta Cana Club would go in the cocktails. I knew immediately that I got what I paid for, 35 dollars of below-average rum.

Our guests arrived with Hennessey and Ease Us to Jesus. As folks who prefer their liquor straight, the cocktails stopped flowing after the first round and for the rest of the night we gave our livers improvised stress tests with the hard stuff, generously unmeasured, snifter by snifter.

Punta Cana Club Ron Viejo was universally rejected. Too sweet. We can’t get fucked up on this. One woman consumed a half liter of the Brugal on her own, explaining that it was her only means of keeping the Punta Cana Club in her stomach, masking it with a real rum so her digestive tract doesn’t feel disrespected.

Not every “where are you going, where have you been” moment in the world of bottle hunting is a score. This isn’t the last time you’ll read about me disappointing myself with an Oliver and Oliver product either. A year later another liquor store a half mile away would carry the entire Punta Cana Club line-up, deep stock but in 750 mL. bottles with an American distribution company listed on the rear label. This rum isn’t special at all, but at the very least, how did it get here two years ago?

Somewhere on a retired cellphone there is a video of most of the contents of this bottle being poured down a toilet in the projects. If I ever find this video…

Two years afterward my opinion hasn’t changed. I would drink with relish a cocktail inspired by inner organs, nutty gizzards, and fried cods’ roes before I ever let Punta Cana Club pass through my lips again.

**

One of the best times to go into shitty neighborhoods, especially violent neighborhoods, is in the rain.

Blinding rain.

It was a cold winter day and I had an upcoming road trip the following weekend. Rain was in the forecast- thunder, lightning, and flash floods.

This would be the perfect time to get an oil change.

The garage where I take my car is about two miles from a dozen or so liquor stores I’ve never entered. Each time I’m in this neighborhood every single liquor store is orbited by its own crowd of characters from a number of Shakespeare’s plays: Samson and Greg, bragging about their fights and conquests- forced or otherwise; astute-looking Henny, gambling away his fortune- and miscalculation his default when in the grip of his numbers vice; Claudius, selling his poison- and if you stare in his direction for too long he’ll promise to kill your father and fuck your mother if you don’t put your pupils elsewhere; Mack and Lady Mack, bullying the out-of-towners- Lady Mack challenging their testicular fortitude and Mack punishing you on her say-so.

By the way, you can live on that side street and still be an out-of-towner on this side of the street.

But in a blinding rain, almost none of that happens. At worst Claudius stands inside by an electric outlet and charges his phone as he waits for the storm to pass.

This trip called for rain gear, so I layered up and made my schedule: 1 p.m. oil change, 2 p.m. blinding rain and bottle hunting.

It was 1:45 when I pulled out of the garage after my oil change. The rain was bad, but I knew it was going to get worse. Of the 12 LQs I wanted to visit, six were on one side of the street and there was a large strip mall with a parking lot about a quarter of a mile (five minute walk) from the first LQ. I pulled in at 1:55. As the sky got darker and the rain got stronger, I saw the streets empty. No one was outside anymore. People leaving the stores in the strip mall were waiting under a long awning for the storm to pass before sprinting to their cars. It would be a very long wait and everyone would eventually run; I, however, grabbed my umbrella and began my stroll.

The first LQ was a small room encased by three bullet-proof glass walls. Nothing larger than a 375 mL. In and out in 30 seconds.

The second LQ was deceiving. Dirty and grime covered outside, brand new and smelling of fresh construction inside. Not a speck of dust. There were still ladders leaning against a wall. Only new releases sat on the shelves here. This place was located less than 300 feet from the liquor store that was little more than a bulletproof phone booth. Something just ain’t right, and I figure that this place will be robbed in a week or arsoned for insurance money in a month.

LQ number three, oh what can I compare to thee? Perhaps a summer day, gifting us sun and gaiety.

I’ll leave this here:

To your left you should see two things, a line of decades old- Ron Botran Anjeos. That is most noticeable. Score! Next to that is a Brugal label I’ve never seen before though. Brugal Carta Dorada. There’s no one here except for the clerk, me, and Claudius awaiting fiends to turn into ghosts.

I ask the man at the counter if I can see the Brugal. He is only too happy to make conversation with me.

I know his type, he knows I’ve made him- his tell was how he restrained his enthusiasm when he reached for the bottle. He sees me. I’m not from here and I’m a certain kind of not from here, he’s made me, to a certain extent, as well.

See, he’s complicit. He could have been the cousin of the first accomplice that I ever encountered while bottle hunting in Trenton, New Jersey, in 2009.

“She’s a runaway my son picked up,” he said handing it to me. “You should see what kind of ladies he brings in here.”

“Oh yeah?”

I look over the bottle carefully. She comes from another country, for sure, I thought to myself.

“My son, he comes home with brag-to-your-father kind of bitches.”

 I know where I am. I have to respond in kind.

“Your son has a taste for right looking bitches, for sure, ahki.”

The muscles in his forehead shifted. Game recognize game, his interest is piqued. “The bitches,” he responds in a sportive tone, “they love him. They practically jump in the car with him.”

His kind, if you were to adhere to the stereotype, you’d never expect to engage in this kind of vulgarity. He smiles broadly, revealing a painter’s wheel of yellow and brown from nicotine and an irregular pattern of gold teeth from the hustle glean’d.

“My son, Arnold, is coming back in five minutes. He has more to show you if you want to hang around.”

This rain is going to continue for at least another hour. Yeah, I’ll stay a bit. I’ll browse the bourbons. Nothing old. Oh, a Canadian Club 1.75L from 1985- tax strip in-tact. I’ll pick you up too. Wines? Why yes, I’ll have a look.

I browse the wine section, but I can’t stop thinking about how that Brugal got here. I am familiar with it but a 38% abv rum is nothing to get excited about. The only excitement is in the novelty of finding this bottle here. Brugal Carta Dorada is not sold in the United States. I’ve only seen it on German and Italian websites.

His son, Arnold, takes more than five minutes, but when he arrives he is unsteady on his feet, playing it off as sauntering with swag. He carries himself like a leader of men, yet he rolls in a posse of two; he and his man-aide, a degree higher than a manservant but not yet a manservant’s equal, sport matching sunglasses- which they both put on to enter the store. Arthur dragged forward, his footman stationing himself at the entry, minding the door and cranking up the volume in his headphones. He crosses his arms, and from behind his glasses begins riding a carousel and watching two women entertain a polar bear.

 The clerk calls him over, “Son, son, bring your box over.”

He looked inebriated, but at the sound of the word box Arnold was transformed. Sharper, almost.

“You like rum?” he asked as he walked over with a cardboard wine case of loose and boxed bottles. He looked at me strangely for a moment. He smirked, huffed loudly, and inspected me before relenting and putting the box on the counter.

“Man the flying saucers,” he said as he slid the box toward me.

Dusty Captain Morgans. Eh, no thanks. A Seven Fathoms with its back label. Okay, this is strange. Very little American distribution for this one, maybe none actually. Barbancourt, no back label, but J. Pierre is on the front label so this can’t be that old. Then, suddenly, my intestines shift, as if a sinkhole opened underneath me. It’s all in my head, I’m made of stone to the rest of the world, but the feeling came for a good reason.

I look up at Arnold.

“Man the flying saucers,” I said to him.

His eyebrows jumped once, quickly, and he beamed an intense smile.

“Man the flying saucers, biejo,” he said back.

I pulled up a box of Cuban rum. Ron Santiago 12 Year. This is impossible. And next to it was what I thought was another Cuban rum, Ron Cubaney. As it relates to the Ron Cubaney, within an hour I’d realize that sometimes my hands and wallet are faster than my better judgment- it’s a goddamn Oliver and Oliver product and not the Ron Cubay that I mistook it for- but the windfall was here, time to make this move.

“When I found her,” Arnold said as he pointed to the Ron Santiago, “I practically had to run in her house and grab her, right,” he bragged, turning to his friend in the loud headphones and sharing a laugh, “but I was like, ‘They don’t know anything about you.'”

“What do you know about the prices? I want the one in this box and this tall one.”

“40 for the box. Open her up, look inside her. Everything’s clean,” he promised, “You can give her the finger test right here on the counter. Ten for the skinny one, she doesn’t do anything for me no more.”

For better and for worse, this guy makes my stomach turn.

“You done with these?” he asked.

“Yeah man. I’ll take these two to the register.”

Arnold slid the box under the counter and performed whatever controlled falling he called walking back to his lackey and then out of the door, “50 for the two,” he said to his father, who began ringing me up.

Ron Santiago 12 Year, a very dusty Ron Cubaney 8 year, Brugal Carta de Oro, and a Canadian Club 1.75 with a tax strip all for a under hundred dollars. I paid cash because no one should trust Arthur or his dad with their credit or bank cards, and perhaps because the stars had fated me to rescue these runaways as I rarely keep that much currency on me. No more bottle hunting today. Visiting more stores with this many bags on me will make me look like a tourist in a place that’s never seen one. Arthur’s father was eager to help me triple bag everything for the rain, prophylactics he called them, more prophylactics, to prevent teen pregnancy! He was indeed thorough. Right-side up and up-side down and another bag for good measure.

**

I realize that I am part of the problem. I’ve returned to this store on two occasions, weekday mornings in similarly poor weather, and picked up more Ron Botrans from the 1990s. Later, among their whiskeys I found misplaced Ron Barcelos Emperadors from 1995. On both occasions no Arnold and no father, but I did see Arnold’s errand boy once; the door to a back room was open and he was lighting incense, five sticks at the same time, in a geometrically balanced fan shape, and pinning them down on the edge of a shelf under a bottle of Old Granddad. He put on his sunglasses, sat on a metal folding chair, and stared into the curls of smoke, watching the ash fall on to the concrete floor. That was my cue to leave before Arnold might come around.

**

How do bottles meant for the Bahamas, Cuba, and Europe find their way to the gritty urban interiors of Northern New Jersey?

Are the daughters of sun-kissed motherlands trafficked here and put to work? When their exploiters find they don’t earn what they thought they would the girls are then relegated to dark shelves, practically sleeping on the floor in neighborhoods where decrepitude has spread across store fronts and apartment blocks like a malignant eczema, pedestrians avert their eyes from one another, and itinerants linger in alleyways near smoldering trash can fires. My plans for them are different: part storage, part roof deck soirees. We’ll celebrate and consume them the way they were designed to be.

Am I missing something or are there simpler explanations? Oliver and Oliver sent a New Jersey distributor a case of each Punta Cana Club variety to test market here? Maybe, but I’m not sure if liquor license laws in New Jersey allow for that- somewhere along that chain of custody a tax isn’t being paid. And if this is their way of testing out a product’s viability in this market, they are test marketing with no advertising, no graphics with tasting notes, no displays or placards to attract attention to these new bottles: just a spot on the lowest shelf with hand-written price tags.

Should I believe that a guy who owns a liquor store went to Republica Domincana on vacation and ferried back a single bottle of Brugal Carta Dorada and one Cuban rum to sell in his store in New Jersey? One is desirable and one isn’t, someone who owns a liquor store should know which one is which. He also knows he’s risking his liquor license, an asset worth at least a half-million dollars in his county, over 40 dollars. My guess: Arnold kidnapped these girls domestically, because he damn sure didn’t pick up that Seven Fathoms in Republica Dominicana or Cuba.

Then again, if you look at the bigger picture, the same guy who sold me contraband rum also lets a man sell contraband drugs inside of and at the entrance of his store. In another part of the state, two hours away, some drug dealers forced hotel owners out of their own hotel and kept it for themselves to sell drugs, pimp women, and party. They kept an alligator there. Maybe Claudius is the real owner of this store.

There are some Cuban immigrants in the neighborhood were I found the Ole Nassau, but there are no Cubans in the neighborhood where I found the Ron Santiago. Similarly, there is not one Bahamian in the neighborhood where I bought the Ole Nassau. What gives?

Perhaps I should ask fewer questions and just drink. Hell no! When drinking leads to less conversation I’ll stop drinking.

I’ve been hunting rums for over a decade. I love the walking, the driving, and the discovery. Somewhere in New Jersey a nose-picking illiterate mans a cash register with a lone bottle of rum, a Meyers’s Puerto Rican Rum from 1982 no less, mixed in among the 50s, 200s, and 375s of rot-gut behind him.

This could be anywhere from Paterson to Port Norris, and because of that there will always be more questions to ask, more drinks to share, and more stories to tell.

Potential disclaimer:

Don’t get it twisted. I used Shakespeare’s characters and an interpolation of a Joyce Carol Oates classic to describe a dangerous place in Newark, New Jersey. First- unless you look militant enough to avoid being hassled, don’t go to places like this. In other words; unless you have facial hair, visible tattoos that weren’t given to you by someone with a fine arts degree, and unless you walk like you can hold down a building (and if I have to explain that to you, you aren’t qualified to do my job)- don’t do what you read about me doing here. Second- the guy selling drugs isn’t named Claudius, but he openly threatens people inside and in front of the store. As I browsed this store, there was a drug dealer charging his phone by the window. Nothing to get alarmed about, really, this is how it is here. I can tell what gang he’s in, most people under the age of 50 can figure it out as well. The clerk/owner and son are real, but no one is named Arnold. The box was real too. Yeah, pops was a hustler and his son was a thug, and I have no doubt that these folk were clearly outsiders within their own community. Pops also did refer to the bottles as bitches and he linked his son to the other “exotic bitches” his son showed me. These two guys, the clerk and his son, were devils. I immediately thought of a short story that I read in the late 1990s, thus I had no choice but to explain what happened that day in those terms. I didn’t ask for anyone’s name, they named themselves by what they manifested.

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