A little background first. 8 or 9 years ago my national professional society annual meeting was held in San Francisco, my first visit to the city. My wife and I were just dating then, but she travelled with me for this trip. In preparation for the trip she cruised one SF tour guide and discovered that the Ritz-Carlton hotel bar, two blocks from our hotel, was listed as having the largest collection of single malt Scotch whisky in the US, something we definitely had to check out. We did, on two separate nights, and discovered a collection of at least 75 bottles arrayed on a table at one side of the small bar, most either secondary bottlings or direct cask bottlings with hand written labels, another 25 or so bottles of distillery bottlings on the shelves behind the bar. The very knowledgeable and helpful bartender knew everything about each bottle, and guided us to several fine whiskies that we greatly enjoyed, to excess, but generally special bottlings that we have not been able to find anywhere since. But it was nirvana while it lasted.
Fast forward, this year's meeting was held this past week in the same hotel as 9 years ago, and we made plans to revisit the original scene of the crime, so to speak, the Ritz Carlton scotch bar. The anticipation was high, especially since the only night of the trip we could go there to get our thirsts whetted was going to be tonight, our last night, while we had a babysitter for several hours while we attended the society annual dinner dance. So after dinner we snuck out and hurried down the hill to the Ritz eager to enjoy several brands each before relieving the babysitter. To our horror they had completely remodeled the bar, shed the whole collection of special bottlings of scotch several years ago, the new bar only had 10 standard distillery bottlings, nothing over 16 hrs old, only one of which I did not already have in my own collection ( a 14 yr old Balblair 97). Our hearts sunk, but Wife enjoyed the Balblair and I a double Glen Rothes 1995, both nice, but still a relative disappointment from our expectations. Barmaid did not have any idea of why the old scotch collection was gone, or that it had ever existed at all. We had to call it an early evening instead.
Guess I will have to find another great scotch bar, or just keep building my own experience when and where I can, and keep enlarging my collection at every opportunity. Still bummed out though----what a disappointment.