You should never cry over spilled milk, as the saying goes. But spilled whiskey is an entirely different matter, warranting at least a full week's worth of wailing over the wasted drops of sweet, sweet alcohol. Start the mourning period now: a whiskey bottling plant in Scotland spilled 1,700 gallons of the good stuff in a river. Nothing is sacred anymore, NOTHING.
This abomination actually went down in September 2011, after the Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouse accidentally pumped whiskey from tanker into an already full whiskey vat. The golden drops of fermented happiness overflowed out of the vat into the River Ayr thanks to an open drain valve, doomed never to touch our hearts, lips and livers.
Now, officials are coming down on the bottling plant, though for some reason they're more focused on the spill's environmental impact on the river than on the loss of whiskey, as if turtles and fish haven't benefitted from developing a new affinity for fine single-malt on the (literal) rocks, breaking out their finest bottles at underwater parties to help facilitate dissection of Camus's works. "The risk of pollution of the river should have been one of the considerations at the forefront of the company's policies," Sara Shaw, a procurator fiscal (Scottish prosecutor) told BBC News, noting that the plant hadn't prepared its managers and employees for this kind of spill.
The company, which bottles for the Loch Lomon Distillery, was fined $20,000 on Thursday; meanwhile, the rest of us must come to terms with knowing we live in a world that has a little less whiskey in it, and no amount of money will ever heal that pain.
