{"id":3095,"date":"2015-07-10T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=3095"},"modified":"2015-07-11T10:02:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T16:02:13","slug":"shambooze-a-new-word-for-an-old-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/shambooze-a-new-word-for-an-old-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Shambooze: A New Word for an Old Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
When the startling news broke that a TABC investigation revealed that nearly a third<\/em> of Texas bars were selling bottom shelf booze as the good stuff, the first thing I noticed after absorbing the leading\u00a0two\u00a0articles was this: there is no good word\u00a0that suitably describes this ancient treachery.<\/em><\/p>\n The phrases phony pours <\/em>and\u00a0counterfeit liquor<\/em>\u00a0were served up\u00a0in the Dallas News article<\/a>, but the former isn’t specific enough and the latter is likely to\u00a0be confused\u00a0with\u00a0the made-in-a-basement-by-the-local-version-of-the-Mafia counterfeit hooch\u00a0that regularly poisons drinkers in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n Which isn’t what’s going on here. What’s happening in Texas–and undoubtedly every other state in the union–is bar owners or their minions\u00a0are pouring cheap liquor into top- or even mid-shelf bottles and selling it as such. In the industry this is called marrying<\/em> the bottles, but the problem with that word is it also applies to pouring the exact same liquor from one bottle to a matching bottle. Which is also illegal, but for a different reasons.<\/p>\n