Imagethief likes to keep at least one bottle of good Scotch whiskey in the house at all times, in case of emergency. Like friends coming over. My last bottle, which I received for my 40th, way back last October, is finally down to the dregs (I don't drink much), and it was time for a fresh bottle. Since I was too lame to bring a bottle of Lagavulin back from the US last week, I had to make do with with one of the more mainstream choices available at the Marketplace supermarket in the basement of Shin Kong Place, the slick mall next door to my apartment.

I picked up a bottle of 15 year old Glenlivet. I don't know why I got that instead of the perfectly serviceable and 150RMB cheaper 12 year old. It's not like my palate is all that great. I'm a slave to marketing, I guess. Anyway, when I got home and opened up the box, this is what I found:

See anything funny there?

Yep, the age on the bottle and the age on the box don't quite match. Dumbass. How could I not have had the sticks to just check in the box in the supermarket? A Chinese supermarket? I must be getting slow. Always check in the box. It's a basic rule of buying liquor in China, no matter where you get it. 

The obvious guess is that some shifty shopper swapped the bottles and bought himself a discount fifteen year old. Or maybe the distributor is playing fast and loose here and there, hoping a stray bottle doesn't get noticed. But living next door makes recouping the RMB150 worth it, so I went back. To Marketplace's credit, they swapped it immediately and cheerfully for the correct bottle. Now all I need is an excuse to crack it open and enjoy a snort.

And that assumes that the bottle itself isn't counterfeit. But like I said, my palate's not that good...