What do you get a guy who already has all the Blanton's stoppers?

There’s a chill in the air and Mariah Carey’s soprano on the breeze. Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror, and the Days of Nog approacheth. It’s time once again for Fingers’ Bad Holiday Gift Guide for Heavy-Drinking Frenemies™.

Now in its fifth (!!!) running,1 the boozeletter’s annual shortlist of sipping-related schlock has distinguished itself in the halls of drinks-industry public relations firms as the least-desirable press placement of the holiday season. Maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, previous installments of Fingers’ Bad Holiday Gift Guide for Heavy-Drinking Frenemies™ (BHGGfH-DF™) have featured such embarrassing and/or obscene items as:

• “Let’s Go Brandon” .50-caliber bullet bottle-openers for your Facebook aunt who abruptly stopped talking about January 6th, 2021 for… reasons;

• Tesla tequila tumblers for the coworker who recently bought a Twitter Blue subscription;

• A shot-dispensing Shotfun™️ shotgun for aspiring boogaloo bois;

And so much more. This year, I hope to once again assemble a roster of the best bad gifts to give the various familiar (but, for legal reasons, totally fictional) shitheads in your life. For example: what do you get a flatbrim Barstool dad who already has all the Blanton’s stoppers?

To answer such questions, I need your help, Fingers Fam. Comments are open to both free and paid subscribers, so drop links to the worst fucking drinks-related giftables you’ve seen this year:

I encourage you to check out BHGGfH-DF™ 2023, 2022 and 2021 for inspiration. Editorial guidelines here are loose: I’m looking for absurd, self-important, corny, and otherwise irritating drinking ephemera; I am not looking for actual alcohol, or whiskey stones, which are so foundational to this exercise by now that they’re basically just the “free” square in Bingo.2 You can do better (worse), Fingers Fam, I just know it.

As ever, strong preference will be given to Blue Lives Matter flotsam, “let them drink Veuve”-esque baubles, and products that shamelessly pander to The Troops™️. Once I’ve got a good working list of bad gifts, I’ll winnow it down to only the most dismal junk, and invent terrible people that you should give them to. Get thee to the comments:

To any flacks reading this who take umbrage with the premise of the BHGGfH-DF™, please remember that this is all for fun and nothing is personal. Unless your client makes the list, in which case, it’s very personal, and maybe even your fault, too. Don’t email me about it!

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George Esquivel is the co-founder of Four Corners Brewing Company in Dallas, Texas. He joined Taplines this week to talk about selling his brewery to Constellation Brands, spending five years within the belly of Big Beer's Golden Beast, then retaking control of his brewery to go independent again in 2023. It's a rare perspective that only a few brewers across the country have, and Esquivel graced us with rare candor when telling his tale.

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