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When Dave Scott was an Air Force wing commander at Hurlburt Field from 1999 to 2001, he used to give out special bottles of Jack Daniel’s, made from a single barrel of the Tennessee distillery’s finest product.

The bottles were from the Jack Daniel’s By the Barrel program. Created around the turn of the century, it allows consumers to purchase an entire barrel full of a select 94 proof whiskey, which is then decanted into about 250 750 ml bottles.

Scott, a retired major general who last served in 2009 as deputy director of U.S. Special Operations Command’s Center for Plans, Operations, and Intelligence at MacDill Air Force Base, knows a thing or two about the popularity of whiskey among the military.

via For special military occasions, whiskey better by the barrel | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune.

I should note that none of the units I was in participated in the Single Barrel program. And I have a suspicion that outside the special warfare community, you’re likely to see the officers of a unit, or maybe the officers and senior NCOs participate.

Also, please understand that your tax dollars are not going to the purchase of extravagant whiskey. Mostly likely, this is a direct voluntary collection, though I suppose some units might have made the purchase using Non Appropriated Funds. NAF are monies collected from things such as the exchange service that are in turn used to support Morale, Welfare and Recreation activities, as well as returned to the various units occasionally.

Whiskey in the ranks is a tad funny. Lemme tell you about my time in Germany, land of terrific beer.

The Germans love Jack Daniels. Heck, so do I. And as a single soldier living in the barracks, I could walk into the PX and buy a bottle. But the purchase of liquor in Germany on base was rationed. To minimize any black market that would suppress German taxation of liquor sales to their own people. GIs had a ration card that limited the amount of liquor they could buy per month. I seem to recall it was something like four fifths (or really, 750ml bottles) per month.

Now, four bottles isn’t that much, but it should be enough to get you through the month.

On the other hand, young troops in the barracks are not always known for their sterling judgment and high tolerance for alcohol. And so virtually every unit commander in Germany issued a policy that prohibited the possession of hard alcohol in the barracks and limited troops to one six pack of beer per man at any given time (which meant the drunks had to make two or three trips t the shoppette on Saturday night).

It really rankled me that I couldn’t (legally) keep a bottle of Jack tucked back in my fridge for a sip after a hard day of work. I’m not saying I ever violated that order. I’m just sayin’ I may have made an error in judgment a time or two.

BTW, if any of you think a donation of Jack Daniels would be better than hitting the Paypal button on the right, who am I to disagree with you?